Plato has announced that it will be launching educational gaming software for the PSP this April. The computer-based learning company will be launching the \’Achieve Now\’ line of products, comprising 57 different games. The games are aimed to help and support elementary and middle school students.
Bourne Conspiracy\’s lead game designer has said that it was a mistake not to include a hard drive as standard with every 360. He said that the hard drive benefits developers and he \”is not sure why they decided to not require a hard drive on the 360. From what I understand they don\’t move many [Core/Arcade] units,\”.
Showtime Networks and Marc Ecko Entertainment will announce tomorrow that they have partnered up to create a video game based on the US tv-show Dexter. \”Dexter is the extremely rare TV show with enough layers of action and tension to translate perfectly into a compelling videogame,\” said Marc Fernandez, Vice President of Marc Ecko Entertainment.
UK web publication Hexus reports that the Xbox 360 is currently dominating CeBit which is due to kick off from tomorrow. There is a whole line of Xbox 360 pods and absolutely no PS3\’s in sight.
You may have seen an earlier story about Microsoft repair rubbing off various signatures and artwork from a gamers Xbox 360 that was in for service. Bungie has heard about the incident and has decided to take action saying that \”Our team and the community as a whole is rallying to help fix this unfortunate situation. It’s been awesome to see such an outpouring of sympathy and support from our community. We can\’t replace the exact item that was lost but, but we should come very close.\”
Check out the lush landscape and beautiful surroundings of this upcoming sports title.
It hasn’t been long since we last visited Chroma City and its oppressed denizens, a group held captive by the drab walls of their black and white world where colour no longer lives. For the late comers, the devious INKT Corporation has sucked all of the life out of the city, and as the Blob (a mild-mannered tree-dweller with a conscience) it’s your job to return fun and colour to the place using various paint holders dotted around the landscape.
The game at its heart is like an eclectic mix of Katamari Damacy’s rolling, Spider-Man’s wall sticking and bouncing, and Viva Pi
In the world of FIFA Street, soccer isn’t just about scoring more goals than your opponent; it’s about humiliating your opponent at every opportunity. FIFA Street 3 from EA Sports Big tasks you with leading a squad of famous players to victory against other teams from all over the world, taking in some unusual locations along the way. The action is fast-paced and fun for a while. However, the single-player game gets repetitive all too quickly and the multiplayer options are too limited to have lasting appeal.
FIFA Street 3 makes a good impression the first time you kick off a match. The numerous environments–which range from playgrounds and beaches to an oil rig and a city rooftop–are nicely detailed. Although the players are difficult to tell apart unless they have radically different hair or skin colors, they’re very well animated. The game’s upbeat soundtrack is a good fit, and while the sound effects don’t do anything special, they’re certainly not offensive.
Even the game’s more spectacular tricks are a breeze to perform.
Getting to grips with the controls might take you a match or two, but regardless of whether you choose to play with the stylus or with the face buttons, they’re uncomplicated and responsive. The best place for you to familiarize yourself with the controls would be the quick match “game on” mode, but that’s really only a warm-up for the game proper, which is the street challenge mode.
The single-player street challenge mode sets you up with a handful of second tier professional soccer players and tasks you with making them the most respected four-on-four street soccer squad in the world. Only a few different destinations will be available for you to travel to at the outset, but as you earn respect by winning games and tournaments, you’ll unlock plenty more. The amount of respect you earn for winning an event is determined not only by the result, but also by the manner in which you win. So, if you keep a clean sheet while putting five goals past the opposing keeper and running rings around the outfield players, you can expect to reap more respect points than if you win a closely contested game, using very few tricks. It would make for an interesting risk-versus-reward mechanic, except that there’s really nothing risky about performing tricks in FIFA Street 3.
Spectacular “beat” moves and tricks can be pulled off quite effortlessly by even the least skilled players on your team roster. Provided you choose the right moves for the right situations, there’s very little that an artificial intelligence opponent can do about it. That’s because a good number of the trick animations require the opponent getting beaten to fall over, stumble, or turn the wrong way on cue. The AI players seemingly go out of their way to please you in this regard, though the flipside is that players on your team will occasionally do the same thing–even if you’re controlling them at the time.
