Eco Creatures: Save the Forest is an environmentally minded real-time strategy game for the Nintendo DS, developed by Lightweight and published by Majesco. Its story and presentation are charming but the game’s strategy elements are largely frustrating and uninspired.
The game’s premise begins with an industrialized “evil kingdom” encroaching upon the territory of its neighboring Mana Forest, polluting its waters, stripping the land bare, and unleashing genetically modified crop monsters that are jeopardizing the peace of the forest. However, this forest is the domain of a mountain deity who would be angered by the progressive industrialization, so to prevent the god’s wrath, the forest’s protection is charged to a master wizard and his trusty yellow ogrelike subordinate, Dorian.
You’ll lead the cutest army ever if you can overlook Eco’s flaws.
It’s your job to guide Dorian throughout the game’s 40 missions to defend the forest from the kingdom’s destructive machines. The average mission charges you with destroying all enemies/enemy structures while protecting the Mana House, Dorian’s life-replenishing base that also spawns your army of “wood spirits.” There are three unit types to summon from the Mana House: ecolis (squirrels), ecomon (flying squirrels), and ecoby (beavers). Each of these unit types come with base stats of defense, power, and speed. The bulk of the gameplay has you guiding the eco-creatures to defeat the machines and their spawn buildings or weaponry by circling them with the stylus then tapping a destination or foe.
The wood spirits feature basic attacks, as well as unique “special moves,” that add some much-needed strategy to the gameplay. The ecolis grow trees to provide Dorian with the mana he needs to summon spirits or cast spells. Depending on seed placement, the ecolis can also grow select trees tied to spawn specific eco-creatures. For example, growing an ecomon tree in tall grass increases the number of available ecomon by one. Additionally, the ecolis are able to grow healing trees to recover your army’s health, as well as house trees to serve as secondary eco-creature spawn points. Similarly, ecomon serve to transport items to Dorian while the ecoby build bridges, slopes, or dams to allow creatures that can’t swim to cross bodies of water.
Lightweight added more than the usual stat customization and leveling options, enabling you to speedily level a small group of eco-creatures with mana drops, as well as adjust their behavior patterns. For example, a “timid” ecolis will avoid battles, while a “brave” one will fight to the death. These personality adjustments are made via situational cutscenes that prompt you to select a desired reaction to an event. Your choice slightly alters the appropriate stat and rewards you with colored mana drops to modify base stats.
Unfortunately, managing this large army can get irritating. The controls are far from intuitive; to give your wood spirits an order, like grow a tree, you must first select the eco-creature mode, tap the appropriate colored icon, then select the ability and location to prompt the animal to act. The problem is that you’re constantly switching between Dorian mode and creature mode to issue commands. So you’ll often instinctively move to circle the creatures you want to maneuver without realizing you’re in Dorian mode, or vice versa, costing you precious time as you switch back and forth in the midst of battle. Another interface quirk occurs even if you intend to cast the same spell back-to-back. To do so, you’ve got to reopen Dorian’s spell menu and manually select it to cast, but because the spell menu takes up the whole screen, you’re unable to spot approaching foes. There also seems to be an issue with selecting a destination or opponent near the menu because the game voids the command. This requires that you relocate Dorian to move the camera so you can position your desired destination away from the menu–a silly nuisance that gets frustrating quickly.
The artificial intelligence is decidedly worse than the game’s tricky controls. Your wood spirits often continuously frolic into fences, fall behind, or run off exploring map corners if they get separated from the group. This is especially troublesome when you “die” and are returned to the distant Mana House because eco-creatures free from their master scatter across the map. In the event that this happens you have to manually recollect them or wait at the Mana House while they die so you can resummon. To combat this, you can manually enter a command to keep the spirits around Dorian or put effort into adjusting their behavior stats to create a more obedient army, but it’s still an annoyance.
A compounded aggravation occurs when your eco-creatures wander into areas beyond Dorian’s reach because you cannot both move the camera independently of Dorian and tap the touch screen to retrieve lost animals. Once again, you could wait for your warriors to die to resummon, but you’re out of luck if there aren’t any foes nearby. While the creatures usually attack approaching foes on their own, occasionally you’ll have to manually instruct them to attack, which is another frustrating aspect of the game’s AI. Don’t be surprised if they guard an enemy structure rather than attack it.
