Archive for February 22nd, 2008
February 22, 2008
The superduo–Mario and Sonic–have done it again. This time, their portable foray on the Nintendo DS, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, has taken out the number one spot in the overall game chart according to data trackers GfK Australia. The Wii version of the game, which was released in November 2007, also appears in the overall game charts at number seven.
The PlayStation 3 version of Devil May Cry 4 dropped two spots this week, finishing in spot number four, with the Xbox 360 version of the game in third place for the week of February 11-17. Exclusive Xbox 360 RPG Lost Odyssey fell three places to end the period in eighth spot. The PlayStation 3 iteration of Burnout Paradise took out the ninth spot, while the Xbox 360 version failed to make it into the overall chart. The latest Nintendo game to bear the Touch Generation! logo seems to have hit the spot, with Professor Kageyama’s Maths Training: The Hundred Cell Calculation Method finishing the week at number 10.
All sales stats, including console-by-console breakdowns, can be found below:
Top 10 Full-Priced Games
1. Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, Nintendo DS
2. Bratz: 4 Real, Nintendo DS
3. Devil May Cry 4, Xbox 360
4. Devil May Cry 4, PlayStation 3
5. Brain Training from Dr Kawashima: How Old Is Your Brain?, Nintendo DS
6. WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW 2008, Nintendo DS
7. Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, Wii
8. Lost Odyssey, Xbox 360
9. Burnout Paradise, PlayStation 3
10. Professor Kageyama’s Maths Training: The Hundred Cell Calculation Method, Nintendo DS
Top 10 PS3 Games (over A$60)
1. Devil May Cry 4
2. Burnout Paradise
3. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
4. Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune
5. Turok
6. Assassin’s Creed
7. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock bundle
8. Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction
9. Heavenly Sword
10. WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW 2008
Top 10 Xbox 360 Games (over A$50)
1. Devil May Cry 4
2. Lost Odyssey
3. Turok
4. Burnout Paradise
5. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
6. Halo 3
7. Assassin’s Creed
8. BioShock
9. Mass Effect
10. The Club
Top 10 Wii Games (over A$50)
1. Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games
2. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock bundle
3. Super Mario Galaxy
4. Ghost Squad
5. Mario Party 8
6. Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga
7. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
8. WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW 2008
9. Donkey Kong Jet Race
10. Boogie
Top 10 PC Games (over A$20)
1. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
2. World of Warcraft
3. The Sims 2: Castaway Stories
4. World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade
5. Crysis
6. World of Warcraft Battlechest
7. The Sims 2: Teen Style Stuff
8. The Sims 2: Seasons
9. The Sims 2: Bon Voyage
10. The Sims 2: Pets
Top 10 Nintendo DS Games (over A$40)
1. Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games
2. Bratz: 4 Real
3. Brain Training from Dr Kawashima: How Old Is Your Brain?
4. WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW 2008
5. Professor Kageyama’s Maths Training: The Hundred Cell Calculation Method
6. More Brain Training from Dr Kawashima: How Old Is Your Brain?
7. Sight Training: Vision Training in Minutes a Day
8. Nintendogs: Labrador and Friends
9. Nintendogs: Dachshund and Friends
10. Nintendogs: Dalmatian and Friends
Top 10 PS2 Games (over A$50)
1. WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW 2008
2. V8 Supercars 3 Platinum
3. High School Musical: Sing It!
4. SingStar R&B bundle
5. Crash of the Titans
6. SingStar ’80s
7. SingStar Pop
8. Need for Speed ProStreet
9. SingStar Legends
10. SingStar Rock Ballads
Top 10 PSP games (over A$40)
1. The Simpsons Game
2. Need for Speed Carbon
3. Crash of the Titans
4. Ricky Ponting 2007 Pressure Play
5. WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW 2008
6. Syphon Filter: Logan’s Shadow
7. Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories Platinum
8. Medal of Honor Heroes 2
9. Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice
10. FIFA Soccer 08
All data supplied by GfK Australia.
February 22, 2008
At last year’s Tokyo Game Show, SNK Playmore showed off a brief two-level demo of Metal Slug 7, the latest in the long and hallowed line of gonzo military-themed scrolling shooters. Now, we’ve gotten to play around with a much more expansive version of this currently Nintendo DS-exclusive blast-a-thon. US-based reps for SNK Playmore weren’t able to tell us much about the game because they’d only just gotten their hands on it themselves, but we were able to surmise a few new details during our play session.
The thoroughly Japanese build of Metal Slug 7 we tried had a total of seven missions available, any of which we could select for play straight from the new-game screen. We figure this is the entire span of the single-player game, though you’ll most likely have to unlock each mission as you play through the game the first time around. The build we played also had six playable characters available at the outset, though we couldn’t discern any mechanical differences among them.
There wasn’t much here that will surprise you if you’ve played any of the previous Metal Slugs on the numerous platforms they’ve appeared on. You’re still running to the right, shooting everything that moves with increasingly more powerful weapons, and rescuing as many prisoners of war as you can (which are now tallied by name in a score screen on the main menu). There’s a new arcing electricity gun, but otherwise, all the action we saw was straight up Metal Slug.
Metal Slug has been adapted fairly well to the DS’s relatively small screen and limited power. The sprites–the same ones, for the most part, you’ve been seeing since the series’ inception–seem to have been scaled down in size a bit, relative to the overall size of the screen, but the action was moving fast and furious without any significant slowdown. We had no trouble blasting away with the DS Lite’s capable D pad and face buttons.
The game seems to present a new combo or bonus meter of some sort, which fills at the bottom of the screen as you waste enemies. You have to kill frequently to keep it from running back down, and once you fill it up entirely, it starts flashing and exhibits a “MAX” indicator as it runs down rapidly. Our best guess is this is a sort of score combo modifier that gives you extra points per kill while it’s active, though we’ll have to wait until we get to try an English version to figure it out for sure.
