The Wii may be all the rage these days as titles like Super Smash Bros.
Brawl and Super Mario Galaxy keep gamers happy while more casual players are
enticed with the unit's bountiful shovelware, but many have forgotten about the
game that led Nintendo's initiative to expand the market by bringing casual and
non-gamers into the mix: Wii Sports. Serving as an introduction to the system
and the Wii Remote, it was a fun minigame collection that earned accolades from
a plethora of mainstream media outlets and fueled the hype machine that helped
propel the Wii to the top of the sales charts.
Most of us moved on to other games soon after purchasing the system, but
publisher Hudson Soft apparently hasn't been so quick to forget the game that
spearheaded Nintendo's assault on your grandmother's living room. Deca Sports,
one of their upcoming titles, is an obvious foray into the new market that
Nintendo has forged.
Email This 
But while those games dazzled and impressed with their graphical effects, where was the truly epic game that was able to build on the previous generation's cornerstone without relying on technology's unfortunate excesses? Final Fantasy IV's crew of Cecil, Kain and co. had something to say about that. Square released Final Fantasy IV in 1991 and to this date it remains a dividing line between the simplistic console RPGs of the Dragon Quest vein and the more modern (some would say mired in an eternal rut), flashy approach taken by most Japanese RPGs since Final Fantasy VII.
It's hard enough to stand out amongst the flood of new releases that deluges the end of every year, but something even harder to do is meet expectations when your game just happens to be made by BioWare. The game in question is Mass Effect, BioWare's galaxy-spanning action RPG. Hype is no stranger to Mass Effect, but with the BioWare pedigree from titles like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Neverwinter Nights, most would agree the attention is justified.
In Mass Effect you play as Commander Shepard, a character you can fully customize in terms of gender, appearance, and abilities. In true RPG form, Abilities come from your chosen class, from standards like the gun-toting Soldier to the Biotic-dabbling Adept. Mastery of classes will naturally open up more complex options. General combat revolves around a squad-based mechanic where you only have complete control of Shepard. The complete customization of Shepard from the aforementioned abilities to even his/her morality may prove to be quite a timesinker.
Kane and Lynch: Dead Men is the newest offering from developer Io Interactive, best known for their Hitman series. But unlike Hitman's focus on its iconic lone wolf, Agent 47, Kane and Lynch: Dead Men instead plays on the dichotomy between its two titular characters, Kane and Lynch; a division represented in the title's gameplay and story.
Kane and Lynch seems to carry over the Hitman series' mission-based structure but Io seems intent on furthering the game from its spiritual forerunner by introducing a squad-based structure to the gameplay. While you only ever play as Kane (Lynch is playable in co-op by a second player), he can order around an ever-increasingly useful gaggle of goons as the game progresses. Lynch's role, when not controlled by a second player, seems to be one of adding a rather random (if not unwanted) element to the gameplay which is backed up by the game's story.
Nintendo had kept eager fans waiting for years of news regarding their next Smash Bros. game. After a long and silent period, the company had recently garnered the attention of their fans worldwide with its Smash Bros. Dojo webpage. Their latest entry, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, boasts new characters, new gameplay modes, new strategies and extra controls with the Wii and classic controller.
The veteran fighters marking their return include Mario, Peach, Bowser, Yoshi, Link, Donkey Kong, Samus and Zelda. Battles take place in castles, islands and locales that casual and hardcore fans will easily recognize. The biggest news is the addition of new characters joining the coveted fighting ranks. They include Pit from Kid Icarus, Wario, Zero Suit Samus of Metroid, Meta Knight, Ike from Fire Emblem, Solid Snake of Metal Gear Solid fame and Sega’s blue mascot, Sonic the Hedgehog.
This preview was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content.
In Jeanne D’Arc, players take on the role of the French heroine during the 100 year war between the French and English. The role-playing game by Level-5 brings an interesting and unique look to the historic story when it arrives next month on the PlayStation Portable handheld.