The game’s pacing is also detrimental to its level of enjoyment. Many of the gameplay aspects are slow and can easily vex you because you’re forced to wait for elevators, squirrels to plant trees, beavers to construct bridges, or your mana to regenerate so you can actually do something. There’s a significant amount of backtracking if you’re prone to near-death experiences or have a difficult time keeping the wood spirits on Dorian, and this amounts to a lot of wasted time.
Boss fights serve as a refreshing distraction from the game’s many annoyances
While Eco Creatures’s multiplayer should be an automatic boon for anyone giving the game a second glance, it fails miserably at establishing any fun or replay value. The nonviolent multiplayer entirely consists of collecting acorns by planting trees or bumping into your opponent within a five-minute limit. The game does sport two ad-hoc options with multicard and download play. It also includes a level-create and sharing mode, but competition is sparse. Should you be lucky (or unlucky) enough to find an opponent, occasional lag and this single, limited multiplayer option greatly diminishes its value. The final insult is that multiplayer must be first unlocked and then selected within the single-player game itself–there is no quick stand-alone option.
Eco Creatures’s presentation is perhaps its greatest aspect, featuring adorable cel-shaded wood spirits, vivid colors, and flashy spell effects to complement Dorian’s spell roster. This roster includes lightning strikes, tornados, and other “natural” attacks or effects. Cute cutscenes abound, and the game features catchy background music that is just as endearing as its visuals, with the exception of appropriately fast-paced role-playing-game-like boss music. Other ambient sounds, such as Dorian’s footsteps and the squeaks of the wood spirits, add to the aesthetic charm.
Eco Creatures is an adorable real-time strategy game with a solid presentation, a decent level editor, some multiplayer options, and cute creatures to lead into battle. However, it’s simply not strategic enough and ultimately devoid of depth. You’ll spend more time trying to figure out how to outsmart the game’s annoying quirks than you will pondering in what order you want to plant trees or build bridges. When you toss in how rarely you’ll use the multiplayer feature, as well as the game’s overall shallowness, it simply doesn’t compare to other, better, games in its genre.
Originally scheduled for a vague “early in 2008,” WiiWare now has an official date–in Japan at least. The platform is coming to the country on March 25 and will feature nine games available for purchase to begin with, each weighing in at between 500 and 1,500 Wii Points.
The first is Okiraku Ping Pong Wii by Arc System Works, a table tennis game for one to two players (using a split screen), which will cost 500 Wii Points (approx £3.50, $5). Next up is Kotoba no Puzzle Mojipittan by NBGI, a word puzzle game for 1,000 Wii Points (£7.50, $10), and Konami’s Saku Saku Animal Panic for 800 Wii Points (£5.60, $8), a puzzle game in which one to four players have to fence off animals so that each type of animal is separated from the rest. Fluffy bunnies sharing with crocs, after all, doesn’t tend to end well.
Star Soldier R is the fourth game and comes from Hudson Soft for 800 Wii Points. The game is a shooter with a difference: There’s a very short time limit of either two or five minutes in which to obtain the highest score possible, and rankings will be registered. Square Enix’s Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King is the most expensive of the seven games, costing 1,500 Wii Points to play (£10.50, $15), and puts gamers in the shoes of a king confined to his kingdom who builds a city by following hints from his adventurers as to what they need (for instance, an inn, or an armourer).
G-Mode has added a one-player card game with three different modes: Angel’s Solitaire, Klondike, and Tower Off. It will cost 500 Wii Points. Nintendo’s own offering, Dr. Mario & Bacteria Extermination is a puzzle game that sees the good doctor throw two-coloured pills into a Tetris-style grid, and when four colours in a row are matched, the row disappears. There are two different modes, which one to two players and one to four players can play, respectively. Dr Mario & Bacteria Extermination costs 1,000 Wii Points.
Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade already acts as a hotbed of independent developer activity, playing home to a number of offbeat titles such as The Behemoth’s Alien Hominid and Llamasoft’s Space Giraffe. Not content to merely support professional-grade development, Microsoft revealed during its keynote at this year’s Game Developers Conference that the Xbox 360’s online capabilities would also foster the indie scene via Community Games.
