Posted by ASandoval on October 30, 2009 under Games | 
After a solid month or two of concept art teasing, Deus Ex designer Warren Spector finally revealed solid details of his Disney licensed title tenatively titled (I hope) Epic Mickey, a Wii-exclusive action platformer.
The early concept art showed a game that looked darker than the usual Disney fair, and although the game doesn’t match that same concept art, something that surprises me is the idea of Mickey making moral choices, something Spector says you will do quite often. Speaking with Kotaku, Spector says
“By putting the mischievous Mickey in an unfamiliar place and asking him to make choices – to help other cartoon characters or choose his own path – the game forces players to deal with the consequences of their actions. Ultimately, players must ask themselves, ‘What kind of hero am I?’ Each player will come up with a different answer.”
Although choice and consequence are usual themes in Spector’s work, I’m surprised Disney would allow the idea of their famed hero being able to do things we may question. Still, the game’s core ability is to overcome obstacles either by creating with a paint brush, or destroying with thinner, each which could effect how the other characters in Cartoon Wasteland, where all old Disney properties go, think of you.
Either way, I’m excited, more excited for a Mickey product than I have since Dave Jaffe’s Mickey Mania for the 16-bit era. Anyone else been following this game?
Source & Images via Kotaku.
Posted by ASandoval on October 24, 2009 under Games |
Community Highlights is an article where the Digital Relay examines people within the tri-state area of New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania
The world of collecting is one filled with both a sense of personal satisfaction and yet justification. No matter the collection, be it coins, stamps, baseball cards etc., the collector’s hobby is often seen as strange or foreign to those on the outside, who don’t understand the extravagant cost as well as the time and care that one puts into their collection, and video game collecting is no exception. Indeed, video games have never really been considered cheap, and mixed with them being a relatively new medium compared to comics and cards, they are not quite as accepted by the collecting community. This has not stopped Nick Morgan.
A 22 year old computer science major at Glassboro, NJ’s Rowan Univerisity, Nick had begun amassing his collection since he graduated high school, but had been buying before that.
“Back when I younger I used to find games at yard sales,” explains Nick. “(I was) a sophomore or a junior in high school, and I started buying and selling games . . . I started doing it just to make money, and then after that it started to turn into a thing where I wanted more and more games.”
Before long, Nick became among those who had the biggest collections in North America. “I’d say I have about 1500 games, total. Mint, in the box, I won’t do anything less. . . . I have a complete NES collection, a complete Sega Master System collection, a complete Sega Dreamcast collection, a complete Virtual Boy collection and a complete 32X collection.”
And while that may seem like a lot on the surface, the sheer depth of his conviction can be measured by what he’ll go through just to get one game.
“The biggest game in my collection is probably the Nintendo World Championship gold cartridge. That’s probably the most desirable video game cartridge. . . . I paid $12,000. When I bought it, it was the biggest purchase for a video game ever, but it’s since appreciated in value.” But don’t expect to see the cart sitting on the shelf with the rest of his games – he keeps that one and a few select others in a security deposit box.
Despite extravagant (or what the cynical may call ‘insane’) purchases, it doesn’t mean Nick is loaded with money. “I don’t really have that much,” He says, “Currently my only job is buying and selling video games, so the only challenge is money.” This doesn’t stop Nick however, as he says the money doesn’t change what he’ll get; he’ll still buy what he wants regardless of price.
It’s not just the local community who has noticed Nick’s collection; he and it have been featured before on video game blog Kotaku as well as MTV’s video game show, MTV Multiplayer. And yet, Nick still imagines a time when he may be without his claim to fame.
“I have no plans whatsoever to sell out,” he explains. “I’m not collecting so I can sell, however, in the future, realistically, you look at other collectors from . . . other hobbies like comics or baseball cards, most of them who collect to the scale that I do will eventually sell out, not because they collect things to make money, but because their interest change.” And although Nick doesn’t see himself worrying about life’s necessities for another few years, “Realistically, I probably won’t have these games 20 years from now.”