Sony recently sent along a preview copy for us to check out before the anticipated August 21 release date. As stated above, players take on the role of Jeanne D’Arc or more commonly known stateside as Joan of Arc along with two of her partners Liane and Roger.
In the game, Jeanne heads home to Domremy where she finds the town burnt to the ground. In the battle that follows, Jeanne turns into a warrior who has even more power to take down enemies and take on damage.
Following the devastation by English forces, Jeanne’s motive is clear to return freedom to France. During her journey, Jeanne meets plenty of other companions including Colet, Bertrand and La Hire. In the actual game, players will make decisions on which warriors will battle in each stage.
This preview was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content.
It’s like God of War, but on the PSP. No, seriously, it’s the same game.
God of War 2 garnered a lot of critical praise, but personally, I loathed it. God of War was an amazing game that revived and reshaped the brawler genre and brought a second wind to the then-dwindling PlayStation 2 with surprising graphics, cinematics, and overall production quality. The gameplay was addictive, the controls intuitive, the combat sickeningly satisfying.
God of War 2, released just a few months ago, was quite literally the same game. Sure, it was a sequel in the traditional sense: it takes place after the first game, it has a new story, and there’s a 2 after the title. Besides that, though, there was nothing new. It was like deja vu, a tired re-tread. Same controls, same style of puzzles, same enemies, same cobat, same interface, same everything.
From my experience with God of War: Chains of Olympus, I feel the same way. It’s an all new story and it’s ported beautifully onto the PSP with practically identical controls to its PS2 counterparts; but it’s still the same game.
The big problem with bringing a 3D game to the PSP is the infamously absent second analog nub. Some games put camera controls on the two shoulder buttons, others put control onto the D-pad. God of War: Chains of Olympus does neither. There are no camera controls, in fact. The game has a smart camera that locks the perspective where it need to be and follows you around as you move throughout the environment; similar, if not identical, to the PS2 games.
As soon as I picked the game up I was performing the combos now-ingrained in my mind. Identical to the PS2 games.
In short, if you want to play God of War on your PSP, this is your game. If there was something about God of War that you didn’t like or wish was added, no dice here. I would hate to see God of War become another one of those series that churns out inevitable sequels year after year with little to no innovation.
This preview was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content.
If Lara Croft was a dude, his Tomb Raider would be Uncharted: Drake’ Fortune. Uncharted is an upcoming adventure/exploration/action game for the PlayStation 3 that I had a few minutes to sit down with at E3 this week.
Uncharted’s story kind of “re-imagines” the life story of Sir Francis Drake, the legendary explorer. According to the game’s plot, Drake didn’t die of dysentery when he was supposed to have. Rather, he faked his death so he could pursue El Dorado, which he realized was mis-interpreted; it doesn’t really mean “man of gold,” it means “city of gold.”
The main character in the game isn’t Francis Drake, though, it’s his son, or his grandson.. or his cousin’s nephew, I don’t really remember. The new, younger Drake is also an explorer, the Indiana Jones type. The game takes him through the jungles and the mountains as he tries to uncover the mystery of Sir Francis.
The section of the game I had time enough to play took place in a jungle and featured a lot of climbing and jumping. There’s a pretty nice, simple acrobatic system for scaling walls and handling obstacles.
Combat also has a pretty big role in the game, as even remote jungles seem to be full of enemy hoodlums gunning for you. Uncharted has a cover-fire system similar to Gears of War, though nowhere near as satisfying. You can stick yourself to most surfaces and fire around corners, but it all feels loosey-goosey. Aiming guns seemed rather sloppy as well, especially around corners.
The biggest problem I faced, a phenomenally huge problem, is that it takes a ridiculous amount of bullets to kill an enemy. With the pistol, the primary weapon in the game, I counted over six body shots before an enemy went down. I’m not talking about futuristic cyber-soldiers with mithril body armor, either. These are guys wearing tank tops and tshirts. With picked-up weapons like assault rifles and such, it still takes way, way too many shots. It’s almost cartoonish.
