Archive for May 16th, 2008
May 16, 2008
Last night, at a Konami press event held in San Francisco, we had an opportunity to get our hands on a playable version of New International Track & Field for the first time since last year’s Games Convention in Leipzig. Being developed exclusively for the Nintendo DS by Sumo Digital, the game really isn’t that different from the Track & Field games of old. The graphics are cuter, there’s online functionality, and you won’t be breaking any joysticks or buttons this time around, but this is definitely still Track & Field.
The version of New International Track & Field on display appeared to be more or less final, though only four of the game’s 24 athletic events were unlocked when we grabbed the stylus for the first time. Those events were the 100m sprint, the long jump, the 110m hurdles, and the javelin. Rather than alternately mashing two buttons or waggling a joystick to pick up speed, you’ll be rubbing your stylus left and right on the touch screen. You might think that rapidly moving the stylus is a far less punishing control scheme than the joysticks and buttons of old, but after spending about 20 minutes with the game, we can report that you’d be wrong.
Other actions, which in the aforementioned events include jumping and throwing, can be performed in one of three ways: tapping up on the D pad, using the X button, or hitting a buttonlike symbol on the touch screen. Again, these controls feel exactly like those in older iterations, so where applicable, you’ll need to hold down your chosen button and release it only when a suitable jumping/throwing angle has been set.
After checking out the four available events in the Practice mode, we decided to put our skills to the test in Career mode on the easiest of three difficulty settings. Our “standard” character, chosen from a roster of eight, was pitted against three others in all of the aforementioned events–earning medals and gold stars en route. The gold stars automatically unlock new items as you progress, and on this occasion, we managed to unlock a new outfit for the female goth character we were using. There are also 10 “special” characters to unlock, as well as the remaining 20 events, of course.
Upon winning the four-event series, we were promoted to a “novice” rating and invited to participate in another series made up of the events that we’d just unlocked. The events in question were the 400m, the shot put, skeet shooting, and the vault. The controls for these events offered more variety than the previous series because the skeet shooting and vault disciplines are so different from anything that had come before. To perform a successful vault, you have to nail three well-timed button presses (start run, jump, vault) before rapidly drawing circles on the touch screen to perform somersaults before landing, for example. Skeet shooting is definitely one of the easier events because you just move your crosshair left or right with the stylus (vertical aiming is handled automatically) and hit a button to shoot.
Most of the events, we’re told, will support New International Track & Field’s “voice boost” feature, enabling you to improve your performance by shouting or blowing into the microphone. Given that we were playing the game in a noisy environment, it’s difficult to say whether or not we had a chance to put that feature to the test. A far more exciting feature that we definitely didn’t get to see in action is online play, which will purportedly support online tournaments and worldwide rankings, in addition to the head-to-head competitions that you’d expect.
New International Track & Field for the Nintendo DS is currently scheduled for release sometime this summer. We’ll bring you more information on the game as soon as it becomes available.
-If Its Games
May 16, 2008
As a portent of things to come last month, a rating for Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia turned up in the Entertainment Software Rating Board’s online database. Naturally published by Konami, the online listing indicated Order of Ecclesia would be the Belmont family’s third trek onto Nintendo’s DS behind 2005’s Dawn of Sorrow and 2006’s Portrait of Ruin.
Speak softly and carry a big sword.
As part of its Gamers’ Day event today, Konami unsurprisingly confirmed Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia for the DS, saying the game would arrive on Nintendo’s platform this fall. The ESRB couldn’t be bothered with spilling details on the game when it rated it T for Teen, so Konami’s announcement today shined more light on what gamers can expect later this year.
As a member of the oath-sworn Order of Ecclesia, players assume the role of a heroine named Shinoa, which producer Koji Igarashi called a code-name in an interview with If Its Games. Vampire-hunting is once again paramount to the game’s story, and players will employ a number of tactics, including the new Glyph attack mechanic, to defeat Dracula’s minions.
Order of Ecclesia’s single-player experience offers 20 different areas to explore, with environments ranging from forests to oceans. The game will also put to use the DS’s Wi-Fi Connection for head-to-head multiplayer battles, and players will also be able to go online to buy and sell items they acquire during their journeys.
May 16, 2008
The Lost in Blue series has produced three games so far for the Nintendo DS. Last night, Konami announced a fourth entry in the series with Lost in Blue for the Wii. Although it has yet to receive an official title to help distinguish it from the DS games, we spent enough time playing to see a few ways this game is taking advantage of its new home on the Wii.
If island life is so precious, you almost have to wonder why they
May 16, 2008
As the boy-king of a burgeoning young kingdom, you’ve got your hands full. Your beloved papa is missing and presumed dead, the cackling dark lord is on the loose, and a penguin keeps following you around while tossing barbed insults in your general direction. There is an upside, though. For one, you can use a magic power called Architek to summon buildings (and their residents) onto your town’s empty lots, which helps increase your sparse population. For another, you don’t need to personally bother with the local monster population; instead, you just hire adventurers to do the dirty deeds for you. This sounds like a solid setup for Square Enix’s sunny strategy romp, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King. But while its title might be imposing, the gameplay is shallow, repetitive, and fundamentally unbalanced. Furthermore, if you want to get the most out of this $15 WiiWare download, you need to spend even more money. Want a new outfit for the king? It’ll cost you $1. Want a new house to supplement the paltry selection of abodes included with the standard download? It’s another $3. Getting the most out of this thin game requires spending twice the asking amount, and that’s a bona fide rip-off.
Your adventurers are eager to get to the dungeon. You can’t blame them, since they have more fun than you ever will.
