Joypad

Joypad isn't moving!

2010-11-30T13:54:00.000-08:00

Oops!
Uhh, yeah sorry about that. We were wrong. Joypad will stay put.

Joypad is moving!

2009-10-07T22:46:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

This post is to let you know that Joypad will be changing location to the Vanguard's new and improved blog.

Check us out!

http://vanguardblog-psu.blogspot.com/

Public Service Announcement: Demon's Souls

2009-10-02T15:24:00.000-07:00

Attention:

North American servers for Demon's Souls will not be up and running until October 6th. So, if you happen to get a copy of the game early, you will not be able to start playing online until launch day. After that it should be fine, however.

The good folks at Atlus just wanted you all to know; that is all.

Summer Game Awards

2009-09-24T15:10:00.000-07:00

Now that Summer is drawing to a close and the Fall season of games is practically upon us, it's a good time to look back on the last few months and reflect on what worked and what didn’t. But please note: these are not the ‘best of summer’ game awards, nor are they the worst. Think of them as more of a smattering of lesser known and not-so-lesser known releases that all won (or in some cases, won by losing) various awards of my choosing.

So, without further ado, let’s get this show on the road.

Best game destined to fade into obscurity:

Knights in the Nightmare
Atlus
Nintendo DS
4 out of 5 stars

Only Atlus could bring a game like Knights in the Nightmare stateside. The concept almost sounds like parody mish-mash of everything that screams hardcore Japanese—take the stat-based complexities of a strat-RPG, throw them in a real-time setting (sorta) and add a hefty dose of touch screen schmup action (no, I’m not joking) and you’ve got the basic genetic makeup of Knights.

See the little blue thing? You have to keep those bullets from hitting it. And that's an easy monster.
You play a wisp that’s been awakened to revive the dead spirits of knights from a fallen kingdom. In battle, your royal army of shades is controlled by the wisp, who issues orders to the knights by zipping around the screen, arming them with weapons, collecting gems (which refill your character’s MPs) and—wait for it—dodging projectile bullets from monsters. Despite its seemingly at-odds genre amalgamations, though, Knights works rather well. Recruiting the souls of dead knights to join your army is fun, the job classes interesting and the gameplay experience is pretty much unlike anything else out there. It's so niche, in fact, that it’s probably already passed from store shelves into the gloom of a withering retail dusk. If you’re looking for something very unique, Knights is definitely worth tracking down.

Worst reboot:

King of Fighters XII
Ignition Entertainment
PS3, Xbox 360
3 out of 5 stars

Some people may argue with me when I say that King of Fighters XII is the worst retooling of a series to hit stores this summer (especially given the hype it received). That’s fair. At its core, there’s solid design behind KoF XII. Characters contrast and complement each other, the three-on-three bouts and fighting mechanics work well, the game doesn’t resort to being too cheap and the difficulty is balanced. But that’s not the real problem. See, KoF XII is one of those rare cases where less actually is less (as opposed to being more). To put it more bluntly, the game only has a single arcade mode, and it’s entirely bereft of any kind of story or variation.

Sure, KoF XII is pretty, but...well, that's almost everything it has going for it.
Arcade mode is, in fact, nothing more than a time trial; pick your three favorite fighters (from a sadly diminished roster—seriously, where the fuck is Mai?), fight five timed bouts and, uhm, compare your scores. There’s no resolution, other than an HD cutscene telling you that you’ve won. No boss. Nothing. Outside of arcade mode, there’s you can play multiplayer matches head-to-head or online, leaving you with a game you can wholly experience in ten minutes. I’d advise waiting for the bargain bin. It might be a fine fighter at its base, but for what you get, KoF XII is just a disappointment. Pick up Blazblue instead.

Best Superhero game that isn’t Batman:

InFamous
SCEA
PS3
4.5 out of 5 stars

The genre of original superhero titles may not exactly be spilling over with a constant influx of new games, but the InFamous Vs. Prototype debate brought the concept to the fore this summer, before Bats wowed us all with the deliciously dark Arkham Asylum. And as much as I (surprisingly) enjoyed the hell out of Alex Mercer’s uber violent, nonsensical rampage through Manhattan, InFamous edges Prototype out with superior design, art direction and one hell of a polish. As Cole, an ordinary courier imbued with lightening powers after a bomb detonates in the center of Empire City. After a government quarantine kicks in, you have the option to either use your powers for good or evil. What ensues are a lot of superpowered shenanigans, double crosses, twists, etc.

The draw distance isn't even remotely close to the most impressive thing about InFamous.

The GTA-style open world works well for the game, but where InFamous really shines is in its fluid platforming and animation. The frequent combat is great, as well, but there’s just as much of an emphasis on clambering up buildings and across areas as there is with pumping your enemies with electricity. And did I mention this game is gorgeous? The only downside to InFamous is that it seems clearly geared towards playing as a good guy, since Cole’s motivations for being evil, should you choose to do so, are slim to none. Sucker Punch’s PS3 debut has been long awaited, but it was well worth it—this is one of PS3’s best.

Worst movie-tie in:

Up
THQ
PS3, Xbox 360
2.5 out of 5 stars

Movie tie-in games are almost always bad. Really bad. For some reason, I thought that Up might not be. I guess I had been thinking about the overwhelming pathos of the film, and how cool it could have been if it had been translated into game format. Think about it. How great would it be to have played as Carl in the opening stage, simply sitting on a park bench, or walking contemplatively along a deserted waterfront thinking of his recently departed wife Ellie? Rendered with something akin to Capcom’s MT Framework engine, which brought us the likes of Dead Rising and Lost Planet? I don’t have to tell you how awesome it would’ve been. Instead we get an opening fighter plane level with Dug trying to shoot down Charles Muntz’ evil henchdogs in something a PS2 might have rendered if it crapped all over itself.

Don't expect THQ's Up game to look anything like this.

Then we’re forced to a plodding, forced co-op (and worst of all, boring) platformer with poorly programmed enemies and the like. I know this is supposed to be for kids, but even kids like to have fun. While there technically isn’t anything wrong with the gameplay, it’s too ho-hum to be anything more than utterly forgettable. Not even pretty significant involvement of the cast can save this one from the dredges of mediocrity, and quite frankly, Christopher Plummer, you should fuckin’ know better. Pass.

Best “able to live up to the hype” game:

Ghostbusters
Atari
PS3, Xbox 360
4.5 out of 5 stars

This is a no brainer. After almost (possibly) never seeing the light of day, Ghostbusters clawed its way to the top of heap to become one of the best games of the summer, and certainly the best movie tie-in without an actual film behind it. Basically Ghostbusters is the third film in the series, just minus the celluloid, Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis. Taking place two years after Ghostbusters II (that’s 1991 for all you kids keeping track) Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis co-wrote a stellar script with enough scares (inasmuch as the films have scares, which is to say none), laughs, familiar faces and science jargon for any self-respecting ‘Busters fan to keep ‘em from rioting in the streets, which very well might’ve happened had the game sucked.

Aykroyd and Ramis pulled out all the stops to make Ghostbusters an entertaining experience.

Surprisingly, you don’t even play one of the original four—rather instead a rookie the boys hired to essentially do their dirty work and test new proton pack modifications. Missions generally involve splitting off and teaming with one or two of the crew at a time; “Lassoing” spooks into ghost traps is a surprising amount of fun, and even when you’re using one of Egon’s new proton pack toys, a lot of which have different gun-style effects, the classic Ghostbusters tone and feel never goes away. In short, this is about as close to being as Ghostbuster as you’ll ever get. Oddly, despite Bill Murray’s insistence on only doing the game if everyone had an equal part, Venkman’s part in the game seems somewhat limited, which is a goddamn shame (since Bill Murray is in fact a god among men). Still, the anticipation had been building so much for Ghostbusters that it could have ended up a total disaster. Thankfully, it didn’t.

Best use of Tokyo:

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor
Atlus
Nintendo DS
4.5 out of 5 stars

Ahh, Tokyo. Next to New York and, uhm, Neo-Tokyo (or some approximation thereof) it’s probably the town most often used in games as a site for plague, famine, nuclear war, post-apocalypitca and of course, demons. Devil Survivor, unlike most MegaTen games, is set inside central Tokyo, or more specifically within the Yamanote line circle that encloses the area. Basically, if you’ve ever been to the Tokyo, the gang of COMP-packing teens you play is going to be running around in all the hip places you’ve likely spent time in, from Shinjuku to Roppongi. Only there’s a cataclysmic event that’s going to happen in a number of days, everyone’s walking around with a death clock and there are demons everywhere.

That's Omotesando in the background, in case you were wondering.

In the gameplay department, Devil Survivor takes a different tack than Persona or Digital Devil Saga, (though it’s closer to the former) by acting as a strat-RPG more than anything else. Battles are set up in a fashion similar to Front Mission, meaning you move your units (consisting of a demon handler and up to two demons in their possession) and enter old-school Persona-style battles upon enemy contact, rather than simply trading blows a la Final Fantasy Tactics (additionally this means health items and special summoned demon abilities can be used outside of skirmishes). Like any Atlus game, it’s challenging, the art style is great but you’ll have to grind a lot. The story, characterizations and localization are, as usual, up to Atlus' extremely high standards, however. And who doesn’t like saying, “Hey, I’ve been there,” when they’re playing a game?

Best idea that didn’t quite come together:

Cross Edge
NIS America
PS3
2 out of 5 stars

Cross Edge seems like it started out as a good idea. It has characters from Disgaea (Prinnies!) and Darkstalkers, as well as the, uhm, more obscure Ar Tonelico, Mana Khemia and Spectral Souls games. All mished mashed together, like an ultra-hardcore-niche version of Namco X Capcom (whose import-only status should tell of its own decidedly less-than-mainstream appeal). Still, for fans of these RPG (and…fighting?) series, seeing your favorite characters join forces together should be exciting. Right? Maybe. But then you start playing. What might tip you off first is that despite being HD as hell, Cross Edge looks like a damn PS2 game. The sprites are tiny and don’t show much movement. Even the character portraits aren’t terribly exciting, with only one major expression to each character. The story revolves around everyone from their respective universes getting amnesia and ending up in a magical realm where there’s an evil force trying to destroy all existence. In any case, you’ve heard it all before.

What a fucking nightmare.