Slated to be incorporated into Xbox Live later this year, Community Games is a portal that lets indie developers (hobbyists and students included) create games using Microsoft’s XNA development toolkit and then have them posted to Xbox Live for consumption by Xbox Live users. According to Microsoft general manager of the game developer group Chris Satchell, the publisher expects more than 1,000 games to appear on the service by next year.
Were it not picked up as a full XBLA title, one of the first of those games will likely have been James Silva’s The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai. Winner of Microsoft’s Dream-Build-Play XNA contest, Dishwasher has taken the role of poster boy for Microsoft’s Community Games channel, and a demo for the game is already available on Xbox Live.
Far from a typical retail boxed product, Dishwasher is a side-scrolling beat-’em-up with a penchant for Kill Bill-style blood geysers, shambling zombies, and maniacal robots. Inspired by equal parts Jeet Kune Do master Bruce Lee, poseur Italian restaurants, and Ryuhei Kitamura’s epic Versus, Dishwasher in many ways acts as a proof of concept for Microsoft’s ambitious service, and gives players the chance to channel their inner butcher while bounding off walls and mashing on buttons in the process.
For more on the Dishwasher, the viability of XNA, and how the food industry gelled with martial arts films, If Its Games spoke with James Silva.
If Its Games: What previous experience have you had making games?
James Silva: I’ve been a bit of a hobbyist game developer for years now; a select few may remember a certain “Zombie Smashers X” series of yesteryear that I had something to do with.
IIG: So. How did the food service industry mingle with undead samurais, and then somehow become a game concept?
JS: It was, like most games, the product of a number of bizarrely unrelated influences. I had been working as a dishwasher in a fakey-upscale Italian restaurant (all of the menu items were in Italian, but none of the waitresses knew how to pronounce them), and I had gotten into the habit of coping with having one of the worst jobs in the world by telling anyone within earshot that Bruce Lee was once a dishwasher. Eventually, I convinced myself that a story that absolutely must be turned into a videogame was that of a dishwasher-turned-samurai. The undead part was added later (I think I had the movie Versus to thank for that).
IIG: Who do you think the game will appeal to? Did you have an audience in mind when you were making the game?
JS: Whenever I set out to make a game, I just try to make a game that I’d love playing. I’ll imagine a gameplay scenario, tell myself “hey–I’d like to play that,” and then make it.
IIG: Did the game go through any kind of evolution process?
JS: Always. With “The Dishwasher,” this was particularly the case. The XBLA version of “The Dishwasher” is actually my fourth attempt at creating a game about a psycho dishwasher. The game itself received quite a few overhauls–one weapon became five, dish magic was tweaked and untweaked and retweaked, and Arcade Mode found its way in.
IIG: How long did the game take to make, and who, if anyone, did you solicit help from?
JS: I started on the prototype last February while a full-time student with a web development internship. The Dream Build Play prototype was submitted in June, and I’ve been working hard since then, so I guess “The Dishwasher” has been in the oven for just over a year at this point.
For the most part I just worked on my own; I got some help from the XNA developers community on some really dumb programming questions I would have.
IIG: Do you have any other projects percolating that would work with XNA?
JS: So far, all of my pipelined projects are still trapped in my brain. But trust me, they’re there.
IIG: What were some of the challenges working on the game with XNA?
JS: One of the biggest challenges I had was optimizing performance–namely controlling Garbage Collection. XNA uses managed C#, which has some inherent pitfalls on the Xbox360. However, once you get the hang of how to avoid silly mistakes, it’s all gravy.
IIG: What were the benefits of using XNA?
JS: In a nutshell, XNA takes all of the ugly stuff out of game development. Things like device initialization, managing the render loop, gamepad management, and the audio engine are all set up for you, so you can get to the fun stuff pretty quickly.
IIG: How different is developing for XNA than, say, creating a Half-Life mod? Easier, harder?
JS: Having never created a Half-Life mod, I can’t really say. However, I did once try to learn a thing or two about modding and found I didn’t have the patience for it, so that might make the verdict “easier.”
IIG: Aside from the grand prize money earned through Microsoft’s Dream-Build-Play contest, have you seen or will you see any money from Dishwasher once the full game is up on XBL?
JS: The Dishwasher is going to be a straight-up XBLA game, meaning that there will be royalties once it goes live.
IIG: Do you think free XNA games will undercut the traditional $5-$10 XBLA releases?