Of course, even the player-named king knows that nothing in life is truly free. To build homes and produce a population, you need crystal, and to get it, you have to hire adventurers and send them into the local dungeons, where deposits of the stuff are guarded by ferocious monsters. At least, the game tells us they’re ferocious; you’ll never see one for yourself. In any case, you start off each day by posting a couple of behests to the town bulletin boards, and the adventurers you’ve hired all gather there. You can then send them off on assignment, ask them to go gain some experience, or even appoint them to a new job, such as a black mage or a thief. Once they’ve got their mission, your hirelings gather supplies from the local shop and traipse toward their destination.
While your adventurers are out, you can gallivant about the town using your kingly avatar. Assuming you have enough crystal and haven’t surpassed the building limit, you can create additional structures. To do so, you run to an empty plot and wave the Wii Remote, which summons Chime, your perky and pretty adviser. Then you choose a building from the menu, and poof! Your glowing vacant lot is now a house, or a bakery, or an emporium. As with most city-building games, it’s enjoyable to watch your unoccupied land turn into a bustling village, and you’ll look forward to unlocking new possibilities. When you aren’t building, you can visit each shop you’ve built to purchase upgrades so your adventurers can buy new equipment, abilities, or items; you can hire new adventurers; or, most commonly, you can run around looking for citizens so you can increase their morale. Once morale is high enough, you use it to upgrade your town’s official status (from city to kingdom, for example), temporarily boost your explorers’ stats, or boost household relationships, which helps your hired hands recover from battle faster.
All of this makes it seem like there’s a lot to do, but playing My Life as a King quickly boils down to the same rote tasks every day: Review the prior day’s activities, choose your behests, visit the bulletin boards and send off your adventurers, and then run around town to click on citizens for morale boosts and to purchase an upgrade or two. When your adventurers return, you grab as much morale from them as you can before Chime pops up and sends you to bed. While there is a seeming wealth of information to peruse in the downtime, it’s all window dressing, and any sense of depth you might discern from it is a complete masquerade. The kingdom’s limited lots lock you in virtual handcuffs, so while there is some freedom in how you develop your travelers, My Life as a King isn’t strategic at all.
The limitations pile on, one after another. Fans of city builders will deplore the lack of real options: There are very few structures at your disposal, and you can have only a limited number of each. You can’t tell your adventurers how to spend their money. You can’t fire them in favor of new candidates. You can’t even adjust your tax rates. Furthermore, these limitations lead to severe imbalances. When an adventurer completes a behest, you can assign a medal that increases his or her stats. However, this creates an odd catch-22, because your more powerful adventurers are the ones to successfully complete your behests. As a result, you’ll assign medals to the same fighters over and over, while the ones most in need of a boost return defeated. You can work around this by benching the most powerful adventurers in favor of the ones needing a helping hand, but doing so increases the amount of time you spend dealing with the tedium of everyday city-meandering. In addition, when there are multiple behests available to your adventurers, you can’t choose which adventurer takes which behest, so you may end up wasting high-level helpers on low-level tasks.
The missing depth and breadth would be easier to stomach if the gameplay itself were more engaging. Admittedly, the upcoming increase to your house-building cap can push you to finish off another boss, but it’s the same four houses anyway, unless you decide to purchase downloadable content. And there’s the rub: If you want a diverse population that includes every race from the Crystal Chronicles universe, you have to pony up the dough. $15 doesn’t seem like a lot for a game that could take you 9 or 10 hours to finish, but much of that time is useless padding spent clicking on random townspeople for morale (and to give you something to do). To charge $3 just to add a different house to the tiny existing selection is outrageous, especially if you buy the content after you’ve played the game for a few hours. If you’ve already reached your adventurer cap, the Yukes you produce by building Yuke shacks can’t be sent to dungeons in the current game, which means you’ll need to start another city from scratch to get the most out of them. If you want a little variety, something the basic package doesn’t offer on its own, expect to spend twice the asking price. Even then, don’t expect a lot of bang for your buck–unless you consider a new outfit for Chime to be worth that buck.
The Lilty hut you see forming here isn’t included with your purchase.
The Crystal Chronicles visual charm flourishes in every corner of My Life as a King, from its simple but sweet character designs to the way adventurers will occasionally trip and fall as they run. Building a structure results in a beautiful flurry of particles and other clever effects, though it unfortunately causes a bit of slowdown as well. Characters, including your own, move with speed and grace, and the buildings themselves shimmer with color and vibrancy. The chirpy soundtrack is cute, but it gets annoying after a short while, since the same jaunty tune repeats ad nauseam. If you hit the mute button, you won’t miss much, since the rest of the sound design is pleasant but unimportant.
My Life as a King is a disappointing use of two name brands associated with quality games. It’s shallow, limiting, and padded with unrewarding gameplay. It’s also a blatant grab at our wallets–not because downloadable content is available at launch, but because that content is essentially required if you want any variety in a shallow game that begs for it. This cheery game is a nice length and has some superficial appeal, but your valuable money is better spent elsewhere.
May 16, 2008
One of the launch titles for Nintendo’s new WiiWare downloadable games service, LostWinds is overflowing with unrealized potential. This is one of the relatively few games on the Wii that make legitimate use of the Wii Remote, striving to take the puzzle platforming genre to places previously unseen. Dishearteningly, it falls short of the lofty heights it could have reached. The sometimes sloppy controls and occasional camera glitches are the first evidence that something is not quite right here, but it’s the sleepy presentation and all-too-easy puzzles that ultimately doom LostWinds. Frontier Developments should be applauded for bringing something truly unique to the Wii, showing how motion controls can fundamentally change how a genre is played, but LostWinds just isn’t a good enough game to make people take notice.