There are dozens of different tricks to perform in FIFA Street 3 when you’re in possession of the ball, but the list of button combinations that you need to trigger them is kept short because so many of them are context-sensitive. Pressing the same buttons will perform a different move if you’re standing still, running, juggling the ball at the time, or getting close to a wall, for example. When you’re on defense, you have only a single tackle button with which to combat this onslaught. Depending on where you are in relation to the ball when you press it, you’ll shove, shoulder barge, or slide tackle your opponent to regain possession. It’s just as well that there are no fouls or injuries in FIFA Street 3 because the challenges are heavy to say the least. Defenders often take so long to get back on their feet after making slide tackles, in fact, that it’s often the player who was brought down that ultimately walks away with the ball again.
On occasion, while you’re busy performing tricks and trying to prevent your opponent from doing the same, you’ll find the time to shoot at goal. Your odds of scoring appear to be determined not only by the quality of your shot but also by the number of tricks that you’ve performed en route. There are exceptions, of course, and it’s entirely possible to put one past the keeper without any fancy build-up play whatsoever. But tricks are definitely what win matches in FIFA Street 3, especially when you add gamebreakers to the equation. These more-or-less unstoppable moves can only be triggered after you fill your gamebreaker meter by performing tricks. This is easy to do because, as in FIFA Street 2, you don’t have to be anywhere near an opponent to score trick points. When the meter is full, you simply hit a big red button that appears on the touch screen, then do what you’re told anytime the word “Touch” appears on the screen again (three or four times generally) to perform a spectacular sequence of passes and tricks that invariably ends with a powerful shot at goal. If you’re on the receiving end of a gamebreaker, you can try to counter the move using the same controls, though your success is dependent on the other player’s inability to perform the same ridiculously simple task.
The rhythm-based kick ups minigame gets old pretty fast.
Every match you play in FIFA Street 3’s street challenge mode has a slightly different objective, though this unfortunately doesn’t add nearly as much variety to the game as you might expect. Being required to win a game by three goals isn’t really that different from having to do the same thing within a time limit, and substituting goals with trick points doesn’t really change anything either. There are some interesting challenges, such as keeping a ball in the air and away from the opposition for a time or only being able to score with headers, volleys, or gamebreakers. But once you settle into a rhythm, you’ll rarely have to change the way you play too dramatically to be successful. Furthermore, regardless of the fact that you’ll be adding better players to your team and coming up against supposedly tougher opposition as you progress, the level of difficulty takes forever to ramp up. The objectives become more time consuming, but your AI opposition rarely seems to get any better.
In addition to the street challenge mode, FIFA Street 3 supports competitive play for two either online or locally with a single copy of the game. The options are limited, though, so while you can choose to play with a time limit or until one of you scores a predetermined number of goals, you can’t choose to play a match in which only headers and volleys count, for example. Our experiences with FIFA Street 3 online were lag-free for the most part, but if you don’t know any other FIFA Street 3 fans to exchange friend codes with, it might take you a long time to find another anonymouse user to play against. If it were possible, you could play the “kick ups” ball-juggling minigames while you waited, but this rhythm-based touch-screen offering can only be accessed from the main menu and gets old after a couple of plays in any case.
The DS version of FIFA Street 3 is a huge improvement over its predecessor, thanks in no small part to the fact that it supports an end-to-end camera that’s far more appropriate than the traditional sideline perspective. However, the new game’s array of unlockable uniforms and licensed soccer balls just isn’t nearly incentive enough to put up with its repetitive gameplay for long.
In light of its innovative paint-brush gameplay mechanic, many considered Capcom and now-defunct Clover Studios’ Okami to be a far better fit for Nintendo’s Wii than the PlayStation 2 it appeared on in 2006. Luckily, despite the game’s original development house being dispersed shortly after Okami’s release, Capcom signed on Daxter developer Ready at Dawn to pick up the title for a Wii port.
In laying out its release lineup for the first half of the year in mid January, Nintendo gave the game’s fervent following happy tidings, marking Okami for release on March 25. However, that reveal now appears to have been premature, as Capcom has today confirmed to If Its Games that Okami’s prowl has been postponed three weeks to April 15.
Capcom gave no explanation as to why the game was delayed. One possible reason for the hold-up, however, could have been a reallocation of resources to God of War: Chains of Olympus, which Ready at Dawn has prepped for release on the PlayStation Portable later this week.