One feature we haven’t seen in past Metal Slug games is the combat school, which presented a series of challenges that tasked you with playing through specific missions with various parameters, such as a time limit, a minimum accuracy rating, or a limitation to a specific weapon like the pistol. We couldn’t tell if you’ll gain any bonuses or rewards for completing these challenges because the mode was thick with Japanese text, but it was clear you’ll at least receive a letter-grade ranking for your performance after completing each one.
Look for more on Metal Slug 7 when we get to try it in English.
-If Its Games
February 22, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO–Film tie-ins, particularly those for animated movies, don’t generally rise to the top of the heap. Color us surprised, then, that the mechanics behind the Kung Fu Panda game for the Nintendo DS seem pretty solid. We’ll let the movie critics worry about the upcoming animated film’s quality, but for now, we’re eager to see how well the game will turn out, even if the demo we got to play was only about five minutes’ worth of gameplay.
The demo took place on one tiny level, a dojo in which red panda Master Shifu (due to be voiced in the film by Dustin Hoffman) guided us, as Po (voiced in the film by Jack Black), through the game’s basic controls. Movement is simple: You use the D pad to move left and right, press up to jump, and press up twice to–you guessed it–double-jump. While it seems that using a face button to jump would have made more sense, the combat system made it easy to figure out why developer Vicarious Visions went that route: All of the action is performed using just the stylus.
After a quick introduction, we were attacked by killer crocodiles, but we soon discovered fun and interesting ways to turn them into panda food. First up was the standard attack, in which we dragged the stylus toward the enemy and let go. Po slid toward the enemy and delivered a swift karate chop in response. These weren’t the only actions available, though. We could pick up our foe as well, and then throw him toward other enemies, or just into the air. No matter what action you choose, performing it is simple: You select the right object, area, or enemy, and a contextual action will pop up, which makes it easy to determine what Po’s onscreen feat will be. And every time you drag the stylus, the action pauses, which makes it easy to choose exactly what deed of derring-do you deign to deliver.
A few other twists were added in the short demo as well. Some enemies tossed spears, which we could grab and then throw back. Others were vulnerable to the iron claw attack, in which Po transforms into a tiger and leaps through the air toward his advancing foe. Alas, it was over all too quickly, but we learned enough to know that this is one movie tie-in that’s worth keeping an eye on. We’ll bring you more news on Kung Fu Panda as it becomes available.
-If Its Games
February 22, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO–Earlier today we stopped by the Nintendo Booth at GDC to check out the demos available on their DS download station. Included in the selection was Wacky Races: Crash & Dash, a Mario Kart-style racer based on the Hanna-Barbera cartoon.
While the source material might be getting a little old (the show debuted in 1968), the game explores some relatively new ground with its stylus-driven control scheme. You keep the stylus pressed against the screen at all times, moving it around in the direction you want your vehicle to go. That sounds simple enough, but what makes it interesting is that the perspective is constantly changing; at one moment, you’re given a top-down view of the action, while an upcoming bend in the road could move the camera toward a side view, and so on. It’s a unique twist that results in some very mind-bending moments.
The Mario Kart comparison is based on the game’s scattered power-ups. You’ll need to drive over these “wacky widgets” to pick them up, two of which you can store at one time. You can choose which one to use by pressing either left or right on the D pad, which allows you to keep using your stylus as a directional guide. The widgets found in the demo include a pterodactyl swooping in to carry you forward, your kart turning into a rolling boulder that crushes everything in its way, and the ability to briefly lob stones at the other racers.
At certain checkpoints along the track you’ll see the show’s villain, Dick Dastardly, pop onto your screen to pull you into a quick minigame. The two included in this demo have you dodging boulders raining from the sky and tracing a path through winding cliffs. These bite-size distractions will affect your placing in the race depending on your success. Though brief, they occur quite often. A Mario Kart-meets-Wario Ware style of racing looks to be the direction the game is aiming toward, so hopefully they can work to bolster the latter half of that formula with a good range of minigames.
The demo is fairly limited in terms of selection; you can choose only one racer, the Slag Brothers in their Boulder Mobile, and one plain, outdoorsy track called Mish Mash Missouri Dash. The cartoon characters you’re competing against look pretty nice for the DS, with a cel-shaded graphical style similar to the console versions of Wacky Races. On the other hand, the one included track is a bit bland in comparison. Part of what made the Dreamcast version an enjoyable experience was the fact that courses dripped with a uniquely charming style. We’ll see if they can achieve that same level of character when the game is released this June.
-If Its Games
February 22, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO–Wii Fit–the upcoming Wii game that comes with its own balance board and a set of exercises–has already been a massive hit in Japan, with Nintendo finally confirming that the title would reach US shores on May 19 and Europe on April 25. Apparently, health-conscious gamers have none other than Nintendo icon Shigeru Miyamoto to thank for the upcoming game–or more specifically, Miyamoto’s quirky habit of having fun when weighing himself.
In an enlightening speech at GDC yesterday, the game’s peripheral developer Takao Sawano took the audience through the history of Wii Fit’s balance board and unveiled that plans for a Wii-based fitness game was thought up very early in the console’s development and not as a reaction to the success of other titles, such as Wii Sports. He showed a slide of what was apparently Miyamoto’s early concepts for the Wii, which dictated that some sort of health game was a requirement for the upcoming console.
“At the time, Mr. Miyamoto said that he has fun just weighing himself and collecting his weight data, so this idea is bound to lead to something interesting,” Sawano, speaking through an interpreter, said. “He wanted to incorporate that ritual of weighing himself into a Wii game.”
Sawano said despite Miyamoto’s enthusiasm, the team had doubts about the viability of the project. “There’s something Mr. Miyamoto says to staff members with a weakened outlook on their projects. And that is developers must always approach their projects with the belief that they are selling a million seller. Otherwise, the end result will be something that’s average at best,” he said.
