This is it — what almost all RPG fans have been waiting for. Square released a PS3 Final Fantasy XIII demo overnight in Japan, and after the dramatic changes set in Final Fantasy XII, players’ expectations have been running high. After finishing the demo, I have to say I like where things are going.
Here are a handful of things that the demo does differently from other games in the series:
There’s no MP. That’s right, use all the magic you want.
There are no level-ups or XP.
There are no random battles, with all enemies seen on-screen.
Combat moves very quickly, and you can queue up to three actions at a time.
Saw is the latest horror movie turned game. Recently, the trend has gone the other way, notably with Resident Evil and — sticking with the Konami theme — Silent Hill, Saw’s grounding in a more realistic world of horrible, unthinkable choices (when compared to the straight-up action of other survival horror titles) would seem to present a development challenge. Developer Zombie Studios hopes to evoke that same panic and frenzy that permeates the films, of being trapped by a pathological madman, in their game adaptation.
Like in the movies, the game drops you into a series of the Jigsaw Killer’s traps, and forces you to find your way out. Videotape messages and clues scrawled in books lead you along the path to freedom, and you can interact with others also trying to find their way out — though some more dangerous characters, driven mad by the situation, are not so approachable. John Williamson, president of Zombie Studios, says that, unlike Silent Hill, Saw isn’t “something supernatural and ghosty,” but, “it can still build a sense of dread of the unknown.” Every time you open a door, there might be a shotgun rigged to blow your head off, and you have to think fast to get around those hazards.
It’s safe to say that I’m quite surprised to see that IO Interactive’s (Kane and Lynch, Freedom Fighters, Hitman) next game consists of adorable panda bears and squat ninjas taking on large samurai demons; it seems the developer is tired of heading home to the rugrats with garroting on the mind. This upcoming action adventure game is called Mini Ninjas, and its colorful, anime-esque art style definitely has that “family-friendly” quality to it. But from what I saw during an early demonstration of the game (of the 360/PS3 version; Mini Ninjas will also be on DS/Wii/PC), it looks to provide some entertaining gameplay features, but served up with Japanese flare (you’ll even hear some of the enemies speaking in Japanese).
The story starts with a ninja-training village sending its most talented pupils off to fight an evil-doer who’s messing with the forces of nature. One-by-one, those students leave but never return, until soon there’s only Hiro and his best friend Futo left; they then are sent out as the last resort. You might say they’re the bottom of the barrel, but the tiny Hiro and the massive Futo have a lot of the spunk you’d find in a typical boy-oriented anime.
I control Wolverine as he tears through some Weapon X Security Guards like they were made of Swiss cheese; blood and hacked limbs lie everywhere. More guards appear. I lock-on and have Wolvie jump down the hallway to pounce on the first guard, pushing razor sharp claws into his chest, and then fling him at a second group of approaching guards. Such is commonplace with Raven Software’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, probably the bloodiest Marvel videogame ever, save The Punisher. Never known for pulling punches when it comes to gore — Soldier of Fortune was a pretty bloody game in it’s day — it’s clear that everyone involved in the game approached it from the “what if Wolverine was real, had these awesome claws, and then cut people with them…how would the human body withstand this punishment?” Well, the body can’t, and thus the result is a blood filled adventure that is sure to please fans who have always wanted Wolverine in his purist form: a violent uncontrollable beast.
The best part of my recent hands-on with the game was experiencing the fast, responsive, and fluid controls. Everything is tied to just a few buttons, nothing overly complicated, and the game does a great job of introducing each new ability. For instance, after I learned the aforementioned lock-on, I immediately faced enemies too far away for conventional attacks. It forced me to use my lock-on and lunge attack until it felt comfortable, but without making it seem like an obvious tutorial. And the more I killed, the more orbs I received (which are used to purchase upgrades like increased claw strength and accelerated regeneration), making me into an even more efficient killing machine..
When I first sawMarvel Ultimate Alliance 2 nine months ago, it had that ridiculous “Fusion” subtitle attached to the name, and I was taking a shot in the dark that the plot would be revolving around the Marvel’s Civil War storyline from 2006. Count a few points for the home team. “Fusion” has been dropped, and the game is most definitely taking cues from the Civil War storyline (more on that later). Now that the game is on its second round of press junkets, we had a chance to see how it’s shaping up last week during GDC. And while we haven’t seen a new level (the demo took place at Dr. Doom’s domain in Latveria, again) we do have some more details on how the game will play.
For starters, players are going to have access to 24 superheroes out of the gate. This will help get people acclimated to the Fusion ability — when two heroes are allowed to combine their powers for a special attack on the enemy (or a special buff for a friend). Any two heroes can perform a Fusion, and each Fusion combination is different; for example, Human Torch and Thor can create a fiery tornado. Then again, Thor can instead perform a Fusion with Captain America where he bounces his lightning bolts off of Cap’s shield. If you’re keeping count, that means there could be over 250 possible fusion attacks that you (or your friends, as the game still supports four-player co-op both locally and online) can perform during your play through of the game. But since we haven’t had a lot of ample time to actually play the game yet, we haven’t seen for ourselves just how varied the Fusions are in actual practice.
Br�tal Legend is a game you will go nutshit (Tim Schafer’s word) over. It’s also a love letter to the glory of classic metal — and a hate letter towards the lameness of hair metal. It’s a digital re-creation of the album art on Dio’s The Last in Line. It’s a true “heavy metal adventure” (funnily enough, that description was used for a past Schafer game, Full Throttle). It’s a story about, as Br�tal Legend protagonist Eddie Riggs says, “creating beauty by simply rocking.”
Those are all accurate ways to describe Br�tal Legend. There is a lot going on in Br�tal Legend, for it to be able to hit all of those notes outlined earlier. I have to admit, I wasn’t at all prepared for just how big Br�tal Legend will be. I only conceptually knew that it was some sort of action game with open-world elements into it. But this was the first time I’d actually seen any of it. And as much information I’ve had to absorb, Schafer and various members of the Double Fine team repeatedly noted that I’d only seen the beginning.
The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena — the confusingly titled package containing the Escape from Butcher Bay campaign, the Assault on Dark Athena campaign, and a handful of multiplayer modes — is out next week. We had it on this week’s Game Night if you want to gorge yourself on footage, and we’ll have a review soon. But for today, I asked the developers for a list of facts and trivia that we don’t know about the game, and Starbreeze gameplay desiner Martin Annander passed along the following:
Take a pinch of old-school N.A.R.C.’s action, a sprinkle of Gears of Wars 2’s intense gunplay, and wrap it all in an epic Final Fantasy-sized story, and you’d end up with R.O.I.D.S.. The upcoming squad-based shooter/brawler from startup studio Extr�mGames has high expectations, but after seeing the game in action first-hand it looks like they might just be able to pull it off.
In the interest of full journalistic disclosure, I was flown out to their Redmond, WA HQ (just down the street from the Microsoft campus) for this exclusive preview. Both my airfare and lodging were completely provided for as well as my meals. In this economic climate, not too many companies can afford to fly out press for these special screenings, but Extr�mGames is so confident that their freshman outing will be a success, that they’re not sparing any expense. From the outside of their office, you wouldn’t guess they make games in such an unassuming grey building, but inside it’s a whirlwind of computers, artists, pictures, and arcade cabinets — game designers definitely work in the most awesome places. For this first-look preview of the game I sat down with R.O.I.D.S. character artist and lead scriptwriter Michael Williams to discuss the game he describes as, “In-your-face, Arnold Schwarzenegger-style action mixed with Call of Duty 4’s multiplayer madness.”
The third day of this week’s Br�tal Legend cover story happened to fall on April 1. So I asked the team at Double Fine for a list of 10 things the public didn’t know about the game, expecting them to be responsible and factually accurate. Here’s what they came up with:
1) The rumor that Br�tal Legend’s manual was printed with the blood of children is not true — we only used the children’s tears.
2) Jack Black contributed enormously to the character of Eddie Riggs, improvising many dialog lines, and also suