Below is a video from the creators of \”Rock Band: One Man\’s Journey\”. The video follows the journey of an avid fan\’s wait for Wii Fit, and his experience when he finally gets it home.
The Xbox Community Team has moved to clear up some confusion over its announcement that it is some delisting of Xbox LIVE Arcade games. Those who bought a delisted game and deleted it will still be able to redownload the game again. Also, delisted games will still function normally online.
Three Ninja Gaiden 2 gameplay videos have been released featuring \’Hack & Slash Gameplay\’, \’Rooftop Boss Fight Gameplay\’ and \’Subway Boss Fight Gameplay\’. Check them out in the forums.
One site has created a list of the XBLA games that apparently fit Microsoft\’s delisting criteria. They include Arkadian Warriors, Frogger, Pac-Man and Tetris Splash.
IGN have released a video showing off some Yoda gameplay in Soulcalibur IV. They say that Yoda is quick and that you can\’t hit him with high attacks while he is on the ground. You apparently must be patience and wait until Yoda is airbourne to use high attacks.
Ninja Gaiden II has been set loose from Team Ninja’s dojo and will soon be upon our very doorsteps. Due to visit North America on June 3, and Europe on June 6, fans of the series will no doubt be keen to see Ryu picking up his Dragon Sword once more, as he continues from where he left off in the Xbox original back in 2004.
At the European press launch for the game, we got our hands on the previously unseen chapter eight, aptly titled: Submit, or Die! The action begins straight after the events on the Daedaelus airship–seen in our previous hands-on with chapter seven–and starts with the Greater Fiend Zedonius being awakened after a long snooze. It appears he’s not a happy Greater Fiend, what with being surrounded by a small army of puny Earthlings intent on his destruction. Luckily for him, he makes quick work of a bombardment of tank shells and issues an ultimatum to the inhabitants of Earth: accept the yoke of the Archfiend, or die.
After the brief cutscene featuring the red-winged demonic fiend, you’ll assume Ryu’s role. You won’t encounter Zedonius immediately, as you’ll be preoccupied with an array of smaller enemies to dispose of. The setting is a snow-laden city, reminiscent of Russia. You’ll have to proceed through narrow streets, open courtyards, over sandbagged defences, and around deserted tanks, as you progress through the level, on your mission to stop the Archfiend.
Hindering your progress will be wave after wave of soldiers equipped with rocket-propelled grenade launchers. They usually appear two at a time and unleash a series of rockets at you in quick succession. It certainly pays to dodge these barrages–being a sitting duck will result in your health quickly diminishing. While sprinting straight towards your assailants is one way to avoid staying put, it’s a challenge to dodge projectiles en route, as you try to get within striking range without being hit. Another option is to hide behind cover, wait for the soldiers to reload, and then use your bow to take them out from afar which works well should you value your life. Although your health bar will regenerate this time around, it will only happen once you’ve cleared an area of enemies, and each time you bear the brunt of an enemy’s attack, your health bar capacity will be permanently reduced by a small amount. Thankfully, full health can be restored by using health packs, or finding restore points.
In addition to foot soldiers, we also encountered some pesky dogs that looked to be armed with explosives (but of course!), and some larger enemies–including one that resembled the queen from Aliens. Although we didn’t see them, we’re sure the Spider Clan, as well as more unworldly enemies, will still be on the lookout for Ryu.
While Ninja Gaiden was a challenging game for even hardcore gamers, Ninja Gaiden II’s difficulty has been dropped a notch so as to cater for a wider audience. Despite that being the case, there’s still a range of difficulties and even the easiest one (Acolyte) will be a challenge for Ninja Gaiden novices. Thankfully we were able to have a play through the first couple of levels before attempting level eight, but even with a bit of gameplay under our belt it certainly wasn’t a walk in the park.
The idea is that you’ll unlock new moves, abilities, and ninpo (magic), as well as level up your weapons as you progress through the game. Once you’ve gotten to the harder and more advanced levels therefore, you should have the appropriate training to be able to vanquish any foe that stands in your way, although it might still take you a few attempts when it comes to the more challenging situations and boss battles.
Battle through hordes of foes in locations inspired by Tokyo, Venice, Russia and more.
During our playtime, we were also able to check out some of Ryu’s alternate costumes. While they’re not included on the game disc, they will be available after launch as a download on Xbox Live. We saw seven costumes in total including Ryu’s Legendary Black Falcon costume (his traditional garb) and Dark Blood (a variant of this with a blood-coloured theme). The rest of the costumes, codenamed USA_COS_B0, B1, B2 and so on, were fiend variants. These included variants of the aforementioned costumes, as well as a gold-coloured suit with a red glowing visor in place of Ryu’s eyes, a reptilian-like green and grey suit, and a suit that made you look like a mummy, only with silver, black, and meshed fabric. While providing a nice aesthetic addition to the game, they don’t seem to have any affect on your character’s performance when playing.
As you’d expect from Team Ninja, Ninja Gaiden II is proving to be a sumptuous feast for the eyes. After being in development for over two years, the game has already gone gold. The preview build we saw looked impressive, and we only experienced slowdown on one or two occasions when the screen was filled with sword-swinging ninja action.
To find out more about Ninja Gaiden II, watch our video interview with Team Ninja’s Itagaki-san from the event and stay tuned for our full review of the game.
-If Its Games
It’s another quiet launch week down under, with only a handful of games being released. Codemasters is launching their line-up of casual games for consoles, which includes 7 Wonders of the Ancient World, and Luxor: Pharaohs Challenge, and Platypus.
If casual puzzle games aren’t your thing and you enjoy a bit of song and dance, Sony has you covered, with the release of SingStar Summer Party. This expansion includes songs from Aussie artists such as Shannon Noll, Thirsty Merc, and the New Zealand brothers from Evermore.
This week’s new releases are listed below (list taken from retailer and publisher information–actual dates may vary).
May 29, 2008
SingStar Summer Party (PS2)
Luxor: Pharaoh’s Challenge (PS2, DS, PSP)
7 Wonders of the Ancient World (PS2, DS, PSP)
Platypus (PSP)
Monster Jam (PC, PS2, DS, 360, Wii )
Super Collapse 3 (PSP
May 30, 2008
Silent Hill: Origins (PS2)
Top Trumps: Dr. Who (PC, PS2)
Pandemic Studios has been awfully quiet on the Mercenaries 2 front since last July, when the game first impressed us with its large open world and high level of destructibility. Since then, other games such as Red Faction: Guerrilla and Crysis have also played on their highly adaptive physics engines, but our appetite for Pandemic’s politically charged action game still hasn’t waned. With the developer’s mantra behind the game being “always say yes to the player,” Mercs 2 is an incredibly ambitious project. Luckily, producer Jonathan Zamkoff recently took time out of development to show us more of the game, and we put our questions to him about what to expect from the finished product.
According to Pandemic, the main character of Mattias Nilsson is a human tank.
Zamkoff kicked off the demo with a little background about the different factions. The People’s Liberation of Venezuela are natives who have lived in the jungle for over 20 years, and as a result have become incredibly resourceful. They can, according to Zamkoff, “make a bomb out of two sticks and a rock,” but they’ve been persecuted by another group in the game, the Universal Petroleum company. The game’s representation of “big oil” is in the country to suck it of all its natural resources, while giving little regard to the people who inhabit it. Then there’s the Allied Nations, the peacekeepers who want to help stop the raging civil wars, and a group of Caribbean pirates who are simply there to make money from all the carnage. Lastly, there’s the Chinese, although we’ve yet to see exactly how they fit into the overall story. Every faction will play off the other and have its own enemies, and it’s your job as a mercenary to earn money from it all, while seeking revenge on the tyrannical leader Ramon Solano.
Like any good businessperson you’ll need to make contacts within the industry in order to further your career. Whenever you meet key people from these factions, you’ll receive a contact card and you’ll then be able to choose whether to perform primary or secondary missions for them. While primary missions will drive the story forwards, it’s still worth taking part in secondary assassination missions in order to win money and fuel. Each contact will also have a store where you can buy products, including 140 vehicles and 30 weapons. Obviously, not all of these will be available to you from the start, but the developers have chosen to tease you by allowing you to view a list of all the things you can’t yet afford.