JS: I think we’re still going to see a lot of “you get what you pay for.” XBLA Games guarantee a certain level of quality as well as standard features; Community Games on XBL don’t. The first game I made when I started playing with XNA is a Smash Brother’s/Small Arms type game that I don’t really see as being XBLA caliber, but I still would like it to see the light of day as a console game. Community Games on XBL is a perfect fit for this type of game. By the way, the game’s titled “Zombie Smashers X4: Guitarpocalypse.”
IIG: In terms of ease of use, does XNA have the potential to be the magic bullet for bringing game design and development to the masses? As in, are we going to see a lot of average Joes making quality, fun games?
JS: Game development is still an extremely ambitious venture, so depending on your definition of “the masses,” we may never see this type of magic bullet. Otherwise, a guy like me is probably always going to be the best you can hope for as an average Joe. I went to school for Computer Science while working a series of crappy jobs and have always dreamed of making videogames, but have no industry experience of special game development education.
IIG: Are side-scrollers and static-screen puzzle games the extent of what we’ll see out of XNA?
JS: No, XNA Game Studio is perfectly capable of side-scrolling puzzle games as well!
In all seriousness, while I doubt we’ll ever see anything COD4-caliber quality on XNA Game Studio, I’m pretty confident we’ll eventually see something of close-to-COD4-caliber quality. When you get down to it, there’s a lot you can do with XNA (as an author of an aforementioned side-scroller, I can’t really speak from experience), I think it’s a matter of time before we see some polished 3D titles that graphically blow The Dishwasher out of the water.
IIG: What is the potential for innovation with XNA?
JS: Networking in XNA Games Studio on Xbox 360 has been in place since XNA 2.0, so I think the floodgates on innovation are officially open! When community games launch on Xbox LIVE, we’ll see what types of submissions start arriving.
IIG: What effect do you think Microsoft’s pushing of XNA will have on the indie development community? Positive or negative?
JS: I think anything that opens up a new platform to indie developers is great–and console gaming has been closed to no-budget indie developers for decade after decade of console platforms, until XNA Game Studio.
IIG: Do you think XNA will become a crutch aspiring developers will use instead of learning traditional, and potentially more flexible, programming languages?
JS: Coming from someone who sucks at C++, yes. Well, not really. C# is a managed OOP language, so skills you pick up with C# will count towards Java, which I did at the real job I managed to snag out of college before I became a full-time Indie, or C++, provided you can learn to clean up your own garbage.
IIG: Do you think XNA developers will have a legitimate chance at having their game rise above the rabble on XBL, especially considering Microsoft is expecting 1,000 games on the service by next year?
JS: A game is still a game. I’d still rather play “Alien Hominid HD” over the graphically superior Switchball, because I like fast-paced games. If you make a game that plays well, people will play it. If there are people who like your game over another game, you just rose above some rabble!
IIG: Do you think Microsoft’s strict stance on games not being allowed to be distributed on a platform other than Microsoft’s is a problem?
JS: I think platform exclusives aren’t a bad idea–they give console manufacturers a chance to really shine and give us fanboys something to gloat about.
When you think about turn-based strategy games on consoles, most people tend to think of isometric strategy-role-playing games like Final Fantasy Tactics. When you think about them on handheld consoles, most people tend to think of tile-based games like Advance Wars. But what about the classic turn-based games that stole away countless hours from PC players? Aren’t those PC turn-based games too complicated and boring? Not if designer Sid Meier has anything to say about it. Meier and his team at Firaxis are hard at work on Civilization Revolution, a faster-paced turn-based console version of the classic Civilization series for computers. It is more or less completely identical in terms of content on both consoles and on the Nintendo DS. We recently had a chance to dive into some multiplayer sessions of the Xbox 360 version of the history-themed game, as well as to try out the DS version, and we have much to report.
Civilization is finally on its way to consoles.
The multiplayer in the console games, as Civ players might expect, resembles the single-player game. In both cases, you start off on a new map and choose to play as the world leader of a specific nation, such as Gandhi of India or Julius Caesar of Rome, then start your operations with a single city with the goal of doing nothing less than taking over the world. However, there are several different ways you can accomplish this goal, including, but not limited to, conquering the world by force by capturing all your opponents’ capital cities (which contain palaces); achieving a scientific victory by topping out your scientific research, which happens automatically with each passing turn; or achieving a new economic victory tied to amassing large amounts of wealth. In Revolution, unlike in the PC versions of Civ, you have much more freedom to choose different victory conditions and much more leeway to change the direction of your nation midstream.