The graphics seemed typical for a PS3 game: very pretty, but distractingly shiny. It’s like there’s a layer of bacon grease was sprayed over all the foliage and characters. I think there’s some default lighting effect present in the PS3’s graphics drivers, and developers get way too excited when they find it.
Just a few minutes ago I was reflecting that it seems like I think every game I play at E3 is going to be awesome, but then I remembered Uncharted. If this game wants to make any kind of impact come its holiday release, it needs some major tuning. Aiming is poor, bullets are rubber, and everything looks wet. There is a lot of potential in the graphics, controls, and possibly the story. I just wasn't feeling it with the E3 demo.
This preview was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content.
I’m sick of WWII shooters. Aren’t you?
People have been saying that for years now, and I could never really agree with them because I always had a place in my heart for the Call of Duty series. Sure, World War II shooters are tired, but Call of Duty could always surprise and enthrall me.
That is, of course, until Call of Duty 3. That’s another issue, though, and I’ll get back to that later.
“The WW2 market was already well-established when we came in, and we stomped all over those guys,” an Infinity Ward representative told me. “We’re going to do the same thing with this.”
The this he’s talking about is Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the first CoD title to pull away from war-torn Europe and bring players into the modern age.
That comment made me think, though, about the genre of modern-age military shooters that feature real military units using real weapons against real enemies who also use real weapons: there isn’t one.
The idea seems terribly obvious, so much so that the sheer lack of modern military shooters seems almost insane. Think about it, though; can you name any other popular military shooter that takes place right now?
There’s Tom Clancy games, sure, but those have all gone futuristic. Rainbow Six has gone future-happy with R6: Vegas, Ghost Recon has turned into GRAW which is anything but present-set. Everything else either takes place on Mars or a space station.
How can this be? Perhaps, I surmise, because it’s too hard. Making a game set in the future is easy, you can just invent whatever technologies and conflicts you want. To make a good modern warfare game you would have to get every detail right while still making the game fun to play.
If anybody had to do it, it should be Infinity Ward -- who started working on Call of Duty 4 right after they finished Call of Duty 2, a fantastic game and probably the best Xbox 360 launch title. In the meantime, Activision shoveled Call of Duty 3 onto Treyarch, who many feel was not up to par with previous titles. That’s a weasel-wordy way of saying I hated it, but a proper journalist isn’t supposed to say such things.
Call of Duty 4, which I took a look at this week at E3, puts players in control of a U.S. Marine and a British SAS trooper, much in the way previous CoD titles alternated between US, British, and Russian sides of the same faction. The game features a storyline wherein a fictional group of Chechnyan rebels stage a coup, and players will be fighting in areas near and around Chernobyl.
There is an overarching plot to the game, but the actual character you play as has no story, just as in other CoD titles.
There are over 70 weapons in the game, all of them completely realistic and appropriately represented. Other military hardware shows up in the game, too, such as the high-tech Javelin surface-to-surface missile launcher that auto-targets enemy vehicles and fires a missile (a $75,000 missile, the Infinity Ward developer reminded me) straight up, then straight back down onto the top of the target (where shielding is almost always the weakest). There’s also Cobra helicopters and other gunships to provide air support.
The level I looked at took place in a battle-torn village and featured some of the most frantic combat I’ve ever seen. The enemies all run around with multiple RPG launchers strapped to their backs, darting back and forth from cover to cover. There are hundreds of animations for characters, all of them motion-captured and activated dynamically. AI characters duck for cover naturally, shoot around corners when they need to, and stumble convincingly as they’re shot down.
I also came across a few of the “holy sh-t” moments that made me fall in love with Call of Duty. Certain weapons feature IR-sights, which are like laser sights but only visible with night-vision goggles and appear as airy, ethereal green lines emanating from your gun. Put a few soldiers in the same space and those lines dancing across rooms and through the darkness can be quite breathtaking.
There are also some awesome smoke effects, as when enemy-fired RPGs leave behind dynamic smoke trails that linger like banners in the sky. The game features a new dynamic lighting and shadow system as well, just one of the many additions to the constantly-revised Call of Duty engine.