Posted by ASandoval on October 22, 2009 under Games, Movies, Music |
Star-studded celebrity power in games is no longer a big surprise. The rise of multimedia within games along with the million+ dollar production values have almost made it a given with many triple A titles. So it was no surprise to me when Jack Black was announced to voice the main character in Brutal Legend, designer Tim Schafer’s magnum opus centered around the ‘world’ of Heavy Metal visual imagery. Schaefer is most heavily known for his witty writing from the silver age of PC graphic adventures to his last generation sleeper hit Psychonauts, and heavy metal based humor is one of (some may say solely) Jack Black’s claim to fame.
That said, I was anticipating Eddie Riggs to be the 3D doppelganger of Jack Black, or if you want to be cynical, “That guy Jack Black knows how to play”. In terms of Brutal Legend, Eddie Riggs would be that lovable idiot whose love of music doesn’t make up for the fact that he’s not that good at what he does, until he’s suddenly thrown into a Hellish nightmare not unlike you’d see on an 80’s Metallica album, and the trailers did nothing but strengthen this impression I had. It’s not that I thought it was a problem; I enjoyed Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny as much as one objectively could, so it just seemed like the perfect fit for the video game world. But one playthrough of the demo later let me know how wrong I was.
See, Eddie Riggs is not the doppelganger of Jack Black, nor the persona of Jack Black he formed with Tenacious D. In fact, he is if anything, the opposite side of the coin.
Don’t get me wrong, there are similarities. Both characters are intensely, feverishly passionate about music, in particular the classic metal of era (It’s worth noting here that Schafer was born in 1967), but how the passion manifests itself is completely different. JB (The name Black uses as the lead guitarist/vocalist of Tenacious D) is obsessed with becoming the rock star he believes he was born to be. He is in ways, a parody of the epic hero, someone who thinks he stands for everything the people want although in reality no one takes him or his music seriously. He’s obsessed with the glamour of the limelight, the attention and fame the music can give him.
By contrast, the opening intro of Brutal Legend introduces Riggs as a professional roadie who follows bands and helps them with their act by providing guitars or making/fixing stages. And he is completely fine with this, as he explains in the opening monologue:
A good roadie knows his whole job is to make someone else look good. Keep someone safe, help someone do what they were put here to do. A good roadie stays out of the spotlight. If he’s good, you won’t even know he’s there.
It’s not that he is incompetent, either. Immediately, we’re shown that the other characters recognize that Eddie is the best there is at pretty much anything in the music world. This isn’t someone who is clouded by delusions of grandeur like JB – Eddie knows he’s good at what he does. In alot of ways, he is to the music world what Solid Snake of Metal Gear fame is to the military – Snake isn’t a soldier for the glamour of being a hero, but believes in ideology of fighting for what one believes in, and therefore sticks to the shadows as an unknown entity. For Eddie, it’s all about the music and the band, even when the music isn’t particularly good.
And the best part is that Jack Black nails the performance. It’s actually a shame that the video game medium isn’t given much thought by film critics, because anyone whose ever say Black can only ‘be’ Jack Black would be hardpressed to find anything that seems remotely slapstick. Riggs is a somber character, passionate about the music but cynical about where it’s going as a medium. Black’s performance is rather quiet, with a subtle tinge of a southern accent to give him an extra push of individual character. I’m sure this is partially from the direction of both the audio production company and Schafer himself – it would certainly explain the more Lenny Kravitz inspired art made when Brutal Legend was nothing more than a premise – but also that Black really embraced who the character was for his performance, seen at many recent award shows and events dressed up as Eddie.
Color me impressed, then; I knew I wanted to play Brutal Legend, but I didn’t see it as a game that would change both how I viewed Tim Schafer as a designer/director and Black as an actor. If anything, it’s a testament to how a perfect melding of minds can make for a unique experience, and this is solely based off of impressions from the demo! Hopefully I’ll be able to pick up the full game soon. I’m much more interested in that character and the world than I originally thought I would be.
Posted by ASandoval on October 20, 2009 under Games |
Space Invaders Extreme for Nintendo DS was a small treat when it was released last year, but it was a fairly unknown game despite being the newest entry in the legendary Japanese Economy ruining franchise. It wasn’t another rehash of the same game with flashy colors like have been released since the early 80s. No, this was an entirely new style of game! . . . With flashy colors. It was fun, and offered tons of variety, arguably the best in the Neo-Retro revival genre, including Xbox Live Arcade’s Pac-Man CE. The game took off with a relatively small, but hardcore, fanbase however, which may explain why the sequel is being released in the middle of the holiday season.