For more on Okami, check out If Its Games’s extensive coverage of the PS2 version of the game.
Rainbow Six Vegas was a breath of fresh air for the shooter genre when it hit shelves in 2006. The first entry in the long-running series to hit current-generation consoles, Vegas looked beautiful and, thanks to the gameplay overhaul from developer Ubisoft Montreal, also played incredibly well. Having gotten past the hard job of adapting the Unreal 3 engine for the previous game, Ubisoft is now heading back to Vegas in Rainbow Six Vegas 2. We recently got our hands on an updated preview build of the game and took it out for a spin.
The experience bar on the bottom of the screen will fill slowly but surely as you play Vegas 2.
Although we covered the main features of the game in our extensive first look at the title, there’s still plenty to go over. One of the major new features of the game is the way in which the character that you create will be able to use the Advanced Combat Enhancement and Specialization (A.C.E.S.) system to unlock new weapons and rewards. The A.C.E.S. system should be familiar to anyone who’s played Call of Duty 4, as it offers the same constant reward of experience gains while also allowing you to specialize in the type of gameplay you prefer to use.
For almost every action your character takes, you’ll earn experience points; a basic kill is three points, with extra points for killing enemies through cover, headshots, long-distance kills, and other difficult maneuvers. You also get experience for enemies that your teammates take out, but they won’t confer on you any bonus points if they happen to pull off a headshot or another difficult kill. Experience points are fairly linear, and as you obtain them, your character will increase in rank, from private second class all the way up to the “elite” class at 400,000 experience points. But increasing your rank never earns you any new weapons. Instead, you’ll obtain new pieces of armor and camouflage as you earn new ranks. Just as that golden desert eagle in Call of Duty 4 is the mark of a player who’s put a lot of time into the game, you’ll know you’re up against a pro in Vegas 2 if you see someone with night-vision goggles on. The highest rank will actually allow you to create custom camouflages for your character.
In addition to general experience, though, you can earn experience in three separate specializations. A normal kill will simply add to your basic experience, but specific kinds of kills will earn you experience in a specialization, which reinforces your style of gameplay. The first specialization is marksman, through which you advance by getting headshots, killing enemies at long range, and killing enemies while they or you are rappelling. The rewards you unlock for being a marksman consist mostly of accurate rifles and sniper rifles. The second is close quarters battle, which rewards you for shooting enemies with blind fire, killing foes at close range or from behind, or shooting afflicted enemies with a flashbang. Your rewards here are mostly submachine guns (including the fearsome P90) and shotguns. Lastly, you can attempt to specialize in assault, which tasks you with killing enemies through cover, with C4 or grenades, or killing enemies that are using a riot shield. Most of these rewards are assault rifles or light machine guns, but the final reward is the riot shield itself.
Character customization will ensure that no two players will ever look exactly alike.
In addition to the experience and the specializations, Vegas has a number of achievements to go after. All the achievements are also present on the PlayStation 3 version of the game, so we’re assuming that they’ll eventually be tied into PlayStation Home when that’s released. These “awards,” as they’re called on the PS3 version of the game, are split up into medals, badges, and ribbons. The bulk of these awards are focused on multiplayer, with your standard “kill 1,000 enemies in multiplayer” and “kill five enemies without dying” types of achievements. Most of the multiplayer achievements require you to be playing in a game with at least six people before your kills actually count, though, so if you’re a fan of cheesing your way to achievements with a buddy, then that probably won’t work out for you. There are also a few cleverly named achievements for single-player, such as “My Name Is Sam,” which forces you to kill five terrorists in a row with silenced headshots.
While the experience system is obviously inspired by the similar system that was incorporated into Call of Duty 4, Rainbow Six Vegas 2 ups the ante by letting players earn experience in either single-player or multiplayer, which should give a bit of replay value for players who prefer to go up against the computer instead of other humans. We’re sure everyone is dying to get their hands on the game, but luckily you don’t have long to wait, as it’s scheduled to ship out March 18. Stay tuned to If Its Games for more coverage in the coming weeks.