Then the battles start. Oh, lord, the battles. Cross Edge has, without a doubt, one of the worst battle systems of any RPG I’ve played. And I’ve played a lot of RPGS. It’s kind of like a four-ally quasi-real-time system similar to Valkyrie Profile or Xenogears, on a broad level. But then the nitty gritty basics start. There’s a gauge for taking actions. All actions take AP (even using items). You’re only allotted a certain amount of AP per turn, and there’s a gauge that measures it. In addition to basic moves mapped the Dualshock’s face buttons, you can also perform EX moves, but they take as much AP as three regular attacks do. There’s a level measuring that. On the defensive side, there’s overkill and guard break meters, as well as no less than four different measurements of defensive power that are depleted with enemy attacks. Then there’s combo attacks. Following all this? I sure as hell can’t. After about hour you’ll probably give up—between the nuclear physicist degree prereq and the tepid story and gameplay, Cross Edge just wants to be too many things for too many people, which ultimately ends up destroying any fun you might have had with it to begin with.

review: Battlestations: Pacific

2009-08-21T22:13:00.000-07:00

Battlestations: Pacific is a bit of a conundrum. On the one hand, the game has an interesting take on both the usual generic limitations of WWII as well as a unique approach to fairly limited offerings of available console strategy games. You can decal the nose of your favorite fighter with swell period pin-up girls for use in online dogfights. Taking command of a massively powerful battleship like the South Dakota class (armed with a full battery of 16” guns) feels undeniably bad ass.

On the other hand, the grainy, real-life film footage shown before each mission begins is, sadly, a little misleading. Pacific’s tactical-yet-arcadey combat may reach the tracer-saturated fever pitch depicted on the back of the box from time to time, but seemingly just as often the chaos of the Pacific theater’s large-scale naval, air and infantry battles (the last of which isn’t playable here) seem strangely muted.

Dive-bombing is often a key component to a successful aerial assault.
The game throws numerous scenarios at you in which you control, say, one or two cruisers or a destroyers, but rarely allows you access to the entire naval armada, instead seeing fit to dole out command of ships one to three at a time (and even then only as replacements for any vessels you may have lost). Carriers, which act as RTS-style bases, can produce fighter planes to help you maintain the offensive or defensive upper hand, but only allot one four-plane squadron each. The result is a campaign of island hopping support that, while enjoyably strategic, isn’t necessarily spread evenly and can feel somewhat sparse at times.

What’s baffling about Pacific is that despite a serious graphical overhaul and boost in available units, in some ways it’s a step backward from its predecessor, Battlestations: Midway. Covering the earlier part of the war in the pacific (including the battles of the Solomon Islands—where there’s some over lap with Pacific—and, clearly, Midway itself) Midway used a full blown narrative and the ability to choose which tactical maneuvers to utilize in order to crush the Japanese resistance.

Torpedoes can be tricky to use, but devastating to the enemy.
Aside from offering virtually no story aside from a spotty approximation of historical events (brought to tepid life by a cast of either bored or far too overzealous voice actors) Pacific has a penchant for tactically shoehorning you into using certain air or seacraft to accomplish various tasks (though it should be noted that additional units can be unlocked as you progress). The trade-off is that Pacific has a little over twice as much gameplay as Midway, complete with a full, alternate history Japanese campaign; beating both campaigns and unlocking everything will be more than enough to keep some of you coming back to this one.

Thankfully, despite a bit less tactical wiggle-room, Pacific’s arcade combat is still fun. Though controls and tutorials for the game’s dual sea and air fleets may seem a little daunting at first (the game even uses the two letter call signs actually used during the war to identify different types of air and sea craft), they’re streamlined so that even novice tacticians can enjoy the game. Letting off a volley of AA or dual-purpose guns is as easy as firing a gun in an FPS, and the intuitive targeting and formation systems can make even the most overwhelming battles manageable. Although you technically control units one a time, the game (mostly) lets you simultaneously carry out naval and air-based actions, issuing different commands while you control your preferred unit. This gives Pacific gives the overall feeling of a more hands-on RTS, which is pretty swell indeed.

Learn to love the tactical map; it'll save your ass on more than one occasion.
Pacific also has its fair share of moments that are a tremendous rush. Laying waste to an entire fleet of Japanese warships in minutes with a bombardment of long-range guns (not to mention actually watching the explosion of twisted metal from a damaged hull or magazine) never gets old, and dodging through an intense hail of AA fire to successfully deliver a torpedo or bomb payload is exhilarating. In short, these are the moments that will make you want to keep playing. The sheer number of different units is a great touch too, although in order to really use them effectively you’ll likely have to take some prep time to familiarize yourself with the catalog.

At the end of the day, Pacific earns its wings as a more than competent strategy-action hybrid. There are times when it may feel a little too straightforward and, let’s be honest, the story and presentation generally come off as worse than a History channel re-enactment. Despite some setbacks, if Eidos Hungary can learn from their mistakes I have faith they can really put out the complete package with their next Battlestations effort. Give it a shot if you’re in the mood for a different kind of war game. At the very least, it beats the hell out of yet another tired period shooter.

Battlestations: Pacific
Eidos
Xbox 360
$59.99
3.5 out 5 stars

review: Bit.Trip Core

2009-08-21T00:06:00.000-07:00

Let’s face it: outside of clans, forums and fan communities, significant cultural memes sprung from the collective consciousness of gamers generally aren’t things you hear about every day. “Popular” modes of expression are usually limited to pop-culture commercialism, and even original projects (like, say, fan-made sequels to popular games) are often subject to intense cease-and-desist litigation.

On the other hand, I would argue that chiptunes don’t follow general modes of gamer expression. Using hacked Game Boys, Nintendo’s and the like, chiptune artists combine “chip” sounds, utilizing archaic hardware to compose electronic bleep-bloop melodies that hearken back to gaming’s infancy, creating a sound that is uniquely retro and modern at the same time.

Having stated this, I shouldn’t have been surprised when I learned that chiptunes play a central role in Bit.Trip Core. As the second of four Bit.Trip titles to hit WiiWare from Gaijin Games, Core (much like its B.T predecessor, Beat) revels in its hybridization of old and new.

Ostensibly, the game looks and feels like a cross between a multi-directional shooter and DDR, with a serious aesthetic fetish for all things Atari. Looking at it in terms of arcade history, it’s a natural progression from Beat, which basically reconstituted Pong, juiced it up and added a really crazy difficulty curve (as well as trippy chiptunes and visuals) for a unique retro-modern arcade feel.

Welcome to your Bit.Trip.

Continuing on the idea of gaming progress, Core then fully embraces the conceptual lineage of arcade shooters, mimicking tube shooters like Tempest, only on a 2D plane. The screen is marked with what amounts to a diamond targeting reticle—from the center of the reticle you can aim bars of light up, down, left and right. Your objective is to shoot the various dots, lines, arrows and boxes that fly across the screen when they intersect the path of your light beams. The more hits you get in row, the higher your combo chain and score.

Aside from its shooter-esque mechanics, Core also functions as a rhythm game—a notion
directly linked to its evolutionary ideology. Each successful shot produces an in-key tone, which accompanies the background beat or baseline of the level. As your combo chain grows higher, the music you create evolves from flat, static chipped sounds to full-bodied notes that compliment each track’s (and level’s) musical growth.

Screw up, though, and you’ll fall back down to “nether” status (the game measures your hit rate on four point-based tiers)—a stark, black and white (and one would assume, tongue-in-cheek) representation of the game featuring only the metronomic skeleton of the level’s track. On the flip side, should you actually reach “super,” (the highest) you can flex your musicality muscles by improving notes in the background to go along with the beat. Each note while in this mode nets you 1000 points, so it’s a good way to rack up high scores.

See where all those lines and vertices intersect with the cross hairs? You have to hit ALL OF THEM.

Not that it’s all that easy to stay in super. Core may start off by throwing relatively slow moving patterns of dots at you, but by the time you’re hurtling through the last level the visuals—and challenge—can be quite ridiculous. Patterned dots, lines and others will split off, multiply, rotate around the center of the targeting reticle, jump off in odd places, shift patterns suddenly, seemingly break the rules by traveling diagonally…you get the idea.

It can be quite a madhouse. (For more proof just click here ). The game does afford you one screen-destroying bomb per game, (I'd save it for the boss patterns, which can obviously be very tricky) but given the extremely limited availability of these, you'll mostly have to rely on your own wits and pattern memorization skills.

Pay no attention to the 3D geometric shapes behind the curtain.

But everything is meticulously calculated, and nothing is impossible. In the long run, it makes for a game you can beat based on repetition and perfection, such as throwbacks like Contra or Gradius. But with the obsession that’ll soon take hold in chasing each level's elusive perfect score, (not to mention the game’s fantastic tunes), this isn’t one for simply playing through once and then walking away. And for six bucks, how can you really go wrong?

Now, that just leaves me with one question for Gaijin: when do we get the soundtrack?

Bit.Trip Core
Aksys Games
WiiWare
$6
4.5 out of 5 stars

This... is pretty much the best news ever.

2009-04-21T11:05:00.000-07:00

[From PC WORLD]: Goodbye speculation, hello LEGO Rock Band, the game you were never really expecting but you'll probably stand up and cheer for anyway. You know, like LEGO Final Fantasy. Or LEGO Fallout.

Improbable? Seems that way. I mean, the hypothetical legal red tape involved had to be staggering. LEGO Group, MTV Games, Harmonix, Warner Bros., Travellers Tales, Backbone Entertainment, another dozen I'm probably forgetting yet to be announced...what are the odds?

Like the LEGO-less version of Rock Band, this presumably kid-friendlier version with cute claw-grip plastic abstractions is due for the Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii, release date vaguely heralded as "holiday 2009." Oh, and a version for the Nintendo DS, too. Sounds like a clip-on peripheral a-brewin', though the DSi's lack of an old-style Gameboy cartridge slot leaves the question of "how?" hanging in the wind. Ad hoc wireless peripheral?

Traveller's Tales, who've handled the trunk LEGO games (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Batman) thus far, will cover all three console versions partnered with Harmonix, the guys responsible for the first two Guitar Hero games and the trunk Rock Band series. Backbone Entertainment (they did Rock Band Unplugged for PSP) will work with the TT and Harmonix on the DS version.

Tracks teased so far:

"Boys and Girls" (Good Charlotte)
"Kung Fu Fighting" (Carl Douglas)
"Song 2" (Blur)
"So What" (Pink)
"The Final Countdown" (Europe)

And now, clips from the film Armageddon, set to Europe's rock epic, The Final Countdown.

