Archive for March 14th, 2008
March 14, 2008
The danger of driving a tank into battle is that if you get out to pee, your enemy might drive off with it. THQ and Kaos Studios (who, as Trauma Studios, were responsible for the popular Desert Combat mod for Battlefield 1942 and collaborated with DICE on Battlefield 2) know this, because they essentially jumped into EA’s Battlefield franchise when no one was looking and renamed it Frontlines: Fuel of War. Although this tactic wasn’t particularly creative, in a console generation that hasn’t seen many Battlefield-type games, the outcome is a refreshing return to large-scale combat. With some wonky physics and a weak single-player campaign, Frontlines doesn’t beat Battlefield at its own game, but at least someone is giving us the chance to run over people with tanks, borrowed or not.
The most important part of Frontlines is its lone online multiplayer mode, also called frontlines. Like in any Battlefield game, this mode has you and the enemy vying for control of specific points on various maps. Unlike in Battlefield, only a few of these points are available for contention at any given time. You see, every map is divided into two sides by a battle line, and only points along this line are open for business. By capturing all of these points, you push the line deeper into enemy territory, to the next group of points. If you push the line all the way back to the enemy’s base and capture it, you win the game.
Sometimes the choppa gets to you.
This is an interesting approach to Battlefield gameplay, with some awesome strengths and a few head-scratching weaknesses. The beauty of this scheme is that every battle, at any given time, focuses nicely on either one or just a few spots. So if you’re in a game with a bunch of strangers, you can still count on everybody being on the same page, given that there are only a couple that they could possibly be on. Another thing that’s nice about this setup is that you generally know where the enemy will be coming from and where they’ll be going, so you don’t have to constantly watch your back.
On the flipside, it seems silly that you can’t do anything useful from within enemy territory (other than hunker down at their spawn points and pick off recently defeated enemy players as soon as they jump back into the world). It just doesn’t make sense that area C would be worth controlling only if you also have areas A and B. Furthermore, considering that all of the fighting is based around particular spawn points, you yourself will get killed off the moment you spawn into the world…a lot. Of course, there are ways around this (such as choosing to spawn in at a different point), but all the same, it sucks to wait through one long respawn time just to get zapped and wait through another.
Before a battle, and any time you die, you can choose a loadout and a role type. The loadouts, of which there are six, determine the weapons you carry. For instance, if you choose the sniper loadout, you’ll get a sniper rifle and a pistol. If you go antivehicle, you’ll get a rocket launcher and a couple of other guns. All of these have their intended purposes, but they are far from equal. The heavy-assault loadout, with its huge, accurate machine gun, is far more powerful and versatile than any other, whereas the sniper rifle is generally useless due to its lack of stopping power. Balancing issues aside, it would make more sense for you to be able to pick up other peoples’ guns.
However, the role types are one of Frontlines’ most interesting aspects. Each role confers three extra abilities on the player; you start with one of them, and earn the other two by doing normal stuff such as killing people and capturing points. One of the coolest roles lets you control three different types of unmanned combat drones. These are essentially RC cars and choppers covered with bombs and sometimes armed with rockets. Other roles let you repair vehicles, call down air strikes, or nullify enemy electronics. These aren’t particularly balanced, either (setting up a grenade turret is pretty futile if someone decides to send an air strike at you), but on the other hand it’s nice to always have some kind of powerful ability at your disposal.
You also have lots of vehicles, from jeeps to tanks to aircraft, and they all respawn really fast. The catch is that they tend to spawn only at your base, which is hopefully far from the front line. However, most vehicles have two gears (slow and breakneck), so getting where you’re going never takes long, and it can actually be a pretty fun ride. That is, until you run over some physics. You know this has happened when you try to drive over an abutment and your giant tank gets stuck pointing straight up in the air. Tricky terrain aside, the vehicles are powerful and fun to use, but easily destroyed by rockets or heavy fire.
Frontlines’ controls, both in vehicles and on foot, are very generic. You zoom with a click of a stick, throw grenades with the L trigger, shoot with the right, and change weapons in a radial menu that can be brought up at the push of a button. Nothing is new or exciting, but everything works. The same can be said for the online play. Running around in tanks and capturing points isn’t a new concept, and you can say the same for calling in air strikes, but chances are it’s been a while since you’ve done either, and it’s as fun as you remember.
This gun sounds even better than it looks.
The Battlefield games were never able to deliver a good single-player experience, and Frontlines unfortunately inherited that distinction as well. The campaign tells the story of a future in which only one oil field remains in the world, so everyone gets into a fight over it. The plot isn
March 14, 2008
Reuters - Electronic Arts Inc plans to make a tender offer to acquire all of rival video game publisher Take-Two Interactive Software Inc’s outstanding shares for $26 each, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.
March 14, 2008
Reuters - Electronic Arts Inc plans to make a $26-a-share tender offer for all outstanding shares of rival video game publisher Take-Two Interactive Software Inc , following its rejection of EA’s unsolicited offer at the same price last month, according to a person familiar with the matter.
March 14, 2008
InfoWorld - Hackers looking to steal passwords used in popular online games have infected more than 10,000 Web pages in recent days.
March 14, 2008
Reuters - Electronic Arts Inc on Thursday launched a hostile offer for rival video game maker Take-Two Interactive Software Inc at $26 a share, taking the $2 billion bid directly to stockholders.