The view outdoors is quite striking.
The story of LostWinds is one every person can relate to: boy meets wind deity, deity gives boy special powers, boy and deity save village from evil monsters. Once the roles are established, you’ll spend the rest of the game searching for new abilities and hidden memory chests with only brief interruptions from distressed citizens to warn you of the impending darkness poised to envelop their little town. Like much of this game, these interactions lack personality. The characters are stylistically familiar to anyone who has played Okami, but they lack the quirkiness that made that game so memorable.
Visually, LostWinds seems like it’s geared toward inducing sleep in people suffering from insomnia. The opening scene will have you believing that you’re in for a treat with delicate colors and expressive backgrounds, but that idea quickly blackens as you trudge through the murky depths of the town’s underground mines. Beautiful green hills and vibrant cherry blossoms fade away, replaced by a suffocating cavern of dreary blue rock. It’s a shame that half of this three-hour adventure takes place in the dank underbelly of this fantastic little village. This is another sharp contrast to the Okami vibe that LostWinds projects: Instead of bringing life to a dying land, you’re spending time in ugly locales with no visual reward waiting for you. Combine this with the dreamy woodwind soundtrack accompanying your every move, and you have a game that simply lacks any semblance of energy.
Just like the other aspects of LostWinds, the gameplay mechanics at first seem like they are going to push the genre forward, but they fall short before any progress is made. You control both characters at the same time. You move the boy Toku with the Nunchuk, but without his omnipotent friend, he is quite useless. He cannot jump to great heights or attack his dark foes, but he can crawl up small ledges and make modest horizontal leaps. It’s the Wii Remote, which controls the wind god Enril, that adds a dose of ingenuity to the mix. Most of the navigation and all of the puzzle solving are accomplished using fantastical wind powers. Instead of hitting a button to jump, you hold down the A button and gesture in the direction you wish to travel. As you progress further in the game, you’ll unlock even more abilities. You’ll be able to blow on fire to solve puzzles, levitate objects in air, or, using Toku’s fancy cape, blow the boy up to previously unreachable heights.
But the inside portions are a total drag.
The problem with controlling a powerful force of nature is that wind doesn’t have a fine touch. Objects not bolted to the ground tend to blow around the environment like dandelions, which makes precise maneuvers something of a chore. Instead of the challenge coming from brain-scratching puzzles, most of it lies in trying to balance heavy rocks on tiny platforms. And the motion controls do not always register. Using the vortex command to make objects hover in air is unpredictable–sometimes the rock will stay right where you want it to, but other times it will fall back to the ground with the vortex winds still circling it. The wind also doesn’t always blow young Toku where you would expect. For instance, horizontal commands are sometimes reversed. Even if you clearly move the Wii Remote from the left side of the screen to the right, the wind will sometimes blow in the opposite direction. These quirks can be overcome with two or three attempts, but having to constantly redo motions to solve spatially easy puzzles turns what should be a delightful adventure into a frustrating tribulation.
Even with its very clear drawbacks, LostWinds is still a decent showcase for what independent developers can do with the WiiWare service. It is a unique experience that could not have been done without the Wii Remote. But potential can get you only so far. With a presentation that lacks vibrancy and puzzles that never push the innovative gameplay mechanics, much of LostWinds is either boring or frustrating. It’s still worth checking out if you’re craving a new experience, but you might have to wait for the already announced sequel to see these great ideas come to fruition.
May 16, 2008
The games industry could always do with more original concepts, so we were naturally intrigued when we saw this new action puzzle game from French developer Mekensleep. Published by Eidos and slated for release in June 2008, this DS-exclusive game is a stylish take on the puzzle genre that is quite unlike anything we’ve seen before.
The concept is fairly simple: You must help escort animal souls, using bubbles, to the afterlife. A simple touch-screen interface allows you to draw bubbles and move them quickly through each level, although there are plenty of secrets to be found for those willing to do a little exploration. We had the chance to see the game in action with Eidos recently, and although we didn’t get to play the game, we were impressed with what we saw.
Soul Bubbles boasts a charming visual style that’s reminiscent of European animations.
The backstory isn’t too important, but it is humorously bizarre. You play a shaman apprentice who’s tasked with getting animal souls to the afterlife, and you do this by encapsulating them in a bubble. The game is played solely with the stylus, so you physically draw bubbles on the screen and then use the stylus to make your onscreen character blow them in different directions, while floating through each level. This is all done thanks to…a magical elephant mask of course! This allows you to both move the bubbles and inflate or deflate them as needed.
The game isn’t just about moving souls around, though; you have to protect them as well. You have to avoid enemies such as crows and sharp obstacles as you progress, but you can tap the screen to attack your enemies. Tougher baddies, such as the skeleton crows that we saw in our demo, must be dispatched by drawing lines through them with the stylus. There are also puzzles where you need to make your bubbles larger than normal so they push on a switch as they move past, and you do this by drawing smaller bubbles on the outskirts of your existing bubble, which then amalgamate into it. On the other hand, you can also draw air out of bubbles by tapping on them, helping them become small enough to fit through tighter gaps.
Soul Bubbles has a really attractive visual style, taking in obvious influences from European animated films as well as games such as LocoRoco. As with the aforementioned Sony title, there are many secret areas to explore, and your souls glow when you’re near something that might be of interest. Obstacles such as wind stop you from progressing easily into these areas, meaning that you have to use the stylus to blow hard against the draft to progress. The game also uses the DS microphone, having you physically blow into it at certain points, such as when you first set up your character at the beginning of the game.