-If Its Games
March has at long last arrived, and that means the birds are atwitter as layers of insulating clothing are quickly being doffed. It also signals the beginning of baseball season and the return of masked guns-for-hire wreaking havoc across the globe. Well, that last bit is probably more of a year-round occurrence, but that doesn’t change the fact that EA’s Army of Two debuts on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 this week. Having retreated from the holiday 2007 fray, EA has spent the intervening months polishing the co-op-oriented third-person shooter, as noted in If Its Games’s recent hands-on with the game.
With all 30 professional clubs now having reported for spring training, Take-Two and Sony are stepping up to the plate with their annual pro baseball sims. As the exclusive third-party licensor of Major League Baseball for games, Take-Two has a number of refinements for this year’s MLB 2K8 on the Xbox 360, PS3, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, and Wii, including entirely new pitching and batting mechanics. As console makers are exempt from Take-Two’s deal, Sony will once again be fielding PS3, PS2, and PSP versions of MLB 08: The Show, which have been bulked up with a revised franchise mode and online features.
Gamers more interested in playing ball with mythological creatures’ heads undoubtedly already know that Kratos returns this week with God of War: Chains of Olympus for the PSP. The third installment in the GOW series, Chains of Olympus is a prequel to the first two PS2 installments and follows an anguish-filled Kratos as he rampages through Ancient Greece in the wake of his family’s demise. The game will also be receiving a special-edition bundle featuring a “deep red” PSP silk screened with Kratos’ glowering mug in June.
THQ’s Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Soulstorm and Rockstar Games’ Bully: Scholarship Edition round off the week’s high-profile release lineup. The final project of Iron Lore Entertainment, Soulstorm is the third expansion to Games Workshop’s far-future real-time strategy series of PC games developed primarily by Relic Entertainment. Though the PS2 branch of Bullworth Academy has been in operation since October 2006, the expanded Xbox 360 and Wii campuses open this week with Bully: Scholarship Edition.
The Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii will each be receiving one new downloadable offering this week. Revealed last week, Capcom’s overhead shooter Rocketmen: Axis of Evil will be hopping aboard Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively, for $10 (aka 800 Microsoft points). Wii gamers will be able to check out the Bionic Commando-influenced action platformer Super Turrican for 800 Wii points ($8).
This week’s new releases are listed below (list taken from retailer information–actual dates may vary).
MARCH 3, 2008
Arctic Stud Poker Run (PC)
Field Ops (PC)
Galactic Command - Echo Squad (PC)
Let’s Ride: Friends Forever (DS)
Mysteryville 2 (PC)
Stranger (PC)
Super Turrican (Wii VC)
The Lost Crown: A Ghost-hunting Adventure (PC)
Tom Clancy’s Chronicles (PC)
MARCH 4, 2008
Anno 1701: Dawn of Discovery (DS)
Army of Two (X360, PS3)
Bully: Scholarship Edition (X360, Wii)
God of War: Chains of Olympus (PSP)
Chicken Hunter (DS)
Eco Creatures: Save the Forest (DS)
Imagine Figure Skater (DS)
Imperium Romanum (PC)
Major League Baseball 2K8 (X360, PS3, PS2, PSP, Wii)
MLB 08: The Show (PS3, PS2, PSP)
Mysterious Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer (DS)
Ninja Reflex (Wii, DS)
Pet Shop (DS)
Petz Bunnyz (DS)
Silent Hill: Origins (PS2)
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Soulstorm (PC)
MARCH 5, 2008
Rocketmen: Axis of Evil (XBLA)
Spitfire Heroes: Tales of the Royal Air Force (DS)
MARCH 6, 2008
Rocketmen: Axis of Evil (PSN)
MARCH 7, 2008
Legends of Norrath: Inquisitor (PC)
Dawn of War was an excellent real-time strategy game that brought the ultraviolent Warhammer 40,000 universe to life, and since then, the game has been supported by numerous excellent expansion packs. The latest expansion will be the soon-to-be-released Soulstorm, which will feature new playable factions, as well as new units to the game’s existing factions. In our last preview for the game, we’ll cover new units for the Eldar, Imperial Guard, and Necron factions.
The Eldar Nightwing.
Eldar Nightwing
See the Eldar Nightwing in action.
Watch | Download
The Eldar Nightwing is a new aerial unit that will act as a swift and powerful antiair vehicle for the faction. The Nightwing isn’t the toughest vehicle on the battlefield, but it’s one of the swiftest, and it can cover vast areas of ground quickly to even the odds. The vehicle is equipped with dual shuriken cannons and dual bright lances that are devastating against enemy air vehicles, though they’re also useful against heavier targets such as tanks and mechs.
The Imperial Guard Marauder Bomber.
Marauder Bomber
See the Imperial Guard Marauder Bomber in action.
Watch | Download
The Marauder Bomber is a powerful unit whose versatile weapons make it an essential part of the Imperial Guard’s forces. This aerial unit comes with heavy bolter weapons for use against ground forces, as well as lascannons to fight enemy air units. However, it can also be equipped with numerous types of bombs that can either be used to set up a clever feint or simply wreak havoc on enemy forces. For instance, the Marauder Bomber can be loaded with smoke bombs to cloud your enemies’ vision, or with incendiary bombs to literally draw the line of battle with fiery walls. The unit can also be equipped with krak bombs to simply deal heavy damage to any enemy units below. This power and flexibility will keep most opponents guessing.
The Necron Deceiver.
The Necron Deceiver
See the Necron Essence of the Deceiver in action.
Watch | Download
Soulstorm will not add a new air unit for the Necron faction. Instead, this faction will receive an upgrade to the already-powerful Necron Lord hero unit. In the Dark Crusade expansion pack, Necron heroes could research a powerful upgrade that temporarily let this unit assume the form of the Nightbringer–a Necron god. The Soulstorm expansion will add Essence of the Deceiver as a new research path for this faction’s heroes to let them take the form of the Deceiver, another powerful Necron god. You’ll need to choose carefully, since these upgrades are mutually exclusive. While the Nightbringer was a form that granted Necron heroes immense power on the battlefield, the Deceiver, while still a powerful god that can dish out a lot of punishment, has subtler abilities, such as the power to cause enemy armies to flee in fear and the power to summon illusory forces to draw enemy fire while your other forces move in for the kill.
-If Its Games
Final Fantasy Chronicles has recently been given a price and date for its WiiWare launch. Square Enix has confirmed that the game will launch with WiiWare on May 12 and will be priced at 1500 Wii points. Full information on the title is available at Square-Enix.com.
Phil Harrison must like a challenge. Why else would the executive resign his post as president of Worldwide Studios at Sony–where he had worked for 16 years–just as the PlayStation 3’s fortunes seem to be improving? And why then would he take on one of the most unenviable tasks in the game industry: turning around Atari, the once-mighty publisher that has seen itself drown in red ink for the past several years?
Questions may still linger about Harrison’s exit from Sony last week, but rumors of him jumping ship to Atari have now been confirmed. Today, Atari’s parent company Infogrames SA announced that the executive has signed on to be its president and director general, effective immediately. He will report to David Gardner, Infogrames’ recently installed CEO.
“I am pleased to welcome Phil to Infogrames,” Gardner said in a statement. “He has an outstanding reputation in the industry, as one of the key leaders behind the success of PlayStation. We have been seeking an opportunity to work together for some time and I am certain he will be able to make a significant contribution to [Atari’s] publishing strategy.”
Indeed, Harrison’s main duties at Infogrames will be to “lead group publishing and game development into the network era.” Harrison’s task may prove a Sisyphean one: In mid-February, the French company’s New York-based Atari subsidiary reported it lost $300,000 on a 13 percent revenue slide during the quarter ended December 31, 2007. The lackluster report came three months after Atari–which is facing delisting on the Nasdaq exchange–itself said it has “substantial doubt about [its] ability to continue as a going concern.”
For his part, Harrison is unfazed by Atari’s woes. “This is the perfect time to join Infogrames and help shape the future of Atari, one of the industry’s legendary brands,” he professed in a statement. “As the game business moves rapidly online, I believe we have an outstanding opportunity to create amazing network game and community experiences for players the world over.”
Japanese stocks fell the most in a month amidst concerns about the U.S. mortgage market crisis is spreading to Japan\’s consumer lenders and a U.S. recession will extend the dollar\’s decline against the yen. Nintendo stock was hit badly as it sells more than double the amount of Wii\’s in the Americas than it does in Japan. Its stock fell 5.7 per cent, its steepest decline since February 6th.
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