Sawano also unveiled many other tidbits about the development of the balance board. For example, the concept of having several weight sensors on the balance board apparently came to Sawano after he noticed that sumo wrestlers have to weigh themselves on two separate scales because of their large weight. This gave him the idea of initially having two sensors, which could detect left and right movement, with the final product having four in total, which can detect forward and back motions as well. Also, this very new piece of Nintendo technology apparently has some old tech in it. Specifically, Nintendo has used the same type of rotary encoders found in Nintendo 64 controllers in the new balance boards.
Sawano also unveiled the latest Japanese sales figures for Wii Fit. As of last weekend, the game had sold more than 1.4 million units in Nintendo’s home country.
February 22, 2008
Since Jimmy White’s Whirlwind Snooker bar billiards and its many cousins have been re-created on pretty much every format going, and in the second quarter of 2008 it will make another appearance, this time on the Nintendo Wii. While it’s also coming to the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, and DS, the Wii version is notable because it will ship with a snooker cue attachment for the Wii Remote that will re-create the physical experience of playing the sport. Blade Interactive recently dropped by with advanced builds of the several console versions, and we had a play.
WSC Real is being built using Blade’s Infinite Worlds engine, which the company is also using for its highly anticipated upcoming title Hydrophobia. It will feature all the major tournaments from Sheffield to Shanghai, online play for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions, and commentary from the likes of John Virgo. In addition to being able to create a player in the create-a-player mode, you’ll be able to play as 32 real-life snooker pros in the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions and as 96 pros on the Wii. And as you’d expect, all the official snooker equipment and sponsorship deals are true to life, whether they be from manufacturers such as Riley or broadcasters such as the BBC.
Locations for matches are more varied than you might expect.
The centre of the WSC Real experience is the career mode. As with most sports games these days, when you create your own player you can design his facial and physical features before taking him into the game. You’ll then build up this player from the lowly ranks to play in the world’s major competitions, and only then will you take on players such as Mark Williams and Ronnie O’Sullivan. Despite your humble beginnings, you’ll still have your own snooker hall, where you can practice certain shots, see the competitions that are coming up, and collect newspaper cuttings about your games. One nice touch in WSC Real is that you’ll be able to supplement your income with DVD appearances, and you’ll see the cases lining up along the shelf for each one you star in.
When it comes down to the snooker itself, WSC Real doesn’t stray too far from common conventions. You can move the camera to look around the table or shift to a top-down perspective, and once you’ve chosen your target, you can add spin and change the angle of the cue if necessary. Playing the game on a debug Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the developers demonstrated a mode where you can see where both the cue ball and the target ball will end up on the table. You won’t be able to use this in the final game, but it served to show some of the mathematics going on in the background of the Infinite Worlds engine. Taking the shot is a matter of using the right analogue stick, with a green bar at the top of the screen indicating how much power you’re applying.
The Wii version of WSC Real is a different beast entirely. The game will ship in a case that contains a 2-foot-long attachment that will turn the Wii Remote into a proper cue-shaped peripheral. The buttons and the infrared emitter will still be accessible so that you can control the game, but you take shots by holding down the B button and thrusting the cue forwards. According to the developers, this action takes a little getting used to and is slightly less precise than the joystick motion of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 controllers, so some leniency has been allowed in the difficulty of the AI opponents. While it’s no walk in the park, the AI level has been dropped by approximately 30 percent over the other versions, allowing you a little bit of a safety net if you mess up one particular shot. We were initially reticent to thrust the prototype controller with any force, but thanks to the inclusion of practice shots, we quickly got the hang of it.
On the graphics side, WSC Real definitely makes the most of TV-style presentation. The wealth of detail makes it feel undeniably authentic, but the game isn’t afraid to have some fun with the World Snooker Championship licence either. We saw one match being played in the official Shanghai arena and another in a trendy sky-high bar with lots of people watching from plush sofas. The audio production is even better, with a number of famous commentators who will be familiar to anyone who has seen snooker on TV in the UK. Like Sid Waddell is to darts, John Virgo is the instantly recognisable voice of snooker in the UK, and his witty commentary track adds some light relief to WSC Real. As the developers explained how to play the game, we’d hear John cracking one-liners about reading a book or watching paint dry as he waited for the action to commence
The game will also allow you to play pool when you’re looking for a little light relief.
WSC Real will be online-enabled on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 for one-on-one play, and in testing, the developers have found it to be a much more social game than the usual online fare. With typical games such as Call of Duty 4 and Burnout Paradise, encounters can last for as little as a few minutes at a time, during which the high-intensity action can prove to be a barrier to communication. With snooker matches taking 30 minutes to an hour, the developers have found that players tend to act more socially, advising each other about shots and generally becoming more relaxed. Sadly, there will be no online mode for the Wii, nor will there be any Sixaxis motion-sensitive support, although Blade admits that these are features it will look into for next year’s version.
With all the official licensing, simple controls, and an intuitive Wii accessory going for it, WSC Real 08 will be an interesting proposition for snooker fans. It’s still a little rough around the edges, but there’s plenty of time for Blade to polish it up before release. The developers plan to have it ready for an April ship date, which should coincide nicely with the World Snooker Championship at the Crucible. Even better, the version bundled with the Wii cue peripheral won’t cost any more than a standard Wii game, so expect it to be around £35 once it hits stores. If we hear any more in the run-up to April, we’ll be sure to keep you in the loop.
-If Its Games
February 22, 2008
One Piece: Unlimited Adventure tackles two challenges, and it does so reasonably well. First and foremost, it offers a good amount of fan service by way of its flashback-oriented storytelling. Second, it’s a somewhat-entertaining action-oriented adventure in it own right, with a light but amusing combat system and some fun boss battles. It’s also quite long, though that’s partially due to a lot of dull backtracking. This is a good game, to be sure, but a bit of monotony moves in early on, only to take up permanent residence as the adventure continues.