Also new is a material-penetration system, where every surface and object is given a unique density. Soft materials like plaster walls and wooden fences can simply be shot-through. Fresh bullet holes glow green through night-vision until the heat dissipates.
As for the annoying elements of Call of Duty 3 that won’t be carried over: those stupid little mini-games they threw at you in the console versions, like twisting the analog sticks around to charge demolition explosives, or the little scripted grapple-fights where an enemy would grab your gun and force you to mash buttons or wave your Wii-mote like mad until the game would decide you won -- they’re gone (there won't even be a Wii version), bomb setting and all combat will be straightforward; the pointless scripted cut scenes that did nothing for the actual story, like early in CoD 3 where a teammate threatened to mutiny against his superior -- none of that, anything a character says will be story-oriented and nothing will ever take you out of the game.
And the cool stuff that will be coming back? Frantic, balls-out action sequences that may give you P.T.S.D.? You bet. Slower, stealthy-style sections to even out the pacing? Yeah, there’s a few sniper levels complete with ghille suits. Picking up and throwing back grenades thrown at you? Yes. Cooking off grenades so they’ll blow sooner after throwing? Yes. Tank driving? I couldn’t get an answer out of the guy; that probably means yes.
Infinity Ward seems pretty excited about the multiplayer mode. “It should beat Halo, not in terms of sales, but in terms of fun,” the developer told me. Deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag, domination, all that stuff. What should make it stand out isn’t crazy mode, but rather the ease of control and gameplay. Apparently, multiplayer control should be exactly like single-player.
Like pretty much every other game at E3, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare will be out this holiday season, meaning the game is pretty-much finished and now being polished. It’s unusual, then, that there was no free-play demo at E3; it was entirely “watch somebody who made the game play it,” which often means that the demo will explode if you go anywhere off the beaten path.
Fans of the Call of Duty series who liked it for more than it’s Nazi-blasting WWII setting should rest assured that this isn’t just a modern shooter with “Call of Duty” in the name, this is a Call of Duty game from top to bottom. People who lost hope in the series after Call of Duty 3 should rest assured that CoD3 was just an offshoot, and that the very people responsible for the greatness of the original Call of Duty games are behind Modern Warfare.
Bearing in mind that I still haven’t actually touched the game, I’m obligated not to give an actual gameplay verdict. As a gamer, though, and not a journalist, I’m buying this game.
This preview was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content.
Remember back in 97’ when Sony Computer Entertainment released their first rhythm game entitled PaRappa The Rapper? How about that thin paper looking dog? Or even the famous line, “Kick, Punch, It’s all in the mind”? Well, he’s back and this time coming to the PlayStation Portable. Today at the annual Sony Gamers Day in San Diego, we had a chance to go hands-on with the game and were quite shocked with what we saw.
Gamers take on the role of PaRappa, a paper-thin rapping dog who is trying to win the love of Sunny Funny. Your job is to learn the moves of fighting, driving, raising money, baking, and so much more. To do this, the teacher will rap a line that consists of the buttons on the PSP handheld such as the D-Pad and shoulder buttons. Once the teacher raps a line, you will need to repeat it. There is a grading structure, so you must stay above good, avoiding the bad or awful areas.
PaRappa isn’t getting a makeover, but the game will indeed receive a couple more modes that will keep the replay value up high as it’s pretty much the original that was released back on the PlayStation. Some of the new modes consist of Ad hoc, in which players can connect wirelessly and share a demo level with four PSP systems simultaneously. Essentially it’ll download onto the gamer’s PSP even without the game, and then friends who don’t own copies of PaRappa will be able to play with you. Once the gamer turns off his or her handheld, the game will then disappear.
As stated, the game is basically the PlayStation original, but players will be able to download eight remixes from the internet. These remixes can be downloaded from the PSP or downloaded onto your computer and then transferred over via the memory stick. Visually, the aspect ratio was tweaked tremendously making it look really crisp and smooth on the PSP’s screen, but there weren’t any graphical modifications made according to a Sony representative.
|
Go to page |
Reviews