Needless to say, the game is being overshadowed. Possibly by a open world game with literally millions of guns. In fact, I didn’t even know the game was coming out until seeing the weekly release list on many of the game blogs I frequent. So I looked it up, and surprise, the game looks great! And by that, I mean it looks exactly the same as the first one.
Ok, maybe I’m being a tad faceitious. In the original game, you would go to bonus rounds that, if won, would give you a super weapon that was good for screen clearing for a short period of time. It was cool, but slightly jarring because the game would stop and move to the bonus round. Now, the bonus round is played on the top screen as you play the bottom screen, keeping the game moving at a fast pace while also giving you an extra challenge.
But that’s about it. For people who’ve played the first game to death, there really isn’t much new. I, for one, will probably be passing on this game since I only play the original when I’m bored and don’t have much to do. In short, I don’t feel I’ve completely grasped the first game since I enjoy it casually, so I have no need to move on to a sequel. I imagine anyone whose played the first one off and on will feel the same way. So consider this post a recommendation to check the game out for the first time if you haven’t. If you even kind of like Space Invaders, the extreme series really adds something new and makes the game fun in a contemporary sort of way.
Images courtesy of 1up.com
Posted by ASandoval on October 13, 2009 under Games |
The Weekly Highlight is a weekly feature that takes one game, just one, coming out that week that deserves a mention over all of the other titles coming out that week.
So hey – Tim Schaefer’s rock/action epic Brutal Legend comes out this week, and so does Naughty Dog’s very well reviewed sequel Uncharted 2. But you can read about those anywhere! Let’s talk about a game that’s being swept under the rug despite the hype it was given at its announcement.
The new A Boy and His Blob for the Wii is a reimagining of an NES game by the boys at WayForward who recently ressurected another classic series, Contra on the Nintendo DS with Contra 4. The basic premise has remained unchanged; the blob is an alien from Blobonia, come to earth to find someone to help him stop a threat on his world. He apparently finds that help in some ranbom boy on Earth with a big bag of jellybeans – jellybeans that changes the blob into various objects, based off of the flavor of the jellybean. The boy and the blob then embark on a mission where the boy must use the blob’s strange power to get around the world.
While an interesting idea, the original Boy and His Blob was kind of sloppy and all and all, not very fun, and there’s a reason for that. Created by David Crane, the creator of the first platformer game, Pitfall!, he originally designed the game for the popular system of the last generation, the Atari 2600. Now had it been on the Atari 2600, it probably would have been amazing for the time. On the NES, albeit unique, it was outdated before it even arrived. Even aside from the meager sprites, the controls are slippery, the world is confusing, and too many harmless looking things will kill you without a moment’s notice. At least the Japanese sequel for Gameboy tried to make the main character more interesting, but that was about it.
So Wayforward looked at the game, took the interesting concept and threw everything else out, giving the game its own sense of style and substance. Their trademark animation is at work, this time in the style that I can only describe as something I would have watched in the 80s. It’s colorful, works well with the story, and is almost too obscenely cute for its own good.
Gone is the expansive open world full of pratfalls and dead ends. The game is now a level based platform puzzle, where the boy and the blob must make it from one end of the stage to the other. They’ve also added clear obstacles, including real enemies that must be defeated along the way. To surmise, it’s really more of a traditional game now other than an awkward experiement.
It’s not hard to understand why noise for this game has been muted out by the flash and glamour of the more next gen titles that are on their way. It’s worth noting that with all of the core’s unassumed Wii-bashing, that there are games that play to the system strengths to provide unique experiences that can only be had on Nintendo’s technologically humble system, and the new A Boy and His Blob is another one of those games. I’m not saying you shouldn’t get the aforementioned big releases – I’ll be picking those up myself! I am saying you shouldn’t pass this up as well.
Thanks to 1up and VG Museum for the images.
Posted by ASandoval on October 8, 2009 under Games |
My friend Bren is a writer, but not of the game journalist sort. He’s actually a comic book writer. So his blog usually deals more with comic books. Released earlier this year, the critically acclaimed Batman: Arkham Asylum was released. That’s a game based on a comic book character. A perfect opportunity for our two blog’s subject matters to connect! Naturally, Bren saw this opportunity and posted his review of the game. I’m fairly certain this is his first stab at doing a game review, and it’s written in his usual style of comical cynicism mixed with thoughtful insight. You should check it out.
While I’ve played enough of B:AA to say I agree with his comments (if not being slightly more forgiving toward it), I can’t officially comment seeing as my PS3 decided to give way soon after my purchase. Natch.
Source:
Of Questionable Authority – Batman: Arkham Asylum review
Posted by ASandoval on October 6, 2009 under Games |
Before I (presumably) close the door on Rocket Knight, the writer of the aforementioned preview Jeremy Parish wrote up a nice piece about seeing what he had missed out on with the older games on his personal 1UP blog.
It goes into a lot more detail about what made the game wholly unique that I briefly touched on, as well as gives us some insight on the history of the game and its developer so we can see why it came out the way it did. It’s an interesting look at both the series through new eyes as well as how a traditional genre can still be wholly unique in a sense. It’s definetly worth a read if you’ve played the old games or are interested in giving them a try.
Source:
Tales of a Rocket Knight Noob.
Posted by ASandoval on under Games |
Rocket Knight Adventures ranks among one of my favorite games. Sure, I was among one of the many children of the time who was swept up by the animals-with-’tude phase that took over the 90s, but Rocket Knight has stood up in the minds of many others, despite the cloudy nostalgia that has mostly cleared away for the other trash that was being shoved into our naive, pre-teen eyeballs. This was due to Rocket Knight being a more than competent game, which is more than I can say for things such as Aero the Acrobat and Bubsy the Bobcat. I also think this was because Sparkster, the titular Rocket Knight, carried himself differently; he actually smiled than gave a cynical smirk, and the story carried itself with a little bit more seriousness and dare I say, maturity. This is an odd thing to say about an opossum knight with a jet pack who brings members of the pig army to their heart-endowed underwear, but if you’ve compared the game to others in its genre, you’d understand.
But despite its gameplay and style, Sparkster only lasted two games (Three, technically, since Sparkster on SNES and the Sparkster on Genesis are, confusingly, two completely different games) before disappearing into obscurity. I can only assume it wasn’t a success in its home country of Japan, but sales numbers weren’t as free then as they are in our current and fancy digital age. Oddly, Sparkster had been making cameos in more recent Konami games, such as New International Track And Field for Nintendo DS.
And yesterday, 1up broke the news that the next game, Rocket Knight, will be coming early 2010 for downloadable platforms Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation Network and Steam. And I almost cried. True story.
Jeremy Parish wrote up a nice preview to go along with the news story which helped detail out the game. There are some awesome highlights, including the amount of work they’re putting into Sparkster’s animations to capture the character and new features such as a dynamic camera to help with your zipping around on your jet pack.
I’m also impressed with how they are handling the narrative. Parish explains that the game will be a sequel, taking place 15 years after the last game (The exact amount of time in years since that game!) where now that pigs live harmoniously with the opossum, The untrusting Sparkster has moved away with his family to another land. Now, a new threat threatens his old habitat, but its not the pigs; They have joined forces with the opossum to take out a new threat, an army of wolves, and Sparkster once again takes arms against them. This actually seems like a pretty complicated story considering the characters, but there won’t be lengthy cutscenes; It is expressed specifically the story will be told via pantomime, just like the former games.
The write up nicely sums up the game, and the idea that the new team, UK-based Climax whose former Konami work includes Silent Hill: 0rigins on PSP, really understands what made the Genesis game great, so I’m very excited. Anyone else a fan of the original? Love this? Hate this? Let us (Read: me) know.
Source:
Rocket Knight Preview
Thanks to VGMuseum and 1up for the photos.
Posted by ASandoval on October 3, 2009 under Games |
If you haven’t heard, there’s a Super Street Fighter IV coming out next year. And just as with the similarly named update for Street Fighter II many years back, it’s going to have new characters. Eight of them, in fact! Only two have been announced so far, including veteran T-Hawk and a new character, Juri, the first Korean world warrior.