“Nose to nose” takes on a new meaning whenever Usopp is involved.
The story doesn’t tread new ground, although that ends up working to the game’s benefit. Luffy and his pirate pals find a mysterious crystal (amusingly, this generic mysteriousness is the source of several humorous bits of dialogue from the ever-positive Luffy) just prior to crash-landing on an unfamiliar island. As it turns out, that same crystal is the key to freedom, as well as some apparently precious treasure. More importantly, the crystal causes the gang to relive memories, which are represented by frequent clips from the television series. As a tip of the hat to rabid fans, this is a rather effective narrative device, but if you’re an American One Piece enthusiast, be warned: Many of these clips are from episodes yet to air in the United States. In other words, expect spoilers galore.
In the lengthy story mode, you can play as any one of eight Straw Hats at any given time, and switch among them at will by pressing the minus button on the remote. Should a character fall in combat, never fear: You can replace him or her with someone else, which means that all eight need to bite the dust before it’s game over. From a combat perspective, all of them bring something different to the table, from Usopp’s bow and arrow to Zoro’s flurry of swords. As you play as a particular character, you unlock new moves and level up existing ones. It’s likely that you will settle on two or three of them early on to do the bulk of your business, given that several characters feel underpowered at first. However, you’d be wise not to neglect them, not just because leveling them up evens out the playing field, but because losing your best characters during boss fights and getting stuck with underdeveloped ones is an easy ticket to a reload.
Nevertheless, part of the game’s uneasy dichotomy is the RPG-esque grinding that results from this setup. The combat itself is pretty simple but good fun, and consists of a comfortable blend of button mashing and remote waggling. There is also a contextual combo system in which you must duplicate a series of moves listed on the right side of the screen to unleash a powerful attack. However, you’ll end up spending a lot of time slicing up endlessly respawning enemies in the same environments over and over, just to keep all eight characters ready for the next boss battle–of which there are many.
The tedium that results from the grind itself is pretty mild because the combat is so enjoyable. Unfortunately, it’s compounded by the actual adventuring. To progress, you use your ever-mysterious crystal to activate globes scattered across the island to gain access to new areas. Your crystal is a hungry sucker, though, and requires you to feed it various objects before it’ll introduce you to the next horizon. In turn, you need to craft various tools to assist you. For example, if the crystal is hungry for insects, you’ll need to create a net to catch them–and before you can do that, you need to collect ingredients to make the net.
That’s not an inherently bad mechanic, and there’s a certain feeling of accomplishment when you finally manage to gather everything you need to move on. However, you can craft items and save your game only at camp, which results in an excessive amount of backtracking. You might end up needing items from a completely different area than the one you’re in, or you may have stored them at camp to free up your limited inventory space. Either way, you’ll spend a lot of time running around areas you’ve already visited over and over again, and fighting off the same sailors, when all you want to do is find a spiderweb.
Defeating bosses and other enemies also unlocks them for the other two modes the game offers. Although survival mode–in which you mow down enemies against the clock–is barely worth noting, versus mode is actually pretty interesting. In this mode, you and a buddy spend a limited number of points on a group of fighters, which means that you can take in a whole bunch of underpowered marines or a few powerful bosses, and then take one another on.
Nami isn’t the most powerful character at first, but she’s more helpful as she levels up.
One Piece: Unlimited Adventure is visually unimpressive, though it manages to capture the freewheeling spirit of the popular anime quite well. Character models are nicely done, and some of their attacks result in a flurry of colorful particles and other effects. But as a rule, everything looks pixelated and washed out, and environments are often unimaginative, with a few notable exceptions, such as a beach with a hulking dinosaur skeleton. There are some obvious dips in the frame rate as well, though the game is easy enough that it never affects gameplay to any great extent. Thankfully, the show’s cast does a terrific job in bringing the Straw Hats to audible life, and though none of the music or sound effects stand out as particularly exceptional, none of these elements are particularly bothersome either.
There’s certainly a lot of game here. The adventure could take you 40 or more hours to complete, so if you’re a fan of Luffy and company, you’ll get your fair share of time to spend with them. Sure, there’s a ton of repetition here, but the game’s aesthetic is so charming and easygoing that it’s hard to fault the gameplay for following suit. Most likely, you’ll be able to overlook the game’s faults and enjoy One Piece: Unlimited Adventure for what it is: a cute and fun way to join your favorite pirates on their latest escapade.
February 22, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO–OK, so Nintendo’s upcoming Wii Fit might not be an all-in-one solution for transforming you into Brad Pitt (or Angelina Jolie for that matter), but that’s not what the game is supposed to do. We’ve had the Japanese version of the game in the office for a few weeks now, but today, on the floor of the 2008 Game Developers Conference, we had a chance to check out the European version of the game to get a feel for how the English-language version of the game will work.
In Brain Age, you learned how old your brain is; in Wii Fit, it’s your body’s turn.
Because we’ve been able to check out the various exercise games, yoga poses, and balance games that make up the majority of Wii Fit’s gameplay, our interest this time around was in seeing how the game keeps track of your fitness regimen as you play it. In much the same way that the Brain Age series tracks your mental acuity over time, so too will Wii Fit measure your physical progress the more you play it. All of this information is saved in a profile that is naturally tied to your Mii
To benefit from this kind of progress tracking, you first need to establish some baselines for Wii Fit to gauge your development. You’ll first enter basic statistics, such as your height and date of birth. Then the game will calculate your body mass index (BMI: a statistical measure of weight scaled to a person’s height), center of gravity, and balance capabilities. To do so, all you need to do is stand on the Wii Fit pad and follow the onscreen instructions. Interestingly, after measuring how you stand on the pad, the game will let you know how you carry your weight (we tend to carry our weight toward the rear of our feet, for example), and you’ll also be asked to test your balance by shifting your weight from foot to foot.
Once all of this is complete, you’re Wii Fit age is calculated by the game. Goals are an important part of achieving fitness, and you’ll be able to set specific goals in Wii Fit. You can choose to lose a certain amount of weight or achieve a target BMI within a certain amount of time. The game will help you keep track of your progress and even suggest when a goal might be unrealistic.
Once you’ve got your goals set, you can move on to the actual exercise events, which are organized in four categories: yoga, muscle-building, aerobic, and balance activities. These activities run the gamut from practicing specific yoga poses to playing fun games, such as walking a tightrope or skiing a slalom event. For each minute you spend on a particular exercise, you’ll earn credits that will eventually unlock new, more advanced events you can check out. In addition to keeping extensive records of all the time you spend on various events by taking frequent body tests, Wii Fit will chart your progress on BMI, weight loss, your body age, and so on. You can even enter other exercise activities you take part in away from Wii Fit into the game, which will also count toward your overall progress.
Though there’s no doubt that you can work up a sweat practicing your warrior pose in Wii Fit, the game seems best suited as a hub of sorts that keeps track of all your physical activity. Will Wii Fit contribute to slimmer bellies and stronger muscles across the nation? We’ll find out when the game is released in the States on May 19.
-If Its Games
February 22, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO–Say “Square Enix,” and gamers will immediately think of the Final Fantasy series or another of the Japanese developer’s epic role-playing games. So it was a challenge for the company to concentrate on a small WiiWare game, according to game designers Toshiro Tsuchida and Fumiaki Shiraishi.
“Hail to the king, baby…whoops, wrong game.”
In their Game Developers Conference presentation “WiiWare and New Choices,”
the pair showed a short trailer of the game in question, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King. The downloadable title is not a traditional Square Enix game, in the respect that the core mechanic is about building a city rather than exploring a world.
The trailer started with a title card saying: “For his kingdom is the only gift my father has left me,” and then showed a variety of characters from the game. The presenters explained that the character of The King–played by the gamer–was far too important to risk losing in battle. (Think chess.) Therefore, he must stay within the realms of the kingdom.
Shiraishi said that during his time at Square Enix he had built up a “big wish list” of things that he wanted to try. One was to try creating a game that didn’t rely on game volume, and another was to try out a smaller project with a smaller project team. “When I read about WiiWare I wrote the game proposal that day,” he said.
However, the new platform meant that the company couldn’t use its standard Square Enix game design model. Instead, Shiraishi proclaimed that, “we started with the game concept rather than the visual assets. This may seem an obvious thing for some studios but not for our studio.”
“Our traditional game method is that we are good at creating content with a large amount of high quality CG,” said Shiraishi. “However, the WiiWare memory capacity is limited so therefore we cannot use very high quality CG as a weapon.”
He then showed another video, with scenes from the first chapter of the game. “This is very early on…so there’s really nothing built except the walls,” Shiraishi explained. In it, the King spoke to two of his heroes who, after a brief chat, left the village to adventure in some caves nearby. There were also Moogles, a Final Fantasy staple. These creatures appeared to have the job of offering the player advice. At the end of the day, the King is given a report showing what his heroes have been up to, what areas they’ve explored, monsters they’ve battled, and items they’ve picked up.
From these daily reports, the player uses the information given by his motley crew of warriors to work out what he needs to build and invest in the village. Next up was a scene from the very end of the game, where the same village was full of buildings, and the heroes were shopping for weapons.
In conclusion, Shiraishi weighed up the pros and the cons of working on a smaller project compared to a big budget one. “In terms of being a smaller project, I think all the team members had more say in the game itself, but there’s simply not enough time to really make something that no one else has done,” he said.
He then discussed some of the things that ended up being cut from the game in order to make it work as a WiiWare product. Battle scenes and monsters were given the boot, along with the whole world outside the village, which is limited to text only. There are also no villager model variations other than their names.
Development started on the game before WiiWare was even official. “We didn’t wait for things to get official,” Shiraishi said. “With the industry moving as fast as it is, sometimes you can’t wait. We did take a risk by making this game before Nintendo had even announced WiiWare.”
Of course, working on a platform which hasn’t even been created yet brings with it its own unique set of problems. When asked how the design team dealt with WiiWare memory limitations, Shiraishi said, “We estimated between 32 and 40MB for the actual memory, and that limitation turned out to be right on target. But we actually ended up with memory left over because of the compression. The biggest problem we actually had was the Rapid Access Memory that Nintendo had, not the 40MB.”
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King will be coming out in March in Japan. No North American or European release date has yet been set.
February 22, 2008
Sierra’s strategy game Commanders: Attack of the Genos! borrows from many different sources but makes it all fit well in one package. The art deco style of all the vehicles, buildings, and units takes influence from the early 1900s, but the gameplay is a fairly family-friendly blending of StarCraft and Advance Wars.
You must build your army to face off against the Genos.
The premise of the game rests on an alternate turn-of-the-20th-century history of early nuclear and genetic discoveries, in which the art sensibilities of the time are married with the sci-fi stories of modern day. The Genos, a genetically enhanced race of humans, have broken off from the rest of humanity and founded their own nation. Both the Genos and Human Armed Forces have been militarizing over the years during their own cold war. The game’s story builds on this premise of large nations squaring off against one another, but does so with a list of quaint characters who are continually allying, betraying, and riffing off of each other. The dialogue is replete with puns, unreferenced movie quotes, and tickling melodrama. If you roll your eyes at a preponderance of puns, you may be turned off, but it’s so delightfully part of the overall milieu that it’s hard not to like. The campaign starts with Alec Falcon, who leads a ragtag band of troops through 15 missions in which you capture installations, pump oil, and fight for your very survival against friend and foe alike.