We got to see only a couple of levels of Soul Bubbles during our time with Eidos, but we’re told that there will be ice and snow environments as well as weighted bubbles to play with. The finished game will feature 40 levels across eight differently themed worlds, and with a release date of June 10 in the US and June 13 in Europe, we won’t have to wait long to see if it can deliver on its potential.
-If Its Games
May 16, 2008
Last night, we had the opportunity to attend Konami’s Gamer’s Night event here in San Francisco. After focusing on the big guns during its opening presentation, Konami gave us the chance to play a number of other upcoming games. Among the selection was Hellboy: The Science of Evil, a tie-in to the upcoming Hellboy film sequel subtitled The Golden Army. Scheduled for release June 24 on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PSP, this brawler features a stylized look reminiscent of the graphic novel and a combat system where the line between enemies and weapons is often blurred.
All alone with nothing to destroy.
We jumped right into the first level of the game. This one takes place in a graveyard tucked away in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania. In terms of story, those incorrigible Nazis have once again hatched a plan to take over the world. The opening cutscene is a bit vague as to how these graves relate to the latest Nazi quest for world domination, but nevertheless, you are Hellboy–and you’ve got a giant fist made of stone ready to smash things.
This introductory level is filled with little gremlinlike enemies called bambinis. When it comes to these little guys, you have a few options for how to best deal with them. You’ve got a light attack button, a heavy attack button, and a gun that can be fired with one of the triggers. It’s also possible to link your attacks together, as the combo ticker that pops up on the screen during a fight would suggest.
You can also make use of the game’s contextual grapple system. What this means is that you can hit one of the triggers to grab small enemies and use them as unwilling projectiles. You can grab a bambini to throw at groups of other bambinis, which works quite well and is often very amusing, but you can also throw them at the cursed graves from which these little monsters emerge. Doing this a couple of times will demolish the cursed grave, stemming the flow of annoying little critters while allowing you to collect whatever loot lies at the bottom of the graves. These finds seem to be mostly of the ammo variety, with bullets and frag grenades being the most common loot.
The contextual grab is also used to progress through the graveyard’s various sectioned-off areas. You’ll often run into an area devoid of enemies unsure of what to do next, in which case, you’ll need to go searching for a stone door or wall that appears to be in less than ideal condition. If you find one that’s weak enough, you can press the grapple button to grab it and then repeatedly whack on the circle or X button (X on a 360 controller, mind you) to smash the living daylights out of it, allowing you to move on to the next area. Grabbing things and smashing them is a common theme in the game, if our time with this first level is to be believed.
Visually, Hellboy is looking quite nice, regardless of the platform. Rather than opting for a photorealistic look to mimic the film, The Science of Evil appears as though it will bridge the gap between the movie and graphic novel with a look that’s a touch on the cartoony side but not quite ripped from the comics. In the interest of comparisons, the PS3 version looked a bit better, though it was hardly a massive difference. The PSP version obviously lags behind its console brethren, but much of that is offset by excellent graphic novel cutscenes interspersed throughout this portable version.
We’re eager to see how Hellboy’s repertoire of combat techniques evolves past this first level. The beginning of the game was a bit limited in terms of what Hellboy could do, but those few moves were pretty fun. As mentioned before, Hellboy is scheduled for release on June 24.
-If Its Games
May 16, 2008
With the Grand Theft Auto IV launch at the end of April, there was little doubt that the month’s game industry sales would be up in a big way. The stat-tracking NPD Group today released its snapshot of US retail sales, and it showed that total industry sales were up 40 percent year-over-year, with Rockstar’s latest responsible for 2.85 million copies sold on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in its first five days of release.
Between software, hardware, and accessories, US stores sold $1.23 billion worth of gaming goods last month, up from $838.6 million in April 2007. Software saw the biggest gains, racking up $654.7 million in sales for the month, up 68 percent from the previous year.
GTAIV was the strongest multiplatform seller, but another of the month’s new releases, Mario Kart Wii, actually came in second on the software sales charts. With 1.12 million copies tallied, Mario Kart Wii outsold the PS3 edition of GTAIV (1 million sold), but fell shy of the Xbox 360 edition’s 1.85 million copies. Although it was beaten out by Mario Kart Wii, the third-place finish on the sales charts for the PS3 edition of GTAIV is the best yet for a game on Sony’s latest console. Other strong new releases included the retail edition of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue (copies of the game sold through the PlayStation Network’s online store were not tracked by NPD) and Nintendo’s latest Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games for the DS.
In a statement accompanying the release of the figures, NPD analyst Anita Frazier made special note of the top three sellers and called Nintendo’s release of Mario Kart Wii in advance of GTAIV “a classic example of counter-programming.”
“It’s unusual for three games to exceed the 1-million mark in a nonholiday month, which just goes to prove that great content can succeed regardless of when it is launched,” Frazier said.
Though each of the top three games surpassed their counterparts from the March sales charts, there was a more significant drop-off in units sold further down the charts. In March, the 10th best-selling game was Army of Two for the PS3, with 224,900 copies sold. For April, a mere 141,000 sold was enough to get the Xbox 360 edition of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in the 10 spot.
On the hardware side, not even GTAIV could boost sales for the PS3 and Xbox 360. Both systems sold significantly fewer machines in April than they had in March, with the Xbox 360 and PS3 neck-and-neck at 188,000 and 187,000 units, respectively. Both consoles moved more than 250,000 systems each the previous month.