Trent Reznor talks id software, innovation, old school games

2009-04-07T20:50:00.000-07:00

I was watching this Digg Dialog interview with Trent Reznor earlier, and thought it would be cool if someone mentioned his work doing the sound effects and music for Quake. Much to my surprise, it was mentioned--and thus we get Trent offering his own intelligent observations on the game industry. It's around the 23-25 minute mark, but you should really watch the whole thing, since Mr. Reznor has a lot of great insight to share. Enjoy!

Review: 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand

2009-04-07T01:19:00.000-07:00

In an interview before the release of 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, two of Fiddy’s boys, G-Unit rappers Lloyd Banks and Tony Yayo, revealed they were more than just rap stars lending their voices to the multi-platinum rapper’s new game.

The duo name-dropped both classics as well as new favorites among the gaming elite, but confessed they really just liked to play the best new games rather then trying to pay close attention to the ever-changing litany of original IPs, spin-offs and franchises commonplace in the industry. And who can blame them? They’re professional rappers, not gamers.

When asked what they thought about Blood on the Sand, Yayo probably said it best. “This is going to be my favorite game when this [sic] comes out,” he said.

For Yayo and his fellow G-Unit members, not to mention Fiddy and company’s countless fans, Blood on the Sand may be just what the doctor ordered.

A cover shooter with 50 Cent’s insistently high production values, the game does a great job of wiping away the bad memories of Fiddy’s first game appearance, 50 Cent: Bulletproof, which, despite strong sales, received tepid reviews.

And while Blood on the Sand is a far more solid game, it’s anything if not staid. The cover shooting is perfectly adequate, but overall the game lacks any kind of innovation and certainly offers little you haven’t seen before—outside of its nonsensical story anyway.

Hope you like this camera angle--you'll be seeing a lot of it..
It’s not that Blood on the Sand is a bad game. It’s just one that falls short of what it could have been. What saves it from mediocrity, is, surprisingly, Fiddy’s involvement himself.

This time around, Fiddy’s out for blood in the, uhm, Middle East somewhere, when his payment for a concert, a priceless diamond encrusted skull, is stolen by a gang of ethnic terrorists who ambush the rapper’s humvee.

Yeah, the story makes little sense. All you really need to know is that Fiddy kills a lot of terrorist scum and throws lines around like “That bitch stole mah skull!” But that’s part of the game’s, uhm, charm. (Well, that and lobbing F-bombs like Molotov cocktails).

To their credit, Fiddy and G-Unit members Tayo, Banks and DJ Whoo Kid do a bang-up job with their voicework—especially 50 himself. I have to say I was pretty surprised by the quality of Mr. Cent’s performance, especially considering that kind of voice acting licensed games usually have, but he actually makes Blood on the Sand a hell of a lot more enjoyable. Kudos also must be given to the script writers for not oversaturating the game’s F-bombs.

Obviously Fiddy likes to speak his profane peace, and does so often. But it doesn’t really sounds forced, not like in say, Capcom’s so-bad-it’s-good Beatdown: Fists of Vengeance. And there’s something inherently satisfying with hearing Fiddy yell out, “Motherfucking cocksucker!” before he blows them away.

The game also (I would guess at Fiddy’s insistence) makes for good fan service—the soundtrack is riddled with old and new tracks from the rapper, and unlocking extras like music videos will be fun for some die-hard followers.

Blood on the Sand's hand-to-hand combat leaves much to be desired.
But Blood on the Sand also suffers from some really ho-hum game design. Outside of getting more powerful weapons, the terrorists never really change, and the level design is uninspired and bland at best and cumbersome at worst.

The game tries to make up for this by presenting you with a number of timed challenges that pop up often. You may have to take down a couple of grenadiers, blow up a tank or pick off a few snipers, to name a few, before the time runs out. Do so and you’ll get extra points (yes, this game actually has a point system) and can unlock extras in the game.

But ultimately, as fun as the challenges can sometimes be, they've become just another feature to slog through by the time you reach the end--just like the game’s combat itself. Not even Blood on the Sand’s large assortment of weapons, which can be bought with cash you find lying around in random crates, can save 50's new adventure from the "kill waves of enemies until the level ends" design, leaving little difference, aside from obvious ones of firepower, in your selection. Fiddy likes to take his time reloading too, which I found irksome.

Surprise, Bitches!
And with glaring flaws like the no less than three separate encounters in which Fiddy’s made to take down a chopper with an RPG, It just seems like Swordfish Studios sort of ran out gas halfway through the design process and hoped no one would notice—to say nothing of the game's continuously poor AI, weak hand-to-hand combat (essentially Resident Evil 4-style quick time events, but easier) on-rails sections and obvious graphical glitches.

Credit must be given to game’s inventive point scoring system, which will net you more point if you waste a bastard from outside cover and while making liberal use of the taunt button, but with so many other compounded problems it’s a somewhat hollow victory.

But really, chances are if you’re a big fan of Fiddy himself (especially if you were burned by Bulletproof) or you’re just looking for the next cheap-thrill popcorn shooter, Blood on the Sand’s generic trappings, done up with G-Unit paint, will probably suit you just fine. For the rest of us, well, there’s always Gears of War 2.

50 Cent: Blood on the Sand
THQ
PS3, Xbox 360
$59.99
3 out of 5 stars

2009-04-03T02:12:00.000-07:00

Update: the Dead Rising contest is now closed. Thanks everyone!

Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop contest and trailer

2009-03-31T13:10:00.000-07:00

Hey there,

For those that saw the contest blurb in today's paper, here's the details. Basically, I'm going to pick a random time this week to put up a Dead Rising-related post. Once the post goes up, be the first email games AT dailyvanguard DOT COM with the subject line "Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop contest" (upper case and proper spelling is necessary) and you win a copy of the game. Please include your name in the email so I can write back, congratulate you, set up a time to meet, etc. I will post an update when the contest is closed.

In the meantime, a trailer for the game is below.

If you missed my full review of Dead Rising, click here.
Thanks for reading, and good luck!

Press-Release (because I am too damn lazy to write up a real post): New downloadable Square-Enix titles

2009-03-26T08:37:00.000-07:00

GAME DEVELOPERS CONFERENCE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA (25th March, 2009) – Square Enix Co., Ltd. (Square Enix) announced today at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), the forthcoming releases of new downloadable titles including FINAL FANTASY IV: THE AFTER YEARS™ and FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES®: My Life as a Darklord™ for WiiWare™, as well as the FINAL FANTASY® series for the Virtual Console™ for Wii™.

The release of these new downloadable titles represent Square Enix’s recognition of the growing demand for online distribution of content/services, and the commitment they have made to provide content/services that match the needs of their customers.

Square Enix will be offering two new releases for WiiWare: FINAL FANTASY IV: THE AFTER YEARS and FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: My Life as a Darklord.
FINAL FANTASY IV: THE AFTER YEARS, is an RPG that continues the story that began in the 1991 Super Famicom™ title FINAL FANTASY IV. In Japan, this title was released as a downloadable cellular phone application in February 2008. It has since been lauded for its deep storytelling, and a year after its release, has been downloaded over 3 million times.

FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: My Life as a Darklord is the newest instalment in the FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES series, which has shipped over 2 million copies worldwide and is set to grow further in 2009. This title will be a sequel to FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: My Life as a King™, which launched simultaneously with the WiiWare service in May of 2008.

In addition, the Virtual Console allows Wii users to download and play classic titles released on previous game consoles, and now for the first time ever, the FINAL FANTASY series will be made available via home console download. The first instalment of the series will be FINAL FANTASY, originally released for the Famicom™ in Japan in 1987, which will be available for download in May 2009 in Japan. The release date for PAL region will be in 2009.

Please see below for product details:

About FINAL FANTASY IV: THE AFTER YEARS

Developer: Square Enix Co., Ltd.
Publisher: Square Enix Ltd.
Platform: Wii
Genre: RPG
Launch Date: 2009

18 years after FINAL FANTASY IV first stole the hearts of Japanese gamers, the adventure continues in FINAL FANTASY IV: THE AFTER YEARS.

Released as a mobile phone game in Japan, this wildly popular sequel has topped 3 million paid downloads as of 25th February 2009.

The game focuses primarily on Ceodore, son of FINAL FANTASY IV heroes Cecil and Rosa. He is ably supported by a host of familiar faces from the original cast who star in a series of additional tales.

For more information, please visit the official website at http://www.ff4theafteryears.com.

About FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: My Life as a Darklord

Developer: Square Enix Co., Ltd.
Publisher: Square Enix Ltd.
Platform: Wii
Genre: Real Time Strategy
Launch Date: 2009

FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: My Life as a Darklord puts players in the highly fashionable shoes of the Darklord's daughter, a malevolent little Miss, charged with dispatching intruding do-gooders by strategically placing traps and monsters around the tower she calls home.

Players will need to get their hands on ever more diabolical traps and abominable monsters to stop those pesky adventurers from making it to the Dark Crystal at the top of the tower. Be warned, though – with heroes of all the races and job classes from the FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES series storming the Darklord’s lair in real time, traps and minions will count for nothing unless deployed like a true evil genius. Anything less and the Darklord’s beloved home will be reduced to rubble!

For more information, please visit the official website at http://www.MyLifeasaDarklord.com.

Review: Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride

2009-03-24T16:35:00.000-07:00

In the days before the 2002 marriage of Square and Enix into the RPG colossus we know today, Dragon Quest, or Dragon Warrior as it was known in North America, seemed to be aimed at more of a niche audience—far from the widely popular (and highly publicized) series it is today in Japan.

In fact, it’s probably a safe bet that most westerners had never even played a game in the series until Dragon Quest VIII hit north American shores back in 2005. Such was the fate of many a localized Enix title when it was still a standalone company.

But since 2002, it hasn’t been just the former rival companies that have benefited; gamers have as well, and in spades. Aside from huge financial gains, the merger has arguably made it easier for Square-Enix to take chances by releasing old favorites here that not only have never been localized for western audiences, but also aren’t necessarily typical of the genre.

Case in point: Square-Enix’s release of the never-before-localized Dragon Quest V, a beautifully re-created iteration of the classic Super Famicom release. Like most games in the venerable series, this one is a classic throwback to the simpler times, when random battles were plentiful and characterizations were comparatively straightforward.