You can move your units grid-by-grid through fully realized environments during your turn. Each level is modest in size and scope. To get money, you need to capture oil wells. From there, you’ll see a steady stream of cash with which you can produce units at your citadel or via manufacturing facilities. Over the course of the game, you can select from a handful of other generals to lead your units. Armies in the game never turn out to be grand in number, but offer versatile ground-based units and dominating air units. The X-factor in all of it is the command unit. Each commander has a different spider-looking unit with a unique and interesting power. Depending on which you choose, you can increase your army’s defense, halt opponents in their tracks, or call in reinforcements to pummel adversaries.
Once you choose to initiate combat between your unit and an enemy, the camera pulls in and pans around to focus up close on the two units for the action. The change not only moves the action along but also keeps it couched in the game world, rather than pulling in animated profiles like in games such as Advance Wars or Fire Emblem. Unfortunately, if you or your opponent string a lot of attacks together in short succession, the continued panning could give some a queasy feeling.
The campaign is not hard, Although the early matches provide some tooth-and-nail scraps, the middle missions are punctuated by scenarios easily overcome with a legion of light artillery with air support. Each mission in the campaign is broken up with the emotive, cel-shaded characters talking in amusing cutscenes. The challenge is really ratcheted up in later levels when the enemy pulls out all the stops to exploit distance and damage to keep you from the final showdown
The game comes with two forms of multiplayer: hotseat for local matches using one controller, and Xbox Live matches for up to four players. During online matches, the unit movement is significantly faster and the colors of the units tend to come in single-color schemes. You never mistake your troops for others based on color, but it is frequently difficult to distinguish some of your monochromatic vehicles from each other. The turn-based gameplay is great for eliminating lag during online matches and provides a clear indicator for whose turn it is. Despite playing a variety of both ranked and player matches, the multiplayer achievement doesn
February 22, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO–”WTF is an MMO anyway?”
That was the question that kicked off Realtime Worlds CEO Dave Jones’ session at this year’s Game Developers Conference titled “My First MMO.” Jones–who is credited as the creator of Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto, the original Lemmings, and 2007’s Crackdown–set out to answer this question first when preparing for his company’s debut massively multiplayer game APB, which is currently slated to arrive on the PC and Xbox 360 later this year.
For Jones, the industry is facing an identity crisis over the term MMOG, primarily due to its association with role-playing fantasy games such as Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft. “If you say MMO, immediately you think you’re going up against WOW.” However, he believes the RPG route isn’t the way to go anymore. He also believes that the term massively is a bit of a misnomer, since 90 percent of the time in MMOGs these days only 5 to 25 players are playing together due to the prevalence of instancing. To get back to basics, Jones says that his game from now on will simply be called a MOG–”Multiplayer Online Game.”
Online play is what Jones calls the “nirvana” of the industry, citing examples of Halo, Command & Conquer, Doom, Call of Duty, or Gears of War as really taking on new life when played with others. These games, Jones continued, don’t have the social stigma associated with traditional MMORPGs such as WOW. Eliciting many a concurring response from the crowd, Jones said that people get a far different response soliciting a friend to blast people away in Call of Duty online than inviting someone to go raiding in WOW.
However, MMORPGs aren’t without virtue for Jones. The game designer specifically calls out a number of hallmark features of traditional MMOGs, including persistent worlds, passionate communities, social interaction, long-term aspirations, and longevity. For Jones, though, the most exciting part of MMOGs is the dedicated servers, and it is these that really define the MOG genre, even though they present a variety of technological challenges. Concluding his query of the nature of MMOs, Jones says alters his question from “If you as a designer or team were given a blank sheet of paper and tasked with designing an MMO, what would it look like?” to “If you could have dedicated servers behind your game, how would you embrace them?”
Cue APB. “APB takes the style of games I like to make, and embraces them,” Jones says, before running down a list of features that he feels will make the game stand out among the glut of MMOGs soon to be hitting the market. “The true beauty of the medium lies in the player’s imagination, not in the designers,” Jones says, so it is important for the world in which the game takes place to constrain players as little as possible. Jones also emphasized the need to get the MMOG genre out of the now-generic fantasy/sci-fi settings, replacing “geek with chic” by bringing the genre a contemporary update.
Jones then presented the comparison chart below, matching off Stalker’s Boots, Telescopic eye goggles, Braggart’s Bow, YKL-37R Nova Courier, Mithril Spurs, and the term guild on the geek side against Air Jordans, Raybans, AK-47, ‘68 Mustan, Nitrous, and the term clan on the chic side. Geek terms frighten modern crowds, Jones says, and they add to the stigma surrounding MMOGs because they aren’t relatable.
After talking up the importance of free form personalization, Jones then gave the audience a look at the character creation system in APB. Letting players create a unique, identifiable personality within the game was of paramount importance to Realtime Studios, and the developer poured a significant amount of effort into creating a character creation environment that lets players tailor their characters to exacting specifications. “We wanted to make it completely free form and very high quality, as well as easy to use,” said Jones while flipping through photorealistic base models. The customizer allowed for a range of options, ranging from musculature to facial definition to hair length and style to how pronounced a character’s veins were, all by simply moving the mouse around the screen.
Adding further customizability, Jones showed off APB’s insignia and tattoo creators. Using an impressive array of pre-created assets, he was able to create a layered and detailed emblem, character’s skin or clothing. Clothing styles feature an equally ranging level of customization, with players being able to select details all the way down to whether they wear a shirt inside or outside their jeans. Emblems could also be applied as a decal to a player’s vehicle, which itself is a highly involved process of customization.
Jones noted that Realtime Studios is partnering with social-networking Internet radio service Last.fm to let players be able to take a song from their own library, play it in their vehicle, and if anyone else riding in the car has that song, it will be play. If their compatriot in arms doesn’t have the song, the game will look for music from the same artist or a similar genre.