The game is being built around numerous bonuses that are either automatic or unlockable. For instance, every nation and world leader has a great variety of powerful bonuses. These are available both at the start of the game and unlocked each time your nation advances scientifically to a new “age” (such as going from the Stone Age to the Classical Age). Each of the national bonuses–such as the Germans’ ancient-era bonus of automatically having all soldier units start at the extra-tough veteran level to begin with–are much more powerful than the traditionally minor Civ bonuses of “+1 to food production” to the extent that, in Sid’s own words, you’re supposed to feel as though “you can’t lose” picking any civilization.
In addition, you’ll unlock many other bonuses throughout the course of the game from traditional sources, such as the bonus units or technology or resource caches from “goodie huts” that you can wrest from hostile barbarian tribes or the powerful bonuses you can generate for your nation by constructing an expensive “wonder of the world” (like the Great Wall or the Pyramids). Revolution will also offer all-new bonuses for being the first nation to research a specific technology or even reassemble secret artifacts that are hidden in various territories across the map. These additional bonuses will not only give your general operations a boost, but may also open up new paths that may make you want to change directions. Rushing to research a certain military technology may net you a pile of money that may make you want to seriously consider changing course toward an economic victory, for instance.
The game will offer many different unlockable bonuses that’ll make you think twice about your strategy.
In our experience with the multiplayer on the consoles, the game starts out at a rather brisk pace. Exactly where each player starts the game is random, though there is apparently only one map size for multiplayer; a rather smallish map that randomly generates bodies of water, terrain, and resources. This map may toss you into the world right next to another player (or far, far away from anyone else to let you develop your civilization’s culture, technology, or finances, if you care to). We began our session playing as Germany to churn out as many freely upgraded veteran military units as possible from the get-go, founding our first city in a coastal area near plenty of food and production resources. Like with the PC game, the lay of the land surrounding your cities will determine how quickly they can produce units or buildings, as well as how quickly your population will grow (and therefore be capable of faster production or leaving town with a settler unit to build a new city elsewhere). Fortunately, much of the minutiae of the traditional Civ game have been streamlined out of both the console and handheld versions. Worker units appear onscreen automatically, and roads (which make going from one city to the next much faster) can be built as an automatic civic improvement once selected.
We had no trouble at all quickly advancing through several military-themed technologies, such as bronze working, to produce warriors, archers, and legions to wipe out all nearby barbarian tribes. Interestingly, Revolution will let you band together any three military units to create an “army”–a single unit with the combined strength of all three core units. All military units, whether individual or armies, can gain experience points that eventually advance them through experience levels that not only toughen up your forces, but also unlock additional bonuses that you can choose from, such as the ability to automatically heal from damage over time or the option to take an extra move even after attacking (which normally ends your turn for that unit). Multiplayer sessions have an option to select the speed of the turn timer (so that you can either take your time each turn or limit all players to an onscreen timer that counts down). At the medium speed, we did just fine keeping up with each turn. We even snuck a small army into a rival city across the water in a galley unit and captured it for ourselves.
However, things weren’t all rosy for us; several barbarian tribes kept us busy with defenses (and even kidnapped one of our undefended settler units, though we were able to recover the settler after laying waste to the barbarians’ camp). Meanwhile, the computer-controlled nation of Arabia made a beeline for us with its horse archers and began laying waste to our northern borders. Arabia was able to attack us because multiplayer games allow for both human and computer-controlled players. If we had had the time to play further, we surely would’ve gone back and crushed them–or so we’d like to think. Nevertheless, the console versions of Revolution seem to have plenty to offer–lots of new twists with every turn taken and lots of new reasons to take just one more turn.
You’ll find plenty of reasons to take just one more turn.
We also had a chance to try out the DS version of the game, which, according to a 2K Games representative, is being developed simultaneously with the console games and, with a very few exceptions (such as the all-encompassing “Civlopedia” reference), features all the same content–just with a different graphical wrapper. All the nations, leaders, bonuses, and gameplay of the console versions of Civilization Revolution are otherwise present on the DS from what we can tell. Building new cities, creating units, fighting battles against barbarians and enemy nations, researching new technology–everything seems intact on the DS as well. Fans of traditional handheld console strategy games should be in for an intriguing new experience, while fans of traditional Civilization gameplay will likely be ecstatic that they’ll finally have a version of their favorite game that fits in their pockets. Civilization Revolution is scheduled for release on the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3, and the DS this June.