Earlier in the week, Kotaku reported that the decision to include a Korean character was to appeal to the Korean audience, as other fighting games such as Tekken and King of Fighters have had Korean fighters in their series for some time now.
And yesterday, Kotaku is now saying that their are members of the Korean community who are unhappy about the character.
But the fans cries were not in vain, as one of their own, a blogger at the Korean website ThisisGame.com, then went on to redesign the character based on the common suggestions made by the Korean community. He was not too happy with the results, apparently. Alhough I cannot read the original Korean post, Kotaku has translated:
“Based on your opinions I removed the double pony tails, made the eyes less sharp, and added TaeKwonDo uniform,” the ThisIsGame.com post reads. “This certainly is Koreanisque, but it is too plain; I think it is actually bad for a game character’s rendering.”
It’s important to note that this is not the first time an Asian community has redesigned a video game character that they felt misrepresented their race and cultural appeal. Back in 2008, the character Faith from Mirror’s Edge, who’s ethnicity beyond Asian was not defined, was redesigned by the Japanese fanbase to mixed responses, including Mirror’s Edge’s own developer.
If I may chime in for a second, from my view it’s important to note that when the original characters of Street Fighter II were shown, they were nothing more than bland stereotypes of American action and Asian martial arts cinemas, with the exception of Blanka, a green man-beast thing from Brazil. The fact that Capcom is trieing to get away from stereotyping and creating more original, varied design says alot.
But what does my opinion matter when I’ve got the readers? Feel free to discuss in the comments.
Sources:
http://kotaku.com/5373321/korean-internet-person-redesigns-super-street-fighter-ivs-juri
http://thisisgame.com/board/view.php?id=297884&board=&category=203&subcategory=&page=1&best=&searchmode=&search=&orderby=&token=
Posted by ASandoval on October 1, 2009 under Games |
It’s unfortunate that this blog’s relaunch was just as the Tokyo Game Show in Japan was closing its doors. While I could cover the event, it’d be an exercise in redundancy. Most places, such as the ones on my blog roll, have already covered the event in great detail, so if you need a recap, you should visit them instead.
However, that doesn’t mean I can’t offer my take on a game there should I have played it myself, and wouldn’t you know it, the guys at PSP IGN have let me do just that; they’ve put up the TGS demo of Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker for everyone – including a poor, independent blogger such as myself – take a crack at the game.
Now let me say, prior to actually being able to play the game, I had little interest in Peace Walker or even the Metal Gear series in general. It’s difficult to overstate just how profound of an effect Metal Gear Solid on Playsation had on me as both a gamer and a designer, so maybe there’s some bias here. But although I’ve loved every concurrent game, none matched the sense of elation I had gotten from what I believe is the high point in the series, and Metal Gear Solid 4 last year as the final straw. It was a great game in its own right, but changes in format and quibbles on the story really made me ambivalent toward any effort to continue the franchise.
Five minutes outside of the tutorial, and Peace Walker has completely turned that around.
It’s important to note that I have no idea how to feel about the story, because I don’t understand it just yet. The demo is entirely in Japanese. I will say however that the presentation is spot on for a handheld. There’s been much said by designer Hideo Kojima that the goal of the Peace Walker team is to get as close to Metal Gear Solid 4 visuals as possible on the tiny handheld, and while much is completely outside of their grasp, I’m shocked at how close they come. That’s not to say it’s anywhere near like playing a current gen game on the tiny PSP – it still doesn’t look as good as the last generation thanks to the PSP’s limitations on things such as texture resolution – but it comes a lot closer than the previous PSP outing for the series, Portable Ops. The character models poly count makes them look a lot smoother, which even gives sense of depth when looked at closely, especially in the face area. Environments, while a little grainy on the edges and in the texture, is still some of the highest quality work on the PSP to date.
Speaking of overcoming PSP limitations, Portable Ops had the problem of frustrating controls. Indeed, Metal Gear games have always tried to use the controller of its system to its limits, so trying to emulate that on a system with a limited control scheme can be a nightmare. Kojima Productions has solved this problem by putting as much as they possibly can on to the R button. Your melee is all done by R, changing based on context such as if you’re running, standing still, close to the enemy, etc., and holding L while having a weapon In hand makes R your shooting button. This frees up the directional pad for item and weapon selection, while the camera, menu navigating and aiming now the responsibility of the face buttons. It sounds more complicated than it is, and isn’t as limiting as PO, where you were forced either to stand still and move the camera, or stand still if you wanted to perform a move, depending on your control type.