Nintendo’s Wii and DS once again took the top two spots on the hardware sales chart, but sales of the dual-screen handheld slowed significantly from March, going from 698,000 units sold to 415,000. However, the Wii kept up its momentum, slipping slightly to 714,000 units from 721,000. The PSP was once again the best-selling non-Nintendo system on the market, with 193,000 systems sold in April. Hardware sales were down from March, but they were still up compared to the previous April, jumping 26 percent to $426.2 million.
“This is the first month in many that we’ve seen a decrease in portable hardware and software sales,” Frazier said, “but it’s important to remember that this year, the Easter holiday fell in March as compared to April in 2007.”
As for a hardware bump from GTAIV, Frazier said it might arrive in May’s figures because the game was released so late in the April reporting period.
US VIDEO GAMES INDUSTRY - APRIL 2008
Software: $654.7m (+68%)
Hardware: $426.2m (+26%)
Accessories: $154m (+39%)
Total Games: $1.23b (+47%)
TOP-SELLING HARDWARE - APRIL 2008
Wii–714,000
Nintendo DS–415,000
PlayStation Portable–193,000
Xbox 360–188,000
PlayStation 3–187,000
PlayStation 2–124,000
TOP-SELLING SOFTWARE - APRIL 2008
Title / Publisher / Release Date / Units*
1) Grand Theft Auto IV (Xbox 360) / Take-Two / April 2008 / 1.85M
2) Mario Kart Wii (Wii) / Nintendo / April 2008 / 1.12M
3) Grand Theft Auto IV (PS3) / Take-Two / April 2008 / 1M
4) Wii Play w/ Remote (Wii) / Nintendo / Feb. 2007 / 360K
5) Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii) / Nintendo / March 2008 / 326K
6) Gran Turismo 5: Prologue (PS3) / Sony / April 2008 / 224K
7) Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness (DS) / Nintendo / April 2007 / 202K
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time (DS) / Nintendo / April 2007 / 202K
9) Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Wii) / Activision / Oct. 2007 / 152K
10) Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (360) / Activision / Nov. 2007 / 141K
* Figures include Collector’s, Limited, Legendary, Bundles (Guitars) Editions
May 16, 2008
Stargate Worlds, the upcoming massively multiplayer online role-playing game based on the Stargate SG-1 universe, has been confirmed as in development since the beginning of 2006. Cheyenne Mountain announced the game as its first project, and later announced that it would be self-publishing the game under the banner of a new publishing studio called FireSky.
It’s currently due sometime before the end of 2008, although the team are quick to point out that that’s in no way a definite lockdown right now. The game will take place within a sprawling sci-fi world, with “all the planets, as many as we have time to build,” all of which players can discover and explore.
If Its Games UK chatted with three people involved in the MMOG in a roundtable discussion: Stargate Worlds studio head Dan Elggren, FireSky senior vice president of strategic operations Joe Ybarra, and FireSky senior vice president of product development Rod Nakamoto.
Ybarra is a veteran of the games world, who started in the industry more than 20 years ago as a producer for Electronic Arts. He has worked on games including M.U.L.E., The Bard’s Tale, The Seven Cities of Gold, and The Matrix Online.
Nakamoto is also an industry old timer, having started out developing one of the first sound cards for the Apple II computer, and has worked for (among others) Electronic Arts, Activision, and Sega. Games with his name on them include Wing Commander: Prophecy, Eternal Champions, and NASCAR Thunder 2003.
Elggren describes himself as a “Stargate enthusiast,” and got his break in the industry working as a QA tester. He formerly worked for Electronic Arts as development director, and developed games including three Medal of Honor titles, as well as Command & Conquer: Generals Zero Hour.
If Its Games UK: Don’t mean to rush you, but have you guys locked down a definite date yet?
Dan Elggren: As you know, building an MMOG is a very difficult process, and the release date has to be somewhat flexible to account for the complexities. We have announced a tentative window of winter 2008, but we are continually evaluating the scope and quality of Stargate Worlds to ensure we release the best game possible.
GSUK: What are you most excited about so far?
DE: One feature that we’re really excited about is the noncombat play style that will be available to the Archaeologist archetype. MMOs, with a few exceptions, don’t really give players many options when it comes to navigating the play space. Generally, the only way you progress is through combat. The archaeologist and, to a lesser extent, the scientist will have a noncombat path they can take, even when teaming with a group of soldiers and commandos.
This is a big deal in MMOGs, and we believe it will open up Stargate Worlds to an entirely new type of gamer who wants to be a part of [an] MMORPG experience but doesn’t want to be continually killing enemies to advance their character.
GSUK: Do you think that in social gaming, the social aspect will become more and more important, and the gaming less and less so?
Joe Ybarra: It’s not a matter of games becoming less important, not at all. This is actually about an intersection between two equally important aspects. If there is one thing we’ve learned through observing the MMOG space and primary research, it is that the social networks gamers build inside MMOGs are a key part of their enjoyment. It’s the guilds, the five-man raid teams, and even pickup groups. The network is key, but developers have, in general, provided no more than basic tools for gamers to build them. That’s one of the first things we’ll change.
Absolutely gameplay is important. No one is going to play a bad game because it has a great social-network tool. Games have to be fun, or they fail.
GSUK: Can you tell us more about Project: Ascension?
Rod Nakamoto: Project: Ascension is a code name for a framework for fun games, much like a shopping centre is a framework for stores. A mall has big anchors like Macy’s and Nordstrom’s here in the United States. In much the same way that a mall brings together disparate stores and restaurants to offer a great entertainment package, Project: Ascension will bring together a variety of games, all in the online space. There’s much more to it than that, but that’s all we can tell you about [it] at this time.
Obviously Stargate Worlds won’t have the full dynamic of Project: Ascension at launch. The full depth can’t be achieved until there are multiple titles existing in the framework. We’ll be announcing more of those titles this summer.