Gran Turismo 5 Prologue may prompt some to argue it’s little more than a glorified extended demo designed to milk a few dollars from the franchise before the full retail product ships some time in 2009–but the proof will be in the sales when Prologue burns its way into homes across Australia on March 27.
Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is the first GT title to appear on the PlayStation 3 console, and will be available at both traditional bricks and mortar retailers as well as digital download through Sony’s PlayStation Network for A$59.95 (US$55.74). Fans of the series looking to pick up a Blu-ray version on launch day will be able to get off the line slightly faster, as Sony has said the download option will be available on March 28–the day after discs hit shelves across Australia. There is some suggestion however, that downloads could come on line as soon as the afternoon of March 27, timed to overlap with the game’s European launch on the same day.
To coincide with the launch of the latest instalment in the highly anticipated racing series–which has sold almost 50 million copies worldwide since launching a decade ago–Sony today also announced a new hardware bundle for the Australian market which would include a 40GB PlayStation 3 console, a single Sixaxis controller, and a copy of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue for A$699.95 (US$651.36).
Although Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is only the precursor to 5’s full launch sometime next year, the game will give players the chance to thrash 71 different cars across six tracks (one more than the five tracks found in the Japanese version of the game launched in December last year), take part in 16-player online racing, and experience full high-definition 1080p resolution. European and North American gamers will also see the inclusion of four new features: Drift Mode, which tracks and measures the driver’s drifting technique; In-Depth Car Tuning for power, tyre, and suspension tuning on-the-fly; new online race events; and offline two-player split-screen multiplayer.
Capcom’s shooter Lost Planet comes to the PlayStation 3 more than a year after its Xbox 360 debut, and it has a few extra goodies up its sleeve, such as more multiplayer maps and characters to tempt those who have never gone hunting for giant bugs in the snow before. Unfortunately, none of the added extras enhance Lost Planet’s gameplay, and the PS3 version’s visuals are actually inferior to those of its 360 and PC counterparts.
Lost Planet for the PS3 doesn’t look quite as sharp as previously released versions.
The 360 version of Lost Planet was fun, but it had a few frustrating quirks that made gameplay a real chore at certain points. The PS3 version is identical in gameplay style and content–nothing new has been added to the single-player experience, which means it shares its 360 compadre’s good and bad points. Lost Planet puts you in the shoes of Wayne, an enigmatic snow pirate battling giant bugs known as akrid on a frozen planet called E.D.N. III. The plot follows Wayne as he tries to make sense of his father’s death, destroy one huge, murderous insect after another, deal with marauding snow pirates, tackle the evil NEVEC corporation’s plans to terraform the planet, and more. We’d give you more detail, but storytelling isn’t this game’s strong suit. The story mostly makes no sense at all, and the hammy voice acting does nothing to dispel its sci-fi B-movie feel.
All an eager gamer really needs to know is that you get to tackle plenty of bugs Starship Troopers-style in Lost Planet, plus you get to pilot a wide variety of mechs. The game’s third-person action sees Wayne running around a variety of snow-covered environments. You use the control sticks for movement and aiming, and L2 and R2 to fire grenades and weapons, respectively. As well as the action-game standards of jumping and crouching, Wayne has a Bionic Commando-like grappling hook that he can throw to hoist himself onto high areas. When you’re in a mech (called vital suits–or VS–in the game), the controls work in much the same way, although most VS units have some sort of dash and double-jump moves.
Every enemy killed and most objects destroyed in Lost Planet will net you thermal energy–glowing gobs of orange goo that act as Wayne’s health (actually, Wayne has a separate life bar that refills as long as you have stores of thermal energy). Wayne’s stocks of thermal energy will steadily decrease at all times, a gameplay mechanic that gives Lost Planet an all-action feel and forces you to continue to move forward and rain fiery death on your enemies to stay alive.