March 14, 2008
TechWeb - Until recently, Microsoft had used the Toshiba-backed HD DVD format to add high-definition movie playback to the Xbox 360.
March 14, 2008
NewsFactor - Like a real-life financial video game, Electronic Arts has mounted a hostile takeover battle for Take-Two Interactive Software. The Redwood City, Calif.-based EA said Thursday that a wholly-owned subsidiary has commenced a tender offer for all outstanding shares of Take-Two for $26 a share in cash.
March 14, 2008
Reuters - Do you have childhood memories of having G.I. Joe fight Luke Skywalker, or throwing Superman into battle against the Bionic Man?
March 14, 2008
NewsFactor - Guitar Hero just made its way into the Guinness Book of World Records: Gamer’s Edition 2008, but Gibson Guitar would seemingly rather see its developer in court. Claiming its innocence and looking for exoneration, Activision is welcoming the showdown in a patent dispute that has gamers tuned in.
March 14, 2008
InfoWorld - Though many tech vendors are suffering as the widening U.S. financial crisis slows down consumer and business spending, IT mergers and acquisitions including bellwethers like Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Electronic Arts, and AOL continue to reshape the technology landscape and provide opportunities for investors.
March 14, 2008
TechWeb - The Gibson look-alikes, including Les Paul, SG, and Kramer models, are allowed under an undisclosed license agreement between the two companies.
March 14, 2008
When most people think of school, yawn-inducing lectures, nightmares about tests, and unpleasant memories of homework come to mind. But what if your lectures were all field trips to exotic locations, your tests battles against unnatural creatures, and your homework alchemic fusions? Wouldn’t that be more exciting?
The campus is large with plenty of places to explore.
For Vayne Aurelius, a freshman at the Al-Revis Academy of Alchemy, such a world is his reality. The young amnesiac lived in solitude with his Mana (a companion spirit of sort), Sulpher, until he was unexpectedly visited by a professor at the academy who invited him to study the ways of alchemy. After he arrives on campus and completes orientation, he makes quick friends with his classmate Jess. The two of them set out to explore the school together, but along the way, they’re roped into an alchemy workshop group with the beast-girl Nikki by the wonderfully insane upperclassman Flay, who speaks in an exaggerated, superhero-like tone. He also refers to his workshop as “The Flay Cave” and conveniently leaves you to do his work because he’s got other things to do.
Mana Khemia is, as publisher Nippon Ichi describes, an academic RPG. Besides all the usual RPG-style combat, there’s a huge school campus simulation portion to experience. As such, it more resembles a game like Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 than one of the Atelier Iris games of which Mana Khemia seems to be a successor. Every week, you will enroll in a class of your choice, and that class will give you an assignment to complete.
The two classes we experienced were Basic Synthesis and Combat Basics. Basic Synthesis had us hunt down and find three items to mix together using alchemy. Combat Basics sent us out of the academy to fight a Platinum Puni boss and taught us how to upgrade items in the Athanor Room. Some classes are required, but all will award you a letter grade depending on your degree of success and the length of time that it takes you to complete a class. If you don’t do well in your classes, you’ll have to take more difficult makeup courses to continue your studies, but if you pass with no hiccups, you’ll have more free time to pursue your own projects.
Be sure to strike first to get the drop on monsters.
As the title and setting suggest, alchemy plays a huge role in Mana Khemia. Throughout the game, you’ll find or purchase ingredients that you blend together with a bit of magic in your workshop cauldron to create new items. But making items isn’t entirely free-form because you have to first find the recipe before you can get started on it. Once you’ve assembled everything you need and are ready to begin, you can choose to either enlist the help of a party member who will add his or her own unique talents to the mix or pick positive (or negative) effects from a spinning roulette wheel. Either way, you’ve just created a new item!
When exploring locations outside the academy for items or assignments, it’s only inevitable that you’ll encounter monsters. On the map, they appear as amorphous blobs that roam around randomly, and combat begins either on contact with them or when you initiate it with an attack. Battles are turn-based affairs that feature a timeline with enemy and ally turns mapped out. Attacks and item uses are performed instantly, but spells or special attacks are scheduled in the future. In Mana Khemia, you don’t actually earn experience points from combat that you use to gain levels but, rather, ability points that you spend upgrading your character’s stats by purchasing enhancements on the various items you craft.
Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis is scheduled to come out later this month on March 31. Check back later on for our review of this unique school sim-slash-RPG.
-If Its Games
March 14, 2008
Reuters - Electronic Arts Inc on Thursday launched a hostile offer for rival video game maker Take-Two Interactive Software Inc at $26 a share, taking the $2 billion bid directly to stockholders.
March 14, 2008
AFP - The world’s biggest computer game maker, Electronic Arts (EA), launched Thursday a hostile takeover bid for rival Take-Two, creator of hit game “Grand Theft Auto,” valuing Take-Two at 2.0 billion dollars (1.3 billion euros).
March 14, 2008
Reuters - U.S. sales of video game hardware and software hit $1.33 billion in February, up 34 percent from a year earlier, with Sony Corp’s (6758.T) PlayStation 3 topping Microsoft Corp’s Xbox 360 for the second month in a row.