The character customization demonstration was capped by what Jones called the GDC gang. Comprising the gang were spitting-image re-creations of Peter Molyneux, Richard Garriott, Warren Spector, and Shigeru Miyamoto, who was garbed in a corduroy jacket, a white T-shirt with an old-school Mario imprint, and boxer shorts plastered with goombas. The quartet then posed in front of the gang’s “Geek Squad” hatchback, with Molyneux brandishing a sledgehammer and Miyamoto rocking a rocket launcher.
Character creation complete, Jones then unleashed his design on the city. In addition to the expected large, open cities, Jones said that APB will seek to have hundreds of completely unique characters per city, showing 60 characters–the GDC crew included–on screen at once. He noted that regardless of how difficult it is to get all of the information synched up with, it all needs to have a very high-quality look and aesthetic.
In this city, which was reminiscent of downtown Tokyo, Jones then turned his attention to what players will do. “With hundreds of players, guns, physics, vehicles, and a living city, it pretty much broke down into anarchy within 20 minutes,” Jones noted, saying that Realtime Studios needed to add some limitations. Players needed to first choose which side they’d be on–namely enforcement or gang–and each side has limited by control and order. For gangsters, this means players must first get missions from crime bosses before shooting up the city. The enforcement side is naturally limited by the precepts of order, and will have a focus on hunting down the bad guys. He also noted that enforcement and gangsters don’t inherently mean good versus evil.
Jones then addressed the bane of all MMOGs–the task of assembly-line monster slaying known as “the grind”–calling it a “broken hook to drive hours of play.” The first way to combat the grind, Jones says, is to completely get rid of leveling. Instead, players will be motivated by the appearance of their characters. He then showed a new player decked out in jeans and a T-shirt alongside a player who had been playing for six months, completely decked out in big chains, flashy clothing, and shiny weapons. In this way, it is personalization that will drive characters, not an increase in performance stats.
Jones also took issue with the “kill 10 of these” style quests that dominate the MMOG scene, calling up several examples from WOW. After breaking down the math of how many monsters it takes to reach max level in WOW, Jones pondered how does a game fill that time without introducing a grind. His answer was simple: “Make the core game so much fun, it doesn’t feel like a grind.” For inspiration, Jones said his team turned to Counter-Strike, which he considers to be the best online game ever. This concept formed the basis for using players as content, not “artificial incompetence.”
To illustrate this point, Jones then demoed a typical mission. It began with a group of four gangsters hijacking an armored van heavily laden with cash. After securing the vehicle, the gangsters’ goal is to get back to their base of operations. However, through a process of dynamic matchmaking, the game issues a call to enforcement, who then swoop in to try to thwart the gang first in a car chase and then in a shoot out. Jones says adding the competitive player element makes repeatable missions fun and dynamic. He also noted that players will begin building reputations, so highly skilled players will soon gain notoriety with players on the opposing side, and vice versa.
He also noted that this player interaction scales well, noting that the notion of even matches is silly. Jones then gave the example of four rookie gang members knocking over a convenience store. An APB then goes out to a higher level character that is solo. The four rookies, who are only packing pistols, thus feel they have a chance since it is four-on-one, while the experienced player, who is equipped with an uzi and rocket launcher, is able to gain the upper hand through sheer fire power and game knowledge.
Jones closed out his presentation by saying that it is important to embrace emergent behavior in games. As an example, Jones said that players are able to use a camera in the game, which can be used to tape their exploits and then post online. He said that his QA team took this to the extreme, putting on a full film production by reenacting a Final Fantasy combat sequence, right down to a Buster sword-wielding Cloud. Jones closed by saying that its important to give people great tools and then let them go wild.
February 22, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO–Game developers are frightened of sex, claims the founder of the International Game Developers Association’s Sex special interest group. But Brenda Brathwaite isn’t talking about nerds living in a basement who are too scared to approach a member of the fairer sex; she’s talking about the lack of it in the actual games themselves.
renda Brathwaite.
She told the audience at her “Hentai, Hardcore, and Hotties” talk at the Game Developer’s Conference that “Developers are terrified of putting sex in games in case they get an AO rating, which is the kiss of death.”
Part of this fear is justified, she admits, as even games that get an M for Mature rating are not stocked by the biggest chain stores. “Western sex games like Leisure Suit Larry and 7 Sins didn’t sell,” she sighed. “And they didn’t sell because they couldn’t get into Best Buy, Wal-Mart, or Target. If you can’t get into those three stores, you’re done.”
Gaming’s first lady of sex also bemoaned the ratings system as blocking the potential for serious, educational sex games. “For example, you can make a game about safe sex for teenagers, and it would automatically get an AO rating,” she ranted. “There’s absolutely no provision in the ratings system that says anything like, ‘unless it’s an educational title.’”
Brathwaite admitted she was flabbergasted by the whole furore surrounding Mass Effect, which was briefly banned in Singapore for its girl-on-girl action and contained, according to one report in the mainstream press, “full digital nudity and sex.” The sex scene in question was perfectly acceptable, she believes, and didn’t offer anything near a hardcore experience. She said, “Why is that not OK? Why is that not alright? If we don’t have any sex in games at all, we’re going to end up with just those happy Disney games.”
Attitudes on sex in games are not universal, and countries like Japan and Germany have problems understanding why a little lovin’ causes such issues in the US. She explained, “In Germany it doesn’t have anything in the ratings system about sex. It’s all about the violence.”
She also laughed off the controversy surrounding the sex minigame in Sony’s God of War. She said, “If you were watching that on TV, you know with that kind of the vase wobbling on the table stuff, that would barely be a 13. Come on, that’s almost Happy Days stuff.”
However, Brathwaite doesn’t want more sex in games just for the sake of having more sex in games. “Right now, there’s no reason for it,” she told If Its Games after her session. “Sex games aren’t selling, except in a few exclusive markets and in games that have big IP. “Gratuitous sex is usually mocked, particularly when added to games where it has no real point in the narrative.”