But that’s doesn’t mean that the game is just like any other RPG you can play on the market. To one extent or another, Dragon Quest has always struck me as a series with personality and true soul, something that sometime-overbearing, heavy-handed Final Fantasies can’t even always measure up to (although I’m nitpicking out of love in saying so).

Regardless, DQV is brimming with the series’ signature vitality. The game’s narrative follows a young boy’s journey into manhood, a path fraught with many personal hardships he must endure and ultimately overcome. Along the way, our intrepid hero has to navigate through life’s twists and turns, including personal responsibility, marriage and fatherhood.

For a game that originally came out almost 20 years ago Square-Enix has done an admirable job making Dragon Quest V stand out with a whole palette of lush, colorful visuals.

Even today, few RPGs try the life-lived approach, sticking instead to the basic “hero must save the world from impending doom” approach. While DQV employs a little of both, there’s a notable amount of basic humanity injected into the storyline, keeping things fresh and engaging throughout.

I actually cared more about the personal lives of the game’s small cast—that includes some of the NPC supporting characters—than I really did about the impending doom. That’s pretty impressive, especially for a game that originally debuted in 1991, when RPGs hadn't yet reached the epic levels they have today. Anyway, I don’t think I’m alone when I say that most of the time you play an RPG for the story, and DQV delivers a wonderful and even moving tale.

The game has some other innovations not seen in most games of its time, as well. Take, for instance, the Pokemon-style monster catching element of the game. If you’ve played Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker, you have the basic gist—you can catch monsters you fight in the wild and allow them to join your party as allies, the difference being that unlike Joker, you battle with your beasties rather than just watching them (that, and there’s thankfully a lot less grinding).

Combat in DQV may be old-school, but it's tried and true mechanics hold up well.
For monster-catching enthusiasts and completionists, this feature could add countless hours to the game’s overall length, and different monsters have their own spells and abilities. Monsters can be stored in your wagon or with a monster caretaker, which makes collecting more convenient than a chore.

DQV has standard linear progression inherent to the genre, but you can choose who you want to marry, which is an interesting twist, and the addition to talk to your party about contextual goings-on is a good addition. (You also have your traditional smattering of minigames and side-quests, although DQV, for the most part, sticks to the main story). Finally, I can’t be thankful enough of the game’s dual-screen presentation.

Like last year's DQ IV, this feature makes much quicker work of dungeons, since you can use both screens to check paths for holes and dead ends without actually having to walk down them. In towns and some other areas, the environments are semi or completely rotatable, which really adds a lot to the presentation.

Personally, I love the quaint, limited environmental renderings seen in 32-bit games like this—the charming juxtaposition of humble sprites, blocky geometry and bright, simple textures evokes a sense of character that isn’t always present in more powerful offerings.

DQV's dual-screen presentation is not only pretty, but it makes the chore of navigating maze-filled dungeons a snap.
Combat animations are the same way—simple and straightforward, you simply stare your enemies down in first-person, but the baddies are large, colorful, and very smoothly animated—there’s really aren’t any hitches anywhere DQV and even for being dated, the game offers some wonderful visuals to feast on (the roiling waves of the ocean in battle and a particular water themed-dungeon come to mind).

DQV is definitely old school, but there’s very little I have to say against it. Occasionally the game’s reliance on finding clues about where to go next through obscure conversation isn’t as helpful as it could be, and at around 25 hours you can blow through this one pretty fast (if you want to). But for all the game’s heart, humor and simple-yet-engrossing narrative, these are trifles.

It may be relatively quaint by today’s stand-by apocalyptic standards, but DQV is overflowing with what many other RPGs are lacking—a personality—that alone makes it worth a look. The other stuff? That's just icing on the cake.

Draqon Quest V: Hand of The Heavenly Bride
Square-Enix
Nintendo DS
$34.99
4.5 out of 5 stars

Resident Evil 5 Update

2009-03-13T23:06:00.000-07:00

Capcom appears to have released a patch you can download through XBox live that will update your system and allow RE5 to play on your machine.

Update to my update: The patch allowed us to load as far as the title menu, and then failed. I ended up taking the disk back to Best Buy and switching it out for a new copy, which has so far worked just fine.

I want my God-damn ZOMBIES!

2009-03-13T22:13:00.000-07:00

So, the boyfriend and I just got back from Best Buy, red Elite XBox 360 in hand. We set it up and popped in the Resident Evil 5 disk and... nothing. The disk sputtered a bit and then the system feebly asked us to open the tray and take the thing out of it.

We tried a few other 360 games I had lying around, and they all worked fine. I fired up my 360 and tried to run RE5 there.. same issue. And it looks like this is not limited to us.

What the fuck, Microsoft? W. T. F. May this post serve as a warning to other gamers at Portland State: snag the newest RE title at your own risk.

Killzone 2: E3 2005 debut vs. final product

2009-03-13T14:06:00.001-07:00

Ok, so here's a direct comparison Killzone 2, looking at what Guerrilla showed at E3 2005 (the game's first public appearance) and the final game, circa 2009.

And now, Killzone 2 as it actually plays, meaning all game footage in the trailer below is generated in real time using in-game graphics and effects.

So, did Guerrilla hit their target vision or not? What do you think?
For a full review of Killzone 2, hit up www.dailyvanguard.com/arts_culture.

Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection

2009-03-05T15:54:00.000-08:00

Worth it's weight in gold, Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection gives you 49 Genesis games (most of them good ones, too) for $30. In HD. What are you waiting for? For full review, check out www.dailyvanguard.com/arts_culture.

X-Blades trailer

2009-03-05T15:51:00.000-08:00

In conjunction with Bitrate, the regular short game reviews feature in the Vanguard. X-Blades is an all-out action hack and slash with a foxy, if whorish, female treasure hunter. Enjoy!

Quake Live open beta

2009-02-25T09:37:00.000-08:00

Yep, the glory day for FPS gamers everywhere has arrived. The Quake Live beta opened live to players last night. I've been attempting off and on to connect to the site, but so far to no avail. If the line for this thing could be visualized, I imagine it would be stretching out of several doors. Hopefully I'll have more interesting things to report on about the live beta later tonight.

Jack Black and a little illicit cross-platform action

2009-02-12T09:56:00.000-08:00

Video embedding was disabled for this clip, so follow the still shot for the full thing. Pretty much NSFW.

Dead Space to take gore-filled, interstellar horror to...the Wii

2009-02-03T19:54:00.000-08:00

Remember Dead Space? One of the scariest, (and definitely goriest) games to come out last year. Good game. Filled with claustrophobia and panic moments. EA Redwood Shores did a good job.

Now then.

You remember the Wii? Nintendo's cute 'lil family-oriented console that's largely geared towards kids and casual gamers? The one that has probably five good games for hardcore gamers that aren't ports from other systems?

Well, as weird as it may sound, there's going to be unholy marriage between them. That's right: today EA announced that a new Dead Space game is coming this year to Nintendo's child-friendly console.

The news broke during the company's fiscal third quarter earnings call today, when EA CEO John Riccitiello said that the intellectual property will be making its way to the Wii sometime this year. Riccitiello also stressed that the new game will feature the same elements that made last year's adventures through the abandoned Ishimura so damn scary on the PS3 and Xbox 360. Although no other details are known at this time, the new title will be its own unique take on the series built to take full advantage of the Wii's motion sensitive controls, according to an article on IGN's Wii page.

New Crystal Chronicles trailer released

2009-01-28T12:55:00.001-08:00

Nintendo has released a new trailer for Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers. Please, God, talk them out of using that music anywhere in the game.

Purple is the new ZOMG-cute

2009-01-28T12:29:00.000-08:00

I downloaded The Maw the day it was released on X-box Live Arcade, and I'm happy to say that this Arcade direct-download indie game has so far outlasted Fable 2 in play time and interest. Yes, a simple $10 arcade game has surpassed a fully-funded big-studio $60 360 title. Someone please give these kids at Twisted Pixel buckets of money, so that they might continue to develop their bundles of epic win.

It seems like it's always the simple-concept games that have the most impact, and The Maw is no exception. The premise is about as simple as it gets: You are a cute little alien. You have a pet alien that is even cuter than you are. It likes to devour things that are cuter than both of you mashed together. It is your job to help your pet, named Maw, to fangoriously devour everything in sight.

Over the course of this feed-fest, you and Maw encounter puzzles that must be solved using your laser wristband and Maw's insatiable appetite. Sometimes that appetite leads to interesting temporary changes in Maw, such as the ability to float or zap things.

Or, to develop a dozen more eyes and the ability to shoot laser beams:

Maw's nom-nom-nom noise gets my vote as the most adorable sound effect in a video game ever.

Chrono Trigger: Timeless

2009-01-21T01:24:00.001-08:00

After almost 14 years, countless overwhelmingly positive reviews and a status that borders on legendary, I can tell you there’s not much I can say about Chrono Trigger that hasn’t been said already.

The game was an instant smash when it was released in 1995, peaking the twilight years of the SNES. Fans and critics alike loved the concept, which took the masterminds behind Japan’s twin role-playing colossi, Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, and fused them together to create a sprawling, time-traveling epic. They loved the execution even more.

Six years went by. Square decided to re-release the game for the ps one, complete with a vastly improved translation and an assortment of flashy new anime cutscenes from the game’s character designer, Dragonball’s Akira Toriyama. Gamers everywhere went ga-ga, myself included.

Now, with the treads of the Square-Enix remake machine running arguably past full power as they have since 2006, Chrono Trigger is back for round three, this time on Square-Enix’s perennial favorite, the DS.

This new, travel-friendly edition has all the bells and whistles included with the ps one release, plus a touch screen mode which unclutters the game’s battle screens, an improved (read: richer and more nuanced) translation and a goofy monster battling mini-game reminiscent Dragon Quest VIII’s monster arena, among a few other surprises.

And while I could spend this review saying what’s already firmly been established—that Chrono Trigger is without a doubt one of the best RPGs ever made, as many so fervently believe—that would be a proverbial waste of breath.

What I can tell you is this: when you have a host of next-gen games at your fingertips and you still find yourself gravitating towards a 14-year-old game that made its debut before today's run-of-the-mill gaming technology had really even been in use, you know it’s something special.