But the gameplay takes center stage. In Metal Gear Solid 4, the usual open-ended gameplay was sacrificed for a more traditional level system, and only 2 (arguably 3) of those levels featured extensive classic Metal Gear gameplay. Peace Walker combines the two, giving you missions that you can select, each which has different ratios of open-endedness depending on the objectives of said mission.
The first mission that is not the tutorial sees the main character Big Boss/Naked Snake has to take over a base. This is done by taking out the enemies in the base either by knocking them out or killing them, something that has become more of an option in the MG series as opposed to its former emphasis on stealth over action. This new choice is emphasized by what ‘camo’ you wear on a mission. Originally, camo was selected in game, now instead select prior to taking a mission. This also determines what equipment you bring with you, so a stealth suit doesn’t give you any heavy weapons, but you do get the tranquilizer gun and my personal favorite, the soliton radar from MGS1. It goes in this fashion; less camo means more weaponry, to the point that going without a shirt nets you a rocket launcher.
And while any camo could work on this first mission, the second mission requires something with a bit more firepower; An open arena fight with four soldiers and a tank. And although taking down a tank seems like a simple task for anyone who has played previous Metal Gear games, but this brings me to Peace Walker’s key feature: The multiplayer. Indeed, no matter how hard I tried, I could not take down the tank. It over powered me at every turn, and I knew I was going to need some help.
With a friend, we took on the tank. Although the mission does allow up to 4 players, we don’t have that many people who actually own the PSP, and we’re unsure yet if the full game will allow you to get other people from the internet to join you, as it is not an option in the demo. The first thing we tested was the sync option, where you get bonuses when you are ‘synced’ and within the vicinity of the other person, but the nature of the battle meant we couldn’t be close to each other for long, so we didn’t get to see these bonuses in action.
Taking down the tank quickly gave me images of fighting boss battles in Phantasy Star Online: me and other people taking down a large obstacle as a group. What made it compelling was that it was Metal Gear, with all the deep nuances that comes with that gameplay. In the case of the tank, me and my partner took turns taking the brunt force of the tank while the other focused on attacking the critical weak point on the back of the tank as well as taking out the treads to decrease it’s mobility. Eventually, the tank’s driver was forced to get out of the tank in order to navigate, allowing us a clear target in order to take it down once and for all. Again, with one person diverting most of the heavy firepower away from the other, we both successfully survived the onslaught and achieved victory.
Outside of the gameplay, what impressed me most about the multiplayer was that the emphasis of story was still important. In game, the player always sees himself as Boss while he sees the other as a random soldier (Or in the case of the shirtless camouflage, a guy in a BDSM gimp mask). The cutscenes still play out, with both players being actively involved. It may seem simple, but as a gamer that appreciates narrative, having a game that still offers a deep narrative experience (As opposed to deep narrative itself – keep in mind, I don’t understand a word that is being spoken) during a deep multiplayer experience. It makes Peace Walker uniquely stand out for my personal taste.
To surmise, MGS:PW is a much more accessible experience than the last Metal Gear on PSP outing, which is an amazing feat for just how deep the MGS experience on console is, but has also brought in an amazing multiplayer experience. This demo alone does not just rehash the experience, but updates and innovates it just as MGS3 and 4 have done with the series, and best of all its more fun than either of those games. While I’m still skeptical about the game from a narrative standpoint, if the demo has proven anything, it will still be an amazing game to play. My only hope is that the game will allow me to find players online, since I probably won’t be convincing my friends without a PSP to get one just so we can play together.
But don’t let me be the final say: If you got the PSP and the technical know how, head over to IGN via the above or below links and get the game for yourself. Agree? Disagree? Don’t care? Comment!
Sources:
IGN’s Peace Walker Demo download link: http://psp.ign.com/articles/102/1027904p1.html
All images gotten from and copyrighted 1up.com: http://www.1up.com