It’s mostly nonstop shooting in Lost Planet, with no puzzles and very little platforming to get in the way. It’s great fun to take on the various forms of akrid, and piloting VS units with all their various shapes, sizes, and abilities never gets boring. Boss fights are especially epic, and though each conforms to a set attack pattern that can be easily learnt, they’re enjoyable. It’s a pity, then, that the game’s solid platform of destruction and mayhem is undermined by sluggish controls. Wayne himself moves rather slowly, and the situation is even worse with most VS units. The game’s targeting reticle is similarly plodding, positioning you at a distinct disadvantage against faster enemies like VS-equipped humans. The game does have a quick-turn feature, although this tends to disorient you more than help you. And for some strange reason, Wayne cannot shoot straight up–his aiming angle seems to stop at about 65 degrees or so, which means airborne enemies (and there are plenty of them) become quite difficult to target.
The game is also a little overwhelming to look at in certain spots, with effects thrown in by the bucketful to the detriment of clarity. This can be especially annoying during boss fights, with smoke effects, snow, explosions, laser fire, debris, and much more cluttering the screen. Sure, it looks impressive in most cases, but we’d rather be able to see what our character is up against onscreen rather than being taken down by another attack simply because we couldn’t see it coming.
All of these gameplay faults were present in Lost Planet on the 360, and it’s extremely disheartening that none of these issues were addressed in the intervening months before the game’s PS3 release. What’s of even more concern is that despite the added time, the PS3 version seems to be graphically inferior to the Xbox 360 version. The game’s textures seem a lot less crisp compared to the 360 version, and we found more obvious instances of jaggies and artifacting in the PS3 version (and more frequent occurrences). Frame rate seemed to hold steady for most of the game, with some noticeable slowdown during especially crowded firefights. And in what seems to be the norm for recent Capcom PS3 games (such as Devil May Cry 4), you are forced to go through an installation process at Lost Planet’s initial setup–our install took roughly 12 minutes. This didn’t seem to matter too much to the end experience, however, as load-time comparisons we ran with the 360 version showed that the PS3 was coming out on top by two to three seconds per load at most.
The large variety of akrid you’ll face is one of the highlights in the game.
What the game does bring to the PS3 table is the complete Lost Planet experience so far. It ships with all of the added content released for both the 360 and PC versions. This means 16 multiplayer maps are available from the get-go, including the ones released on Xbox Live: Radar Field, Island 902, Hive Complex, Trial Point, Ice Drop, Ruins, and Lost Technology. New characters are also available for play in the single-player campaign and in multiplayer: in-game hottie Luka, snow pirate Joe, Dead Rising’s Frank West (in his underwear, no less), and MegaMan. When it comes to multiplayer, the game features four gameplay modes with support for up to 16 players. Lost Planet presents a smooth and lag-free online experience–we had no hassles at all in several gameplay sessions with hosts from around the world (mainly from Japan), and there seemed to be plenty of available games and players ready for action.
But more multiplayer maps and a few quirky character additions aren’t enough sweeteners to have made the yearlong wait between console releases worthwhile for PS3 owners. Sure, the core gameplay–fun as it is–is still intact, but the PS3 community was probably right to expect some exclusive content, gameplay tweaks, or a snazzier look as their reward for patience. As it is, Lost Planet for the PS3 is a decent shooter with plenty of fun moments, but it’s not a shining example of how to do a console-to-console port.
2K Sports deserves credit for trying to deliver more than a roster update with MLB 2K8. There’s a new pitching mechanic, fielding has been revamped, and you can now put together your own team using in-game baseball cards. There are also new bugs and poor design choices that come with every new feature, making MLB 2K8 as frustrating as it is enjoyable.
The new pitching mechanic is flawed, but it’s a step in the right direction.
The most notable change to how 2K8 plays when compared to 2K7 is the new pitching mechanic. To throw a pitch, you pull the right analog stick in the direction shown in the pitch’s diagram and then wait for the expanding ring to flash. This determines the effectiveness of the pitch. Then you release the stick when the ring has contracted into the release zone to throw the pitch. For example, to throw a curveball, you would move the stick diagonally to the lower left and then make a counterclockwise motion. If you time it all right, the pitch goes where you want it to, but if you’re just a bit off, the ball will end up several inches from its intended target–a big problem if you’re trying to paint the corners. Certainly, pitchers miss their spots in real life, but very seldom are they punished like in 2K8. If you’re really off with your timing or stick movement, you’ll throw a meatball, and if you throw a meatball, chances are pretty good that you’re giving up a home run. The problem is that the game is extremely demanding when it comes to throwing a pitch properly, but how it determines what is and isn’t a good pitch doesn’t seem to be as precise. Sometimes you’ll see the red flash that indicates you’re getting ready to throw a meatball before you’ve completed the first gesture; at other times, the game will think you’re throwing one pitch when you’re trying to throw another. This is extremely frustrating and will likely cause you to switch to the traditional button-pressing method of pitching if you care at all about winning close games.
Pitching is just one of several mechanics that utilize the right analog stick. Once again, hitting is mapped to the right stick, though you can swing via buttons if you prefer. To swing, you pull the right stick back when the pitcher is getting ready to release the ball and then push forward to swing. The game manual says you release the stick after pulling it back to perform a contact swing, but this doesn’t actually do anything. Although it may not work as described in the manual, this method of hitting generally works well. It certainly works better than last year, though it’s still extremely difficult to judge a pitch’s location and still have time to swing.
Fielding also eschews buttons for the right analog stick. You move your fielder with the left analog stick, and to throw the ball, you push the right analog stick in the direction of your desired base. As soon as you move the stick, a meter begins to fill. When it’s filled to the center section, you release the stick and the player makes the throw. If you move the stick to the wrong spot or you release too late or early, you’ll unleash an errant throw and either pull your man off base or the ball will go right past the base. For the most part, this new method works well, and it makes routine throws a little less routine, which in turn keeps them interesting. That’s not to say fielding doesn’t have its problems–because it has plenty. Players will fail to even attempt to pick up slow-rolling ground balls at least once a game, and they’ll stay down on the ground as if they’ve been shot for what feels like an eternity if they miss a diving catch. Outfielders really have it rough. You have to call one of them off if they’re anywhere near one another or they’ll knock each other down, and they’ll get in each other’s way if they’re both trying to pick up a ball in the outfield. While they make like Willie Mays on balls hit over their heads, they have a tough time getting to any ball hit in front of them.
The trend of new ideas that is almost really cool but has a fatal flaw continues with 2K8’s 2K cards: in-game baseball cards you can earn by performing certain feats with specific players. For example: To unlock Randy Johnson, you need to strike out eight batters in a game; to earn David Ortiz, you must hit two homers in a game; and to unlock Derrek Lee, you need to get three hits in a single game. The cards aren’t just for collecting; you can put a team together and then take that team online to play other users’ card teams. There’s quite a bit of strategy involved when putting together a team because each card has a monetary value assigned to it that counts against your team’s $150 million cap. There are three different types of cards: black, gold, and platinum. Each player has one of each type, with the difference being that a black card counts the most against the cap and platinum the least. The higher the difficulty you play, the better your odds are of earning a gold or platinum card.
Collecting cards is time-consuming but fun.
This is a really neat feature that’s held back by a number of problems. For starters, it’s incredibly time-consuming to put together a team because most of the feats required to unlock a player are rather difficult. You can’t unlock player cards using a custom difficulty setting either. You can purchase packs, but they cost 500 credits, and the only way to earn credits is to sell cards you’ve already unlocked. These typically go for five to 20 credits apiece, so you’re looking at playing quite a few games to earn enough just to buy one pack because you’ll probably only unlock two to five cards a game. The game promises a legend player in every pack, but we won or purchased seven or eight new packs and never received one. You can unlock wild cards by hitting home runs, stealing bases, and striking out players, but unless you’re playing on the punishing harder difficulties, you’re not likely to earn very many; thus, you’re not likely to earn any gold or platinum cards.
When you play online with your card team, the game randomly selects both teams’ starting pitcher, thereby encouraging you to put together a proper five-man rotation, but as soon as the game starts, you can put in any starting pitcher you like, thereby negating the random selection process. That doesn’t really matter though, because you’re not likely to play online. It lags so much that it’s nearly unplayable, and it’s definitely not fun. 2K Sports is onto something with this card feature, but it needs another year in the minors before it’s user-friendly enough for the show.
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Major League Baseball 2K7 (X360)
MLB 2K7 returns for the latest season, offering improved player models and animations, as well as new gameplay features and of course updated rosters.
Score: 7.8
Major League Baseball 2K6 (PS2)
Major League Baseball 2K6 offers new features and an exclusive MLB license for this season.
Score: 7.0
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