The remake angle is not a new concept for Square, who have been re-releasing past Final Fantasy’s and other titles since well before they gave Chrono Trigger another chance in the limelight.

But unlike even past Final Fantasy reworkings, Chrono Trigger has arguably retained its damn-near immortal status not because just because it’s good, but because it’s a game with personality and character.

Sure, there’s plenty of games that have great characters or an engaging story, but few can pump the kind of blood into a tale like this one does—a tale of friendship, heroism, and good old fashioned good and evil. Like revisiting a classic film, the straightforward charms of both the game’s characters and gameplay will bring a smile to the face of even the most jaded gamer, something few games can pull this off this well, even today.

So, can you really improve on a classic? That seems to be the question that Square-Enix is driving at (or attempting to) with the changes pumping blood through this new iteration.

The new translation is, for the most part, a much deeper and more subtle script that adds to the overall experience, if in a slightly superfluous way.

The ps one’s translation was perfectly fine, and in some cases even better—for example, the decision to eliminate Frog’s quasi-Shakespearean mode of speech, present in the ps one edition a la Vagrant Story or the PSP’s Final Fantasy Tactics redux The War of the Lions, is a definite tragedy.

However, this is a minor complaint amidst a host of new or improved features.

The DS edition’s touch-screen capabilities are a nice touch, as is the handy and ever-present map that occupies the lower screen. The sweeping score remains an aural treat, and the anime cutscenes, ported over from the ps one release, look cleaner and (for the most part) sharper than ever. Even the little pauses that cropped up in the playstation edition after winning a battle have been (seemingly) reduced, and drastically.

And while its important for those of you who haven’t played Chrono Trigger to know that it plays like a game that was made in 1995, that shouldn't be a deterrent. In all likelihood, games wouldn’t be the same today without the important innovations Square first unveiled here.

Aside from the game’s engrossing clockwork narrative, Chrono Trigger set precedents with its multiple endings, unique battle system (goodbye, random battles) and new game plus, a concept that allowed you to take your leveled-up characters and play through the game with them again. All of these concepts have since been used in countless other RPGs.

The best form of praise (or perhaps the most paid attention to) I can give the game, however, is that it’s still a blast to play. Now that Square has seen fit to re-release it for the next generation of gaming tykes, I only hope they too can look past age and experience firsthand all the heart and soul this game has beating inside it.

Chrono Trigger may be well into its own twilight years now, but believe me—it’s still got it.

Chrono Trigger
4.5 out 5 stars
Square-Enix
Nintendo DS
$39.99

Prince of Persia: Big budget art?

2009-01-17T00:21:00.000-08:00

When Ubisoft relaunched the Prince of Persia series six years ago with its titular hero reborn as a rugged, strapping prince who had more in common with Shinobi than Ali Baba, you’d probably never have guessed the visage the character has now taken on.

Enter Prince of Persia, 2008’s confusingly self-titled next chapter (and latest reboot) of the series, starring a new prince who is evidently steeped in legend. Although the prince is simply known as just that, he isn’t a nobleman as his predecessor was in 2003's The Sands of Time. Actually, the new prince has little to with the princes of old.

No, the new prince, delivered via the series' development team at Ubisoft Montreal, is everything the old one wasn’t—a dusty, smartass scoundrel who earns a ragged living robbing tombs. He’s part Aragorn, part Indiana Jones and part Captain Mal Reynolds of Firefly fame.

The prince is good at climbing. This is a good thing, 'cause there's a lot of it.
The prince’s new rough-and-tumble look is only part of the equation, however. Although handy with a sword, his combat skills are tempered by the presence of Elika, a devoted princess (and priestess) who wields magic powers against the ‘corrupted,’ demon-like beings who pledged their loyalty to the dark god, Ahriman, who is (sort-of) let loose from his prison at the beginning of the game.

Together, Elika and the prince must cleanse the corrupted lands of…wherever they are, and when not effortlessly swinging and clambering across gorgeous landscapes, they're forced to face off in a series of heavily-cinematic battles with Ahriman’s would-be brood in order to save Elika’s nigh-abandoned kingdom.

Combat has also been modified and tweaked in the new Prince. Far more artistic than technical, there are only two attack types (gauntlet and sword), acrobatics and Elika’s magic. The result are often-climactic, film-like deathmatches that show the prince and his companion in various dazzling acrobatic signatures which highlight the game’s stunningly stylized art direction.

Unlike it's predecessors, combat in Prince of Persia is a one-on-one, cinematic affair.
So, if you’re expecting to find an evil vizier in this Prince of Persia, you won’t.
Call it the Batman Begins of the gaming world—And like Christopher Nolan’s take on the Dark Knight, Ubisoft Montreal’s recreated prince is emblematic of just how much everything old is new again in this game.

It’s actually a near-completely different interpretation of the series, similar in some respects to when Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura reimagined Hideo Kojima’s PS one classic Metal Gear Solid in the Gamecube’s MGS remake The Twin Snakes (although a bit more drastic).

But unlike The Twin Snakes, which could have been called “Metal Gear Solid: Ridiculous Action Movie,” (a jab I make lovingly—games wouldn’t be the same today without Kojima’s precedent-setting series) Prince of Persia may actually be something else entirely: an “art” game.

Take, for example, Elika. Her presence seems to draw some vague parallels to Sony’s PS2 title ICO, which paired a hero (a little boy with horns) with Yorda, a defenseless princess, on a quest to escape a mysterious castle.

Despite its fantasy setting, ICO feels and plays like an indie film (and rightly so, considering the game has been lauded for its unyielding originality, and many feel it’s responsible for starting the whole ‘games as art’ debate). And while Elika is an actual asset in battle, Prince of Persia doesn’t exactly feel like your run-of-the-mill adventure game, either.

The prince and Elika's travels take them through beautiful, lush environments.
The game actually has more in common with Shadow of the Colossus, Team ICO’s “boss-battle-only” spiritual successor-cum-quasi-prequel to ICO—also added to “art game” canon because of its unique combat structure.

Like Colossus, fighting in the new Prince amounts a series of simply-controlled, one-on-on boss and mini-boss battles that pit the prince and Elika against the guardians (as well as the occasional minion) of each of the game’s distinct, open environments, whose areas become more accessible as you progress.

Also like Team ICO's god-killing masterpiece, Prince of Persia’s open-ended world is vast and beautiful, although you won’t be felling monstrous beasts on horseback. Instead you’ll be spending most of your time traversing across an increasingly vertical world, whether you’re exploring, talking with Elika or healing corrupted lands, in a mix between adventure game exploration and straight-up platforming.

But perhaps the biggest thing about Prince of Persia which is suggestive of “art game” status is that you can’t die. Every time you fall down an endless chasm or are about to feel the rough blade of a corrupted in your chest, Elika’s mysterious light-based powers intervene.

In theory, this isn’t really that much of a departure from most any other game—you make your way through the game, fall down a pit, get attacked by a monster, are shot up by terrorists, whatever—after game over, you either start from a checkpoint or a savepoint.

Without Elika, the prince would be dead. A thousand times over.
It’s understandable why some might throw up red flags over my claim that a Prince of Persia could really be an “art game” to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Team ICO's efforts or those of Killer 7 creator Suda 51. To some degree, I wonder how it could be possible, too.

But hear me out: it's all in the game’s approach. Since the prince can't die, you can’t lose. And if you can't lose, the developers were obviously hoping gamers would find another emphasis on something other than the challenge.

Luckily, there’s myriad parts of the game with which to distract you. Gameplay is smooth, the world sumptuous and absorbing, and its unique mechanics, with a focus less on crossing blades than on running across cliffs and leaping over chasms make for an exciting time.

The prince himself is well developed, swashbuckling, and unlike his predecessors, often laugh out loud funny—particularly during in-game banter sessions you can choose to have with Elika (which makes sense, given that his vocal cords are supplied by none other than Nolan North, who brought Nathan Drake to life with same smart-ass personality in PS3’s Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune).

The game’s script often has the spirit reminiscent of the original Pirates of the Caribbean, complementing the new Prince’s high-end production values, its gorgeous cel-shaded character models and the wonderfully organic world rendered around them. The result is a game brimming with humor and heart.

Clearly, the prince has been through a lot. And he's got a smart mouth, to boot.
Ubisoft Montreal are also clearly a bunch of cinema lovers, which is evident in more than just the combat. Watching Elika cleanse the corruption from filthy, polluted wastelands into brightly lit, lush, colorful landscapes is a major visual treat that show off the game’s technical prowess and artistry, as are some of the game’s epic setpieces. Both bring to mind the kind of unique vision and execution of rousing adventure films.

Would the old prince ever have been able to springboard through the sky between giant globe-like flying machines ripped from the imaginations of Jules Verne and Tim Burton? I don’t think so.

However, as fun as the new Prince is, it isn’t perfect. Some players may find it hard to subscribe to the game's no-death philosophy, and others may be turned off by its “tap a button”-style combat and the general ease given with essential immortality.

Healing corrupted lands is just one of the many unothordox things you'll spend your time doing.
In it’s own way, Prince of Persia does still feel like you’re living out an ancient legend, albeit one that displays a different kind of storytelling than in The Sands of Time. But if art is defined as “thinking outside the box” then Prince of Persia is certainly worthy of such a description.

Like Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, which Russell Crowe once called “an arthouse movie with a big budget,” the gameplay in Prince of Persia isn’t your typical mainstream industry fare. Hell, the villain isn't even really present, aside from being a much talked about malevolent force.

There are snatches of industry standards, to be sure, but what Ubisoft Montreal has really done is taken the series, stripped it down to its bare essence, and rebuilt it from the inside out with a new, completely different body.

When not dealing with dark gods, the prince enjoys quiet walks in the countryside.
True, without the promise of death, the presence of real tension in the game is questionable, but maybe it’s not the point, either. If more games would take more risks like this, video games could very well develop into the same kind of multifaceted medium that film industry has become.

And if Ubisoft can do it to the new Prince, an unabashedly high profile game which wears its budget on its sleeve, maybe more companies should be able to take such chances. It’s likely that's precisely the message the game is trying to get across, otherwise such drastic changes probably wouldn't have made it beyond the stage of concept art.

It’s rare that art games move that many units, but it doesn’t make them any less important—such may well be the case with this game.

So, will the industry listen? Only time will tell. But even if Prince of Persia isn’t perfect, it too is important. It's bold and brassy, and most notably, tries something different. Do yourself a favor—don’t ignore this one.