GSUK: And what the snap is SNAP?
RN: SNAP games are the pieces that fit into the Project: Ascension framework. They aren’t all MMORPGs in the classic sense, but they all share an online element.
GSUK: How exactly are these going to “change the dynamic forever,” as you claim?
JY: Traditionally, when gamers invest in an MMOG, they build up equity in the form of their characters. It’s all about XP, loot, and friends, right? That’s part of the reason why people continue to play games.
We’re developing ways for players to have portability with those elements. Project: Ascension and SNAP games will allow gamers to keep their equity across a number of varied titles. Obviously there are gameplay and balance issues to be worked out, but the general idea is one of portability.
GSUK: Can you tell us about the other projects you are working on as well?
RN: In addition to Stargate Worlds, we have four other products in varying stages of development. This includes Project: Ascension, an additional MMOG based on a licensed property, and two other titles we haven’t announced.
GSUK: Why did you guys take the decision to publish Stargate Worlds yourselves as opposed to seeking an outside publisher?
JY: We originally planned on using an outside publisher for Stargate Worlds, but after spending about a year negotiating with various groups, it became clear that self-publishing was a better option.
We recognize that an MMOG is more of a service than a product, and who’s better positioned to offer the support customers need than we are? No one. We’re building a world-class customer-service team and technical infrastructure that will allow us to build a relationship with gamers rather than have that relationship run through someone else.
What it all boils down to is that we have the talent to do this better than anyone else can. We’ve done this before.
GSUK: By and large, developers and publishers haven’t done a great job of marrying quality games with social experiences, although there have been a few notable exceptions. Why are they successful, where others are not?
RN: We think that the current state of social experiences in games is not really that good. Most efforts feel tacked on. The major difference we foresee between our efforts and those of other game devs and publishers is that our efforts are growing organically. All of our products will be built with social networks in mind from the onset rather than providing minimal tools or tacking them on postlaunch.
GSUK: Do you see Stargate Worlds as being one of those that marry the two effectively and why/how?
RN: The true benefits of Project: Ascension and SNAP games won’t become truly evident until we have a couple of games up and running. Stargate Worlds will have the social tools you expect to see in an MMOG, but the full extent of the “marriage” will come later.
GSUK: Do you not think online gaming has somewhat peaked, and that the market may be becoming saturated?
JY: We certainly don’t believe the market has peaked or become saturated. As broadband penetration increases across the globe, established markets will continue to grow and new markets will open up. In the grand scheme of things, even in the US market, the community of 8-10 million online gamers is dwarfed by other mainstream entertainment options. The top five television shows in the US, for instance, had more than 148 million viewers for the week of April 14, 2008. As more consumers seek their entertainment online, we feel that Project: Ascension will give them a home.
GSUK: With all this focus currently on MMOGs, do you think there’s any place still for good old-fashioned single-player games?
JY: Absolutely! There are a number of developers out there creating fantastic single-player games, but that’s not the space we’re going to be in.
GSUK: Can you give me figures on how many people you see on MMOGs in the future as compared to now?
JY: That’s a very difficult question to answer. According to NPD, 19 percent of online gamers play MMOGs. As new games come online and the genre gains in mainstream acceptance, I believe we could easily see that number double in a short amount of time.
GSUK: What do you think of the gold-farming issue? How are you guys going to deal with it?
JY: Gold farming is a problem for developers trying to build a solid in-game economy and for gamers who don’t want to cheat to get ahead. There are no easy answers to this question at this time, but we are committed to giving our legitimate subscribers a quality play experience. We have some ideas about how to deal with it, but nothing that we are ready to announce at this time.
GSUK: Do you think current MMOGs are overly complex? Will Stargate be easy to pick up and play, or very technical but with depth, like EVE Online?
RN: Current MMOGs run a gamut, from complex like EVE, to relatively easy like World of Warcraft. As great as World of Warcraft is, we believe that it can be pushed further. Our goal is to create a game that is simple to learn yet difficult to master.
As the MMOG market matures, it has to have a lower learning curve in order to attract a broader audience, and that’s part of our inspiration for SNAP games.
GSUK: Thanks for your time.
May 16, 2008
Now defunct Osaka-based Clover Studio was responsible for a range of successful titles over the years, including the PlayStation 2’s Okami (which recently resurfaced on the Nintendo Wii), Viewtiful Joe, and God Hand.
Clover Studio boasted some of Capcom’s best talent, including Atsushi Inaba (producer of Viewtiful Joe), Shinji Mikami (Resident Evil creator), and Hideki Kamiya (director of Devil May Cry and Okami). After the publisher closed the studio in 2006, several key members left to start their own studio, Seeds, which has since merged with a company known as ODD to become PlatinumGames.
Viewtiful Joe producer Atsushi Inaba.
At an event in London on Monday, Sega and PlatinumGames announced they had inked a deal for four new-IP games, which will be the studio’s first. While brief details were given for three of the games, the fourth–directed by Shinji Mikami–remains under wraps for now.
Hideki Kamiya will direct Bayonetta, an action adventure game for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 that looks similar to Devil May Cry. The game follows the eponymous protagonist, a witch reborn in a modern-day setting, waging war against angels. Details were scant, but the core experience focuses unique “witch-like abilities” and her array of guns–which apparently protrude from both her hands and her feet.
Infinite Line, a sci-fi role-playing game, will be coming to Nintendo DS, and is being co-developed with Japan-based Nude Maker. It will be directed by Hifumi Kouno, who is president of Nude Maker and also helmed the Capcom mech sim Steel Battalion.