The first mission that we saw was an outpost capture, which offered a $200,000 bounty and access to a light machine gun drop, or an artillery strike. Jumping into a nearby monster truck, Zamkoff propelled himself off of a nearby cliff before an ally also jumped into the vehicle to act as an aide. After driving around showing off the impressive physics engine, he proceeded to show off the on-foot combat, equipping the main character of Mattias Nilsson with every weapon available in the game. Unlocking everything will apparently be a 40-hour feat, while the numerous side missions will add considerably more playtime for those that want it.
There are five warring factions in Mercs 2, but jumping into one of their vehicles will disguise you as one of them.
As well as rifles, rocket launchers, and grenades, you’ll also be able to call in air strikes to rain death from above. When you’re low on resources at the beginning of the game, this means physically running into an area in order to tag it–therefore running the risk of being blown up in the process. As you acquire more resources, you can shell out for more expensive laser- and satellite-guided air strikes, in order to flatten entire patches of land. While money limits what you can do in Mercs 2, fuel is an equally important resource that allows you to call in both air strikes and helicopter support. When you capture outposts and other enemy camps, you can harvest huge oil drums by calling helicopters to collect them, or stealing a tow truck and escorting the drums to your base personally.
Back to the actual mission, and Zamkoff took the rather unsubtle approach of driving straight into the enemy outpost and blowing every last enemy up with a rocket launcher. He describes the main character as a “human tank,” meaning that you can bound into enemy territory and withstand a fair amount of damage. After the first round of enemies were dispatched, he called in support from the faction that he was working for and they promptly arrived via helicopter. The allied AI is pretty timid and won’t engage enemies in large numbers, but they will provide assistance when they see you engaged in a firefight. With the area cleared and the base captured, Zamkoff was rewarded with a new helicopter landing pad and a new contact to add to his PDA address book.
With you running amok and generally causing chaos, it’s not long before you get a reputation in the world of Mercenaries 2. However, you can stop word about your destructive tendencies getting out if you can kill key enemy targets. If you’re attacking a base, for example, someone from the enemy team will be put in charge of getting the word out, and calling for support, and if you can get rid of that person (conveniently marked on your map), your presence there will go unreported. As with the first Mercs, politics play a major part in this world, and as a gun for hire, you’ll often be working for one group one minute and against them the next. One way to get away with this is to drive allied vehicles, as the enemy AI will automatically assume that you work for whichever group owns the car you’re driving.
The developer’s mantra for Mercs 2 has been “always say yes to the player”. Expect some explosive consequences then, when the game launches in August.
The second and final mission that we saw was an escort mission in which Zamkoff drove a Universal Petroleum executive around, helping him destroy some incriminating documents. It was a standard protection mission–for while he was inside offices burning evidence, Zamkoff was outside fending off the attackers trying to stop him. These missions appear to drive the main story part of the game, but there’s a chance the famous “deck of 52″ concept from the first game (where you had to take out 52 key people) may make a return. The deck does actually exist in Mercs 2 right now–but that said, the missions appear to be more varied this time around, and Pandemic admits that the deck may not make it to the finished game.
No open world game would be complete without side missions, and once you begin to make contacts you’ll be able to complete optional tasks for them. Zamkoff showed us that acquiring more fuel and helipads allowed him to call on a helicopter to pick him up and take him around the world. Airborne vehicles seem to play a large part of getting around, and the helicopters look quite easy to control. They also interact well with the world, blowing tree branches around as they pass, and obviously packing some firepower that can be unleashed on the destructible environments below. The game is looking graphically polished at this stage, and even better it runs at a solid 30 frames per second, showing no evidence of slowdown when things get hectic.
Mercenaries 2 is looking like a more varied and explosive take on the original open world concept. It’s also looking polished at this stage, with some nice graphical effects and a high level of destructibility that doesn’t impact on the game’s frame rate. We’re hopeful of a chance to finally play the game ahead of its release, and will be hunting down Pandemic Studios over the coming months, to that very end.
-If Its Games
OMGZombies writes “Speaking on a conference held yesterday in New York, the Atari founder Nolan Bushnell said that a new stealth encryption chip called TPM will ‘absolutely stop piracy of gameplay’. The chip is apparently being embedded on most of the new computer motherboards and is said to be ‘uncrackable by people on the internet and by giving away passwords’ though it won’t stop movie or music piracy, since ‘if you can watch it and you can hear it, you can copy it.’”.