Prince of Persia
4.5 out of 5 stars
Ubisoft
PS3, Xbox 360
$39.99

Princely quips

The prince definitely has a way with words, as is clearly seen in his conversations with Elika and elsewhere in the game. Here's some of our favorites:

P: - "Ugh! I was on my way home. I had more gold than you could--I'd'a had wine! Women! I'd had carpets this thick!"

P: - "Hey, you're cute, but not 'stay and fight a dark god' cute."
E: - "Would you have helped my father if he had asked you?"
P: - "He's not that cute, either."

P: - "Anything else you think you should be telling me?"
E: - "You're an idiot."

P: - "I like your top."
E: - "I think I have a spare if you'd like it."

E: - "Just be patient. Patience brings rewards."
P: - "So does walking into a harem covered with chocolate."

P: - "Do you often go falling out of the sky on to men? I mean, you're a good-looking girl and all...obviously pretty high maintenance, but you shouldn't need to go dropping out of the sky on to men."

P: - "Do corruption stains come out?"
P: - "Gods, monsters, crazy women...what's the difference?"
P: - "Run, jump, die, repeat. Run, jump, die, repeat. I'm starting to get the hang of this!"
P: - "She's not my girlfriend, she's my donkey."

Sheer beauty

2009-01-16T02:04:00.000-08:00

Benheck's PC Mod of the Day yesterday was absolutely stunning. Usually PC mods just don't do it for me beyond the initial "wow look at what someone else far more talented at making shit than I will ever be just made" reaction. They (usually) are awesome, yes, but my second thoughts are usually "damn that has to be a bitch to dust" or "yes but how do you feed the gold fish in there?

But this one..? My God. Wolfenstein 3-D was my first FPS ever as a kid. This case mod is magic. Pure, Nazi-gutting, magic.

Cheap Fan Service

2009-01-15T23:26:00.000-08:00

You know, for a development team comprised mostly of men, you'd think the team behind Fable 2 would get tired of hearing "we're through already?"

And yet, once again, Lionhead Studios has produced Fable content that is disappointingly short and sparse. To illustrate just how short the "extended" (really it should be called simply "additional" or maybe more appropriately "Haiku-esque in length") content that was released on the 13th is:

Yesterday afternoon, I logged in to Xbox live, forked over $12.50 to buy enough points to download the content, and waited 30 minutes on PSU's internet connection for my download to complete. Another hour after that, I was done with 2 out of the 3 new quests the expansion comes with, and I'd purchased all the new items in the (admittedly neat) surprise shop.

If I had known, after that hour that I was nearly done with the $10's worth of game I'd just purchased, I might have dallied a little longer. Stood on a cliff, maybe, and taken in the scenery with my trusty dog, Mr. Grrr.

As it is, it took me a few minutes to realize I'd already beaten it this afternoon, after merely one more hour of play, which included a stop back in Bloodstone to look after my family and get distracted at the gambling table.

It was only after I'd made one last, pitiful, hopeful round of Knothole Island that it sank in: I had finished all available quests and essentially paid $10 so that my character could wear sunglasses and a top hat. Really, Lionhead? That's all you had in you? Really?

Come on fellas. You built us one of the most beautiful sandbox worlds to play in, now please, put a little more effort in to the content before I leave you for good for a game that can go all night.

FFXIII in North America? Not before 2010, says Square

2009-01-15T18:45:00.000-08:00

Now that 2008 is officially over, Square-Enix is ringing in the new year with a major, and completely expected, delay. The victim? Final Fantasy XIII, at least in North America.

Don't say I didn't predict this.

Hot off his announcement that the next proper installment of Square's trademark series is expected to be out in Japan this year, company president Yoichi Wada is now saying that if you're expecting to see FFXIII this year in North America, you're out of luck. Wada confirmed as much in an interview with Reuters, saying the game won't see it's North American debut until at least April 2010.

But hey, FFXII took 5 years to come out right? Don't be surprised to see this pushed back until Summer 2010...at the earliest.

PS3...3D?

2009-01-09T17:00:00.000-08:00

Sony, Sony, Sony. What are we going to do with you? It's not like CES, Las Vegas' annual consumer electronics show, is really that big a deal (it's no E3 or Leipzig, or anything) but it seems like you'd want to bring a something a little more interesting than...3D PS3 games.

Yes, you read that right. At this year's show Sony had tech demos of Gran Turismo 5, Motorstorm and Wipeout HD running in RealD 3D, a new kind of 3D technology. So far, all the impressions I've read of Sony's demonstrations have been pretty positive. And while the idea of a 3D game is cool, this idea seems troublesome to me.

Aside from gamers having to wear 3D glasses in order to experience this technology, this feel like a gimmick to me. Anyone remember Nintendo's Virtual Boy? If that didn't work, (although Nintendo's console was situated so that it was almost impossible to play for more than 10 minutes before it became extremely uncomfortable--Sony's just asking you to wear a pair of dorky glasses like some Persona 4 reject) I'm not sure it would work this time around, either.

Now, Sony stressed that these tech demos were just that--demonstrations of new technology experimentation. That means there are no official plans to make 3D PS3 games. At least, not yet.

The bottom line is, until we can get 3D holograph displays like the ones in Blade Runner, should gaming really move in this direction? It seems like a bit of a misstep. Why don't more developers continue to try thinking outside the box in terms of game innovation? LittleBigPlanet, Mirror's Edge, Braid--last year these games (to name a few) made gamers think in new ways, while delivering on the sort of forward thinking the gaming industry needs--especially if we're really supposed to get "next-gen" games.

Look, the idea of games that "pop", even at the cost of wearing ridiculous 3D glasses, is admittedly kind of cool, but c'mon guys. Until the industry starts taking itself in a more creative direction, can't we focus on making games more progressive instead of just making them a tiny bit flashier?

Thanks to IGN's PS3 site for the story.

Obama likes Wii bowling!

2009-01-08T22:08:00.000-08:00

It seems that Obama likes to play Wii Sports' bowling, according to John Harwood of The New York Times political blog. Obama actually claims to be better at Wii bowling than he is at actual bowling. The important part of the article, titled "Obama predicts a Florida victory," as is follows:

"Mr. Obama said he’d have his hands full attempting to rescue the American economy. But he has gotten in a little practice in bowling lately on the Nintendo Wii his daughters received for Christmas. Mr. Obama, who famously struggled in bowling during last year’s Democratic primaries, said he performs better in the video game."

That's right, Mr. president-elect Obama! We knew there was a reason we voted for you. Please keep supporting the industry. But not with crap Wii shovelware. A man who wants change would know better than that, right?
Thanks to our dear friends at the New York Times Political blog.

Manhunt 2, uncensored

2009-01-07T23:52:00.000-08:00

Any of you remember the great Manhunt 2 scandal?

I was perusing GamesRadar's wonderful website earlier this evening when I came across this little gem. That's right, view 'em and weep--here's all of Manhunt 2's gory, gory, gory kill videos in all their uncensored, uh, mediocrity. Be warned--this video is extremely graphic and violent (duh) and is also guilty of not aging well, despite only being a year old.

So, now you can take solace in the fact that you're allowed to see what the ESRB so many gamers were so horribly cheated out of last year, or cry because of how silly and stupid most of it looks now, how much of an uproar people were thrown into over its existence, and how Rockstar could have easily just cut a few of these scenes and the game would have been fine. It's up to you.

EGM obit -- R.I.P.

2009-01-06T20:32:00.000-08:00

Electronic Gaming Monthly
1989-2009
Electronic Gaming Monthly, a well-known gaming publication revered for its high quality editorial content, died today after nearly two decades of coverage, following the buyout of its mother company, Ziff Davis, to competitor Hearst. It was 19 years old.

Through its staff of talented writers and editors, EGM provided solid, and often exclusive, cross-platform game coverage through five console generations, starting in 1989. In addition to its North American branch, the magazine launched outfits in Mexico, Turkey and Brazil in its nearly two-decade run.

In its final months, it was rumored that Ziff Davis would sell the magazine's digital counterpart, 1up.com, to Hearst, and the fate of EGM would go with it. Tragically, the rumor was true, and Hearst, owners of ugo.com and many of the world's most powerful newspapers, passed on continuing the magazine, which remained brave and faithful to the industry which it served until the end.

One of the last great gaming magazines, gamers across the nation will be hard-pressed to find a replacement to fill the hole EGM has left not only in the industy, but in our hearts.

A print orphan, EGM is survived by 1up.com.

Tomb Raider: Underworld is a series pinnacle, if an imperfect one

2009-01-03T02:22:00.000-08:00

In the first few minutes of Tomb Raider: Underworld, developer Crystal Dynamics really push the game’s bombast. The building Da Vinci Code-esque title screen music, Lara’s escape from a burning Croft Manor in the first level, the script’s timely cut to a week previous just as Lara is inexplicably getting shot at by her allies—these are all epic hooks to draw you in.

Then Ms. Croft is plunked into the Mediterranean, determined to scuba her way to (what else) an ancient artifact. Compared to her brief jaunt through the flaming wreckage of her home, Lara’s exploration of the Mediterranean and the submerged ruins beneath it feel downright tranquil. Even when she encounters a screen filling Kraken, the beast just seems sleepily annoyed at Lara’s presence, only tentacle-lashing her if she gets too close.

These might seem like points against the game, but they aren’t. Rather than arming Lara to the teeth and making her blast the mythical creature to kingdom come, you’ve got to figure out a way to break a giant stone chandelier-looking structure hanging from the ceiling to crush the Kraken’s head with a brains-over-brawn approach that’s prevalent throughout.

However, with its surprisingly solid story, high production values and some occasional fireworks, Underworld certainly does its best to be the most epic Tomb Raider to date. But with the game’s more natural exploration and beautifully-crafted environmental puzzles taking precedence over gunning down faceless goons and wild critters (as has sometimes been the case in past games), the game is actually a quieter affair, if one that’s no less compelling, than its opening moments might have you believe.

Instead, this is Tomb Raider in its element—if you don’t want to spend all your time exploring dead cities and secret passages, Underworld isn’t the game for you.

Underworld's grapple mechanic is much improved over previous iterations.

In terms of both story and design, the game is also as much about Crystal D’s previous efforts with the series as it is a standalone game. The caveat is that while Underworld is great in its own right, some shoddy technical problems with the game force me to say so with some trepidation, based on the series’ past mistakes and marred track record.