The game, inspired by the Arthur C. Clarke novel Childhood’s End, sees players embark upon a journey to become captain of a spaceship. With over 200 ship designs and a wide variety of ship parts to choose from, players will need to apply some thought, both when building their vehicle and when choosing the appropriate crew to man it.
The final game announced at the event was Madworld, an ultraviolent action game coming to the Wii and directed by Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami. The game has a stylised black-and-white palette, with bright red blood providing the only splash of colour onscreen. Madworld bears a striking resemblance to the Frank Miller comic series Sin City and the recent Gears of War 2 announcement trailer. Coincidentally, “Mad World” is also the title of a song that featured in an Xbox 360 Gears of War television advertisment.
The developers said they aren’t setting out to make a depraved or perversely violent game with Madworld, but rather a game focused on “fun,” comical violence.
PlatinumGames said they felt the Wii was missing “such a game [as] Madworld,” with many games on the platform being too similar to one another. A brief gameplay segment was shown at the announcement press conference in which the game’s lead character, Jack, used a chainsaw–controlled with a flick of the Wii Remote–to slice up foes, and was able to perform finishing moves such as impaling them on a nearby spiked wall.
The game also features Bloodbath Challenge minigames. One demonstrated was called Man Darts, where the object was to splatter enemies onto a giant oversized dartboard by swinging a baseball bat at the correct time.
Bayonetta, Infinite Line, Madworld, and the fourth, untitled game are currently in development and have not yet been dated. If Its Games will reveal more details as they emerge.
May 16, 2008
Ever since Beyond Good & Evil came out to wide critical acclaim but little commercial success in 2003, fans of the game have been begging for more.
Michel Ancel, Rayman creator and man behind the original Beyond Good & Evil, has said in an interview with French magazine JeuxVideo, “I am working on Beyond Good & Evil 2. We have been in preproduction on the title for a year, and we’re currently doing market research. But for the moment, it’s in the early stages, and Ubisoft still hasn’t agreed to it.”
Ancel, who still works as a designer for Ubisoft, said that 10 to 12 people were working on the project, and although he didn’t mention platforms or a time frame, he did talk a little about the gameplay. He said, “We want to be in continuity with the first game, with a big variety of levels, lots of emotion in the gameplay, and characters we care about. This time we are dealing with planet Hillys’ future, and the relationship with animals….”
The first Beyond Good & Evil came out on the GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox, and PC platforms. Gamers played photographer-for-hire Jade, who looks after children who have been orphaned by the DomZ, an alien race which is attacking her planet, Hillys. In her work, she soon discovers a conspiracy between quasi-military force the Alpha Sections, who claim to be helping defend the planet, and the DomZ. It combined action adventure gameplay with stealth elements.
The article finishes by saying that it hopes that Ubisoft will give the project the green light, and that perhaps it will be using the upcoming Ubidays at the end of this month to do so.
May 16, 2008
Milestones seem to be a dime a dozen these days. In recent weeks, Microsoft said that its Xbox 360 was the first high definition console to reach 10 million units in the US, Sony flagged Gran Turismo’s 50 millionth unit, and MTV Games jammed out 3 million units and 10 million song downloads, to name a few. Today, Konami jumped into the major-milestone fray, saying that its seminal Dance Dance Revolution franchise was gearing up for its 10th anniversary this holiday season.
To give Dance Dance Revolution some company on the linoleum, Konami is launching three new games in the long-running franchise this fall. DanceDanceRevolution X will foxtrot onto Sony’s PlayStation 2, and with it comes a host of new songs and updated graphics. New modes appearing in the game include LAN Battle, in which up to eight players can have a dance-off simultaneously using the PS2’s local-area network capabilities. DDRX will also let players customize their own fitness program, as well as input their image into the game using the PS2’s EyeToy camera.
Konami will be returning for the third time in two years to Microsoft’s Xbox 360 with DanceDanceRevolution Universe 3. This time out, the publisher has added in DJ Mode, in which players can create their own tracks and song lists, and City Mode, which features a variety of boss battles in an urban environment. More than 65 songs will be on offer in DDR Universe 3, with acts spanning from the ’70s to the present day, and the game supports online multiplayer for up to four.
The publisher will also be releasing a follow-up to one of its key 2008 fiscal-year revenue drivers, DanceDanceRevolution Hottest Party 2 on the Wii. As with the original, DDR Hottest Party 2 will be a total-body affair, given that it incorporates the Wii Remote and Nunchuk. Up to four players can dance at any one time to tracks that span several decades. DDR Hottest Party 2 also adds a number of new moves to its repertoire, including the Course Mode, in which players dance until they drop, and Hottest Training Mode. The game will also support Mii integration, and more than 50 unique dancing venues.
Konami’s DDR lineup this fall will complement the publisher’s return to the rock genre with Rock Revolution. Bearing more than a passing resemblance to MTV Games’ Rock Band and Activision’s Guitar Hero IV, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 editions of Rock Revolution offers guitars, drums, vocals, and song downloads. On the Wii, digital rockers will measure out the rhythm with the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, whereas the DS game will rely on stylus-gesture gameplay.
May 16, 2008
Back in 1991, Capcom released its 2D fighting opus Street Fighter II, and in the years that followed a number of competitors brought their own fighting games to market. SNK was by far the most prolific rival, and while some of its games, such as Art of Fighting, innovated upon the formula they were inspired by, developer ADK created World Heroes for the Neo-Geo, a series that was content with completely ripping off from it. Nearly 16 years after the original hit the arcades, all four World Heroes games have been released in a single compilation title, but despite their flawless porting, this series is best forgotten by all but the most hardcore of fans and collectors.