February 22, 2008
We already know that Will Wright’s next megagame Spore will feature a ton of customization tools and gameplay, given that you take an entire species through its evolutionary paces. What we’re only starting to get a handle on are the community aspects of the game, which seem to have just as much depth and complexity as everything else on offer in the Spore universe.
In our last hands-on with the game, we talked about some of the community tools that are being built into the game, but during a Spore-specific GDC ‘08 session yesterday, game producer Caryl Shaw outlined much more of the upcoming title’s social side. Sharing content and viewing other people’s creations will be a big part of the game when it ships, with Spore borrowing heavily from the social-networking scene for some of its ideas.
Most of the in-game community features will be centered on the Sporepedia, the Spore database that will keep track of all the things the user has encountered during the game. In addition to hosting the player’s own creatures and other creations, the Sporepedia will be the central depository for browsing content created by other Spore users. This can include people on that particular gamer’s friends list (yes, Spore will let you track your friends who also have the game), content from developer Maxis, and all the other weird and wacky stuff from the greater community. Of course, if you don’t want to be inundated with content from strangers, Spore will give you the ability to block out content from other users. You’ll also be able to leave comments and ratings on others’ creations, as well as “ban” content from any individual you may find distasteful. Shaw says that Maxis will eventually ban some users outright if enough people find their uploads objectionable.
Of course, if you’re open to seeing what the rest of the community has on offer, there’s still the hassle of sorting out the trash from the treasure among what will undoubtedly be thousands of new creations every week. Maxis has already thought ahead in this regard, and Shaw said the developer will be introducing a sophisticated quality-management system that will make sure only the best offerings are highlighted in the Sporepedia. This quality system will go beyond merely measuring user ratings of a particular object, and will apparently include other factors such as the age of an asset, the number of feed counts it has been added to (such as Sporecasts), the rating of other assets by the same user, the amount of time taken to build that particular asset in the Spore tools, and more.
Maxis also wants players to take their Spore experiences outside of the game, and has built in several features that will somehow link the creatures you create inside the game with the wider world. Widgets will be created to keep track of updates in Spore while you’re not in the game. You’ll also be able to take screenshots and send them to friends (complete with comic-book-style captions), and the game will come with a built-in video tool that links directly to popular video-sharing site YouTube should you want to upload footage of your virtual species doing something interesting. You can also take animated .gifs of your creatures for use as avatars in other sites and forums. And Maxis is also planning on having a retail model through which you can order T-shirts and mugs with a picture of your favorite created species.
Spore will be released on September 7 in North America and September 5 in Europe.
-If Its Games
February 22, 2008
In Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Soulstorm, nine factions from the Dawn of War universe will descend upon the worlds of the Kaurava system and battle it out among each other. In the single-player campaign, you’ll be able to take command of any of the factions and must work toward conquering the four worlds and three moons of the system. This will involve moving your army from territory to territory, where you’ll engage in real-time battles that will require you to think and act quickly as you develop a base and an army to crush your opponents. We continue our look at some of the new content in Soulstorm by checking out the new units and commanders for the Ork and Tau factions. Soulstorm ships next month.
He may be big, but Ork commander Gorgutz is also incredibly fast.
More Air Units and Wargear
Ork Armor: Gorgutz and the Megabooster
The green-skinned Orks will be led in Soulstorm by Gorgutz, a hardened veteran of many conflicts around the galaxy. With the other factions of the galaxy descending on the Kaurava system, the Orks see a great opportunity to jump into the fray and mix it up. Otherwise, they’d get bored. Gorgutz is equipped with some powerful equipment, including a megabooster that gives him surprising speed for his size. With it, Gorgutz can close the range with an opponent and crush him. The Ork fortress, their headquarters for the Soulstorm campaign, can be found beneath the Rokclaw Mountains.
Commander Or’es’Ka leads all Tau forces in Soulstorm.
Tau Armor: Or’es’Ka and the Marker Drone
Commander Or’es’Ka leads the Tau forces in Soulstorm. Or’es’Ka has three goals: contain the warp storm, develop the Nan Yanoi moon into a military base, and pave the way for colonization of the rest of the Kaurava system. One of the pieces of wargear that Or’es’Ka can recover in the campaign is the marker drone. This can be used to target an opponent, at which point all Tau units around Or’es’Ka can unload at the target with incredible accuracy. If you couple the marker drone with the multitracker, Or’es’Ka can target even hidden foes.
Fighta-Bommers will rain death from above.
Ork Fighta-Bommer
Aside from its fun spelling, the Ork Fighta-Bommer is a high-speed, low-flying strike craft designed to bomb enemy forces. These can be dive bombers, considering that their pilots, Ork Flyboys, will seemingly head straight for the ground before pulling up. In addition to the pilots, the Fighta-Bommer also has Gretchin slaves welded into the ball turret and bombs. The slaves serve as living guidance systems for the bombs. Fighta-Bommers can take a lot of damage, and to construct one you must have an Orky Fort, an advanced structure that comes relatively late in the build tree.
Barracudas will try to rule the skies.
Tau Barracuda
The Tau Barracuda is designed to rule the skies. As such, it’s the fastest of all the aircraft in the game, and it’s designed for air superiority instead of air support. Barracuda pilots come from the air caste of the Tau race, and they have an innate understanding of maneuvering in three dimensions. The Barracuda is built from lightweight and strong materials, but with that said, it’s not a particularly durable aircraft. It does feature extensive safety systems designed to protect the pilot and, if the craft is lost, can eject him to safety. Although designed for air combat, it can provide limited ground support, given that its missiles can deal with infantry and even some armor. To get the Barracuda in the game, Tau players need only place a vehicle beacon when it’s available.
-If Its Games
February 22, 2008
AFP - Machinimas, animation films that use characters pulled from video games, are popping up all over the Internet, highlighting the creativity of gamers and bringing together the worlds of film and video-games.
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