The developer’s first shot with Ms. Croft, 2006’s Tomb Raider: Legend, introduced gameplay far more fluid than the stubbornly rigid originals, essentially giving the series an update for the current generation while allowing Tomb Raider another chance to go toe-to-toe with its competition—something a number of unoriginal sequels that were rushed in time for Christmas had been preventing for years.

Legend was a much-needed breath of fresh air for the series, although it kept some action-game elements and modern locales for Lara to traipse about in addition to her usual crypt-like haunts. Crystal D followed up Legend with 2007’s Tomb Raider: Anniversary, essentially a re-imagining of the original game complete with its isolating, damn-near enemy-less design.

Both games felt and played well, earning the series more acclaim than it had seen since ’97’s Tomb Raider II—it was obvious Crystal D had taken the time to get things right.

Which brings us to Underworld, the team’s first release that takes advantage of both the PS3 and the Xbox 360’s hardware. While technically a continuation of the events in Legend (prepare to be confused if you haven’t played it), Underworld is a mash-up of sorts, taking some of the better elements of the last two games while wrapping up Legend’s story arch, which deals with Lara looking for her believed-to-be-dead mother in the Norse land of the dead.

The environments Lara explores are bigger and more impressive than ever.

The game’s levels are actually the stars of the show. Unlike Indy, Ms. Croft could never get by just on personality (although Lara has shown more depth than ever before since Crystal D took over), but thanks to the team’s talented level designers, she doesn’t have to. Underworld’s various sites of antiquity, from Thailand to Mexico, are impeccably rendered and lighted, wondrous to behold and massive enough that you’ll have to stop and figure out where to go or what to do next.

The game retains linearity, but in these huge, open environments everything feels much more natural. Exploration has always been a cornerstone of the series, and thankfully Crystal D doesn’t shy away from it here. Whether you're negotiating traps, solving wonderfully conceived ancient puzzles or simply trying to get from point A to point B, this is the most organic Tomb Raider yet, and as a result, gameplay is a lot of fun.

Yet for all its sweeping grandiosity, Underworld tears a little more at the seams than either Legend or Anniversary. For every sprawling jungle or temple Lara encounters, there are inconsistencies with the frame rate, and with every brain-busting puzzle there are glitches between animations and invisible barriers around objects which Lara can and often will get stuck on.

Each time the game draws you in with beautiful graphics and awesome, gargantuan setpieces like a cavernous room of giant swinging pendulums in the shape of Norse hammers—and it will happen plenty—these numerous little problems will rob you of some of the experience. I don't like to nitpick, but when the final boss of the game gets stuck in the air until you move to a part of the level that triggers another set of attacks, it kind of takes away from the overall experience.

Poor dead critters.

The game is also a bit short, although new downloadable levels coming out sometime early in 2009 could increase the length to some extent. Sadly, Underworld’s DLC is exclusive to the 360 version of the game at the moment, so unless Sony starts making overtures to Crystal D, it's unlikely PS3 owners will see the full story on their console.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Underworld, for as long as it lasts. But both because of the aforementioned missteps the series has seen in the past, as well as Crystal D’s success in reviving Tomb Raider into a capable series, these little chinks in Underworld’s armor are more than just annoyances—they’re distressing warning signs that future games could be shipped half-done just to make a buck.

Since Underworld is the close of a multi-game story, it seems logical that Crystal D will go back to the drawing board for whatever’s next for Lara, taking their time to put out a new revamped game that breaks the formula they’ve more or less perfected. But for better or worse, Underworld is a reminder of how much fun that formula can be, and is a proper send-off of the series until Lara’s next adventure.

Tomb Raider: Underworld
4 out 5 stars
Eidos
PS3, Xbox 360
$59.99

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Sonic Unleashed shows there's still some hope for the series, but its got a ways to go

2009-01-03T02:16:00.000-08:00

I’ll get straight to the point: Sonic Unleashed is a tease. A horrible, horrible tease. Sonic’s name has always been synonymous with going really fast—a mechanic that’s never really gotten old in his nearly-20 year run, even if the games haven't always exactly delivered on it.

That might sound too simple a formula to really work in longevity, but to most veteran gamers worth their salt, it’s the truth. All we really want out of our Sonic experiences is to have the rush of speeding breakneck through everything in sight.

Sonic Team doesn’t seem to want to get this through their heads.

Instead of just giving us what we want, Sonic’s creators have spent the past decade soiling his adventures with hackneyed gimmicks since the debut of his first legitimate 3D game, 1999's Sonic Adventure.

To wit: Sonic vs. his darker, more-extreme-twin, Shadow (who eventually turns out to be a gun-wielding hedgehog), Sonic tethered to two other teammates at all times, and an on-rails Sonic saving pages from Arabian Nights are just a few examples.

Critical reception has ranged from mediocre to abysmal, mostly due to numerous technical glitches, poor design, shoddy gameplay and a recurring god-awful camera. Unleashed doesn’t suffer from all of these problems, but the game does prove that there’s still has a long way to go in Sonic’s slow re-ascent towards legitimacy.

Basically, Unleashed’s gimmick takes Sonic and transforms him into a werehog with inexplicable stretchy arms when the sun goes down. Yes, you read that right. Sonic the werehog. Who can stretch like Mr. Fantastic. Um…what?

WTF?

So, with this new conceit, you’re basically given A Tale of Two Hedgehogs.
In daytime stages, you play as the Sonic we all know and love—the fast one. And when you’re controlling everyone’s favorite speedy blue ‘hog, Unleashed just about sings.

Daytime Sonic’s levels are silky smooth, (mostly) hyper-fast levels that change from 2D to 3D and back. If Sonic Team had stopped right there, the game would have been damn good from beginning to end.

When the moon (always full for some reason) is out, however, things get a bit wonky. Taking control Sonic the werehog—a slower, tougher, brawling-prone beast—results in a play style that’s completely different, turning the game into a brawler/platformer that’s something akin to a more-cuddly God of War rip-off.

I know what you're thinking—“I don't need brawling in my Sonic games.” Believe me, I agree. But as far as some of Sonic Team’s past design efforts go, Unleashed isn’t as bad you might think.

Past the first few werehog levels, which are little more than derivative slogfests through hordes of cookie-cutter enemies, the level design opens up a little, offering up levels of genuine platforming rarely seen in the series.

Sonic’s werehog also has a pretty decent selection (although not initially) of tap-combos, again mostly straight out of God of War. The move list increases with collected experience, which enemies drop, which can then in turn be saved and distributed amonst various attributes such as your strength or life meter (ripped straight from Kingdom Hearts and Onimusha, respectively). Experience also works for regular Sonic, giving upgrades to speed and speed-boosting ring energy, which is a nice touch.

Once you upgrade your werehog moveset, what enemies you do encounter can be dispatched in short order—sometimes combat’s even fun, if only for a little while. But it’s the platforming that’s still the best part of Nighttime Sonic’s levels.

As much as you might not like Sonic as a werehog, his slower style lends itself really well to this kind of gameplay shift, and once they start focusing more on jumping-obstacle-courses, Sonic Team’s level designs are actually pretty good.

Platforming bits save Sonic Unleashed's nighttime levels.

Tying night and day together are some light RPG elements, held-over from the days of Sonic Adventure. As such, Sonic travels all over the world to various cities, helping citizens fend off the advances of “Dark Gaia”, which the nefarious Dr. Eggman not only used to transform Sonic into a werehog in the first place, but unleashed monsters from the planet’s inner core as well. The story makes little sense, but it also doesn’t really matter.

These various world-themed cities, towns and hamlets serve as hub levels to both night and day stages. I personally have never much cared for RPG elements in Sonic games—if I wanted those, I’d play Bioware’s Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood.

And although I don’t see holding inane conversations and solving gee-whiz problems for people as part of the hedgehog’s job description, other than adding a layer of tedium to gameplay, they’ve never been too much of a problem. I had a different experience with Unleashed, for two reasons.

First, Sonic Team elected to place collectable sun and moon medals in each level. Ok, just another platforming “thing to collect", right?.

Wrong.

See, it turns out that its mandatory to pick up a certain number of these medals to access new night and day stages. That would all right, if all the medals per level could be snatched up relatively easily. Most of them can, but some are hidden and require some searching.

So if you haven’t picked up enough medals, sooner or later you’ll effectively hit a break wall and be forced to play through levels you’ve already beaten. This isn’t so bad when you’re replaying Sonic’s daytime levels, but looking for medals in Unleashed’s slower-paced nighttime levels can be a huge chore, and one that artificially extends the game’s overall length.

My point is, no game should punish you by forcing you to replay levels just to collect things you may have missed the first time around, especially when it doesn’t even make a big to-do about when said items are even for.

It would be one thing if there was emphasis on collecting the medals actually does—like how Mario games always make the point that stars open locked doors—but that isn’t the case here. Couldn't these medals have been used to unlock something less detrimental, like mini-games or secret passages or something?

My second point also has to do with cheap ways to extend a game’s length. Like RPGs that make you grind levels until your brain is mush just to beat a certain dungeon, Unleashed is sometimes incredibly vague about game progression, meaning you’ll waste a lot of time trying to figure it out where to go or what to do next.

On several occasions I had to wander around a town where I thought I should be, only to find that I was either a) in the wrong place entirely or b) lacking some gained skill only found elsewhere that I could use to get to wherever the game was telling me to go.

So, if I was told that I had to go beat the boss in the desert temple, what I actually had to do was go to a city halfway across the world, beat a level in that, and then come back. This is not good game design, and leads to an overall uneven presentation.

Now that's more like it.

Outside if the RPG-lite realm, Unleashed has some other problems as well. Controlling the werehog can sometimes be a little sluggish, and things can only be grabbed on to after a green targeting reticle locks on, which feels unnatural and can sometimes hamper platforming segments.

The camera can sometimes be annoying during the nighttime levels, too. Although most of the time it’s fully 3D, occasionally Sonic Team snatches away control to present a more cinematic view of the action, but this can also present problems when trying to land a death-defying jumps.

In sunny levels, sometimes obstacles or turns come up way too fast, resulting in instant death until you get the hang of a course. The occasional light platforming elements in the day stages also feel like an afterthought, and often do little but frustrate and break up the level of speed.
I’m harping on Unleashed flaws for a reason, though. On the one hand, there’s some really great ideas at work here—yes, even in some of the nighttime stages. Finally, Sonic’s traditional levels are coming together after 2006’s truly awful reboot Sonic the Hedgehog, with a good balance between speed, dexterity and player control.

Futhermore, the nighttime levels help break up the pace of the game with some pretty good platforming. There are also some pretty cool boss fights, including one particularly badass encounter pitting Sonic against a G-Darius-type fish robot that actually plays like a horizontal arcade shooter.

But the point is, the aforementioned problems keep the game from being something truly special, and, let’s face it, the werehog conceit seems like something you would more likely find in a spin-off title rather than an actual Sonic game.

Faster than a galloping werehog.

Unleashed remains a tease because in its moments of greatness, it shows us how good a 3D Sonic game can actually be. The daytime levels are dangled in front of us like bait, and really, that’s what keeps us playing through the rest of the game.

I completely understand and applaud Sonic Team for wanting to inject some innovation into the long-running series, and I don’t fault them for it. But you’ve got to know your source material—will this new idea work, given what this series is known for? With Unleashed, it doesn’t always.

I’ve got news for you, Sega. There’s plenty of old-school gamers that would love to see Sonic return to his former greatness, but this isn’t the best way to go about it. No one really cares about Sonic’s annoying, cuddly friends (that weren’t in the original games). No one wants to make Sonic run around fulfilling mundane tasks.

No one wants to play as a slow, lumbering hedgehog. Save those ideas for other games, or at least don’t make Sonic do them himself. Just because I actually enjoyed Unleashed more than I thought I would, but that doesn’t mean its developers shouldn’t be held accountable for its shortcomings.

You’ve showed us that its possible to make a great hedgehog game with the high speeds we’ve all been clamoring for for years—the blueprints are all right here. So next time, put your money where your mouth is and give us a long-overdue Sonic title that’s completely worthy of the series name.

Sonic Unleashed
3 of out 5 stars
Sega
PS3, Xbox 360
$59.99

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Banjo-Kazooie’s latest outing throws a wrench in the works

2008-12-28T17:52:00.000-08:00

I don’t envy Banjo and Kazooie. After only defeating witchy villainess Gruntilda a handful of times in Banjo-Kazooie games over the past decade, the duo have fallen into lethargy, fattening up with a perpetual routine of video games and pizza—at least according to the conceit that begins their newest adventure, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.

Nuts & Bolts establishes the now retired duo living lazily at their home in Spiral Mountain, which makes sense since they haven’t had a proper console adventure since the heyday of the N64. And when I say lazy, I mean it—bear and bird have become so out of shape that Banjo now sports a hefty, blubbery gut, and Kazooie can’t even fly.

This may seem a slightly bizarre approach to begin a new long-overdue installment of a successful platforming series, but Nuts & Bolts isn’t your typical platformer. Rather than simply giving Banjo and Kazooie an HD facelift and a new world to play in, developer Rare opted to go for something else entirely with Nuts & Bolts: a self-aware platformer with vehicular gameplay.

So, whereas you’ll still be collecting tokens, notes (the game’s currency) and Jiggies—Banjo’s equivalent to Mario’s stars—in Nuts & Bolts, you’ll mostly be doing so in land, water and air-based crafts you build yourself. That being said, this isn’t strictly a racing game. There are plenty of races, sure, and most every challenge in the game is timed, but there’s the game’s vehicle building and platforming mechanics make it more of a hybrid.

Nuts & Bolts' whimsy even spills over into its aesthetic style.

Game self-awareness on the level of Nuts & Bolts' is something of a rarity in the industry. Although it may just look and feel like a kid’s game at first, the game’s sharp writing makes use of every opportunity to take jabs both at itself and the game industry in general, with plenty of sarcasm and self-reflexive humor.

This is clear from the very start, when the Lord of Games, or L.O.G., shows up and actually pauses the game, stopping a fight that’s about to break out between Banjo, Kazooie and old Grunty’s head, which has reappeared to hound the duo.

“Greetings, second-rate game characters!” L.O.G. greets the trio.

If Nuts & Bolts’ intro, which makes fun of platforming conventions and plot devices is anything to go by (and it is) the game is rife with parody. After L.O.G., the creator of all games, forces Banjo and Grunty to race collecting as many pointless game objects as possible, (a genre convention most gamers will recognize instantly) it magically makes Banjo and Kazooie fit again and gives Grunty back her body.

When Kazooie protests that she no longer has any of her old moves from previous games, L.O.G. dismisses them as ‘outdated’. Finally, bear, bird and witch are forced to follow L.O.G. on vehicles, of which will transport our heroes throughout the game’s world, Showdown Town.

Like previous Banjo adventures. (or most platformers since Super Mario 64) Showdown Town serves as a hub from which the game’s levels can be accessed, challenges taken on and jiggies obtained. To do so, you’re given a bucket of bolts that vaguely reminiscent of a shopping cart to get around in.

For a platformer, Showdown Town is massive, with various districts and distractions and townsfolk (including familiar faces like Mumbo Jumbo, the series shaman who now owns a garage) to talk to, and thanks to Nuts & Bolts’ uber-slick, cartoony aesthetic you feel like you’re driving through a living, breathing place, like something out of a Shrek-type CG film.

Although you’ll want to stick to your vehicle most of the time, bear and bird can still perform a few basic functions.

This time around, Kazooie is restricted to simply using a helpful magical wrench, which can pick up objects, turn over vehicles, and perform automotive adjustments on the fly, thanks to Nuts & Bolts’ use of the item manipulation friendly Havok engine, and Banjo can still…uh, run around, jump and swim.

Once you leave the town and enter a level, however, you aren’t restricted to your metal-box-on-wheels when selecting a vehicle to traverse the game’s gorgeous environs.

Gameplay herein involves finding and accepting challenges, activated by talking to new and returning characters in the levels. Winning challenges in turn nets you more jiggies, which are used to unlock new levels.

Challenges come from in a variety of forms, ranging from something simple, like racing someone around a route made into the level, hard, like protecting a helpless character or location from hordes of Grunty’s new malevolent grunt-bot henchmen, or ridiculous, like hard-boiling a giant egg by transporting it into an active volcano.

Occasionally Nuts & Bolts forces you to use a vehicle designed for a particular task, but most of the time, you have free reign over what mode of transportation you pick. Collected notes can be used to buy new vehicle parts and blueprints, which brings us to the game’s most fun feature: its robust vehicle editor.

Nuts & Bolts’ open-ended design lets you change, modify, or completely scrap vehicles to build something new. And although creating a running vehicle could sound daunting to non-gearheads such as myself, the process has been streamlined for gamers of any age.

Whether you’re building from a blueprint or starting from scratch, the process is simple—lay down the basic components in your rotatable workspace and the editor will display each part in green, red or yellow if the vehicle’s components will or won't work together, or if something’s missing.

The game’s varying challenges make modifying and creating new vehicles necessary, but the trial and error process is also a lot of fun. Until you get a basic grasp of weight, physics and part stats, you’ll probably be laughing at yourself over some of your results.

Finally, when you think you’re all set for a level, you can test out your contraption using the game’s in-garage test course. The ability to access Mumbo’s garage in Showdown Town before starting any challenge is also a welcome feature, which makes performing vehicular tweaks a breeze, and saves you from the tedium of driving back to the garage or entering a level to test out your new creation.

As you progress in the game, you can work your way up from basic cars to anything from a series of connected cars that look like a centipede to jumping, four-wheels cube covered in weapons—simply put, the only limit to how ridiculous you can make something is your imagination, so long as you have the necessary parts.

And much like the game’s whimsical aesthetic, the aforementioned humor is everywhere. Much like the mission structure in open world games like No More Heroes and Grand Theft Auto, Nuts & Bolts eschews a deep narrative for a script that mostly involves conversations with characters presenting challenges, but its still often pretty funny.

Although in previous games Kazooie has been the cynical one, in Nuts & Bolts, both she and Banjo have become pretty jaded, and are well aware when they’re being asked to participate in a useless fetch quests or menial tasks to the point where the two often chastise or make fun of characters who seem less aware of their own game-based existence.

Constant in-jokes and references also pop up frequently, in levels like Banjo-Land, an amusement park-like area themed after locations from previous Banjo adventures, (now presented as a museum), and LOGBOX 70, which is basically the inside of a giant Xbox 360, complete with spinning game discs of old Rare titles.

Familiar themes and the series’ trademark unintelligible-animal-noise “voice acting” are present as well, and Nuts & Bolts even breaks the fourth wall by having elements the game admits were cut from the final release appear in cameos (read: inflatable sheep), making this one a much smarter game than you might assume from the constant presence of a dopey-looking bear.

Aside from the game’s great sense of humor and creativity, though, Nuts & Bolts does have a few loose screws. For one, the game’s challenges range greatly in difficulty, and, much like any game with racing elements in it, computer controlled characters cheat from time to time.

On top of that, some vehicles’ controls are way too sensitive—to the point where one turn taken slightly the wrong way will result in a series of unwieldy turns or circular spins, which, in a timed-based event against perfect CPU opponents is often the kiss of death.

But the most disappointing thing about Nuts & Bolts is that its creative mechanical design and clever sensibilities don’t always follow-through in the game’s challenges, which are usually little more than races, escort services, attack or defend scenarios, or item fetch quests. Given the sheer amount imagination in the rest of the game, it seems an almost criminal misstep that more inventive tasks weren’t used, and can make the game feel more frustrating than it should.

While this isn't a make or break deal, it is worth noting—the game certainly wouldn’t be any worse with more platforming elements and more varied tasks for vehicle use. Surprisingly, it doesn’t ruin the experience, and for what it does, the game does pretty well.

Nuts & Bolts may not be for everyone—the vehicular mechanic is far more than a gimmick, but it’s the kind of thing you’ll either love or hate. Regardless, Rare took a big chance with the game’s mechanics, and its innovation and reflexive nature is exactly the kind of forward thinking the industry needs, even if Nuts & Bolts’ level design could have used a little more time under the hood. Whether you’re a gearhead or are just looking for something different, this one puts the screws to the competition (sorry, I couldn’t resist). Check it out.

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Next Suikoden title to be in pocket form

2008-11-20T19:19:00.000-08:00

Okay, it would have to be a pretty big pocket to hold a DS, even a DS Lite. The trailer is still both exciting and awesome.