The premise of the World Heroes series is that a wacky scientist lovingly referred to as Dr. Brown Sugar (after Christopher Lloyd’s character from Back to the Future) invents a time machine for the purpose of discovering who is the greatest fighter in history. The colorful cast of characters who sign up for this time-travel tournament are ostensibly based on real figures throughout the ages such as Genghis Khan or Jeanne d’Arc, but their tongue-in-cheek designs make them seem more like rejects from Stereotype: The Fighting Game than the historical badasses they’re supposed to be. You’ve got Hanzo and Fuuma, palette-swapped ninjas that are totally not Ryu and Ken; the Nazi robot Brocken that looks like M. Bison but has Dhalsim’s stretchy limbs; Muscle Power, a Hulk Hogan clone with Zangief’s moveset; Rasputin, a sorcerer who can comically enlarge his hands and feet; Janne, a feminist fencer seeking to bag herself a worthy husband; Kim Dragon, a Korean martial artist and film star; and J. Carn, a Mongolian warlord. Later games in the series follow this trend of absurd character design and include even more over-the-top characters like the pirate Captain Kidd (he can throw ghost sharks!), the demonic football player Johnny Maximum, and the shrieking Pacific Islander witch doctor Mudman.
The original World Heroes features a three-button attack system to perform punches, kicks, and throws. In normal mode, you travel across the world as indicated on a map and battle your opponents in themed stages. Deathmatch mode, the one real innovation that the game has to offer, plays similarly to normal mode but places you in special arenas that often feature electrified walls, spikes, slippery goo, and more. World Heroes 2 is essentially more of the same, though new characters are available, throws can be countered, and projectiles can be deflected. Deathmatch mode has also returned with even wackier stages, though the player health bars have also been combined into a single tug-of-war-style bar.
The ability to throw ghost sharks is definitely one of the highlights.
World Heroes 2 Jet is where things begin to pick up. The first two games laid the foundation (or rather “borrowed” it from elsewhere) but were so absurdly slow even among their peers at the time that playing them was a chore. Jet, much like its name implies, turbo-charges things both by increasing game speed and introducing the ability to perform dashes. It also introduces a new round-robin tournament mode where you battle three different opponents for one round each per match. Unfortunately, for all the steps forward Jet took the series, it falls back a few because it marked the end of the deathmatch mode. World Heroes Perfect, the fourth and final game of the series, changed things up even more by ditching the three-button system of its forefathers and adopting a six-button layout for light, medium, and strong punches and kicks. Notable among other combat changes is the addition of the hero gauge, which lets you perform super moves once it fills.
Jet and Perfect are by far the best-looking games in the collection, though this isn’t necessarily saying much. Character sprites and stage backgrounds across all the World Heroes titles were never very high-quality. Controls across the four games are also notoriously clunky and sometimes nonresponsive, making some of the more difficult special moves even harder to execute.
World Heroes Anthology is an interesting retrospective look at the era when 2D fighting games ruled the arcades, but it ultimately holds no real value today for anyone who’s not a huge SNK fan or who doesn
May 16, 2008
Earlier this week, rumors surfaced that the the June issue of Game Informer would be jam-packed with details of Activision’s Guitar Hero 4, due out this fall. That issue has since arrived in subscribers’ mailboxes, confirming the accuracy of the original post and providing more details on developer Neversoft’s second crack at the rhythm gaming franchise.
As initially revealed by Activision CEO Bobby Kotick in a recent interview, Guitar Hero 4 will add drums and vocals a la Rock Band. Game Informer’s feature includes a shot of the referenced drum kit, which includes three pads, two elevated cymbals, and a pedal (as opposed to Rock Band’s four pads and a pedal). For those keeping track, that means the Guitar Hero 4 kit has one extra input than the Rock Band equivalent, raising compatibility questions for the two series’ instruments yet again. The developer is going wireless with Guitar Hero 4’s drum pads, and will be making them pressure-sensitive so the game can tell if players are wailing on the drums or meekly tapping them.
The details in Game Informer also clear up the mystery surrounding the “innovation” which Activision promised was coming to the Guitar Hero series in a recent earnings report conference call. The article outlines the game’s studio mode, which will give users a variety of ways to create their own songs. Players will be able to jam along with one of the game’s existing tracks, record songs as they’re played, or meticulously detail note charts.
As rumored, the game will also allow users to share the songs they create. Players will initially only be able to upload five songs for others to enjoy, but if those tracks are rated highly by other users, the creators might “get signed,” raising the cap to 10 songs or more.
May 16, 2008
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning–EA’s upcoming stab at the masive MMO market World of Warcraft dominates–has finally been dated down under. EA reps have confirmed to If Its Games AU that the game will ship in Australia at the same time as its North American and European release, which at this stage is dated as Spring 2008.
And in even brighter news for local MMO buffs, EA says Aussies will be treated to their own dedicated server which will be hosted locally. Players, however, will still be able to connect to North American servers should they wish to.
EA Mythic associate producer Josh Drescher told If Its Games AU that an Australian server had long been planned. “We wanted to make sure that in terms of localisation and offering support for players around the world, that we try and give as many people as possible home turf servers to use. And the Australian fans were actually extremely vocal early on in the process. It’s been something we’ve wanted to do for quite some time, and when we were bought by EA it became something that was a lot more viable for us, so we’re very excited to get some dedicated servers over there.”
Click here for If Its Games AU’s interview with EA Mythic’s Josh Drescher, who speaks in further detail about the game’s server plans, realm versus realm play, and much more.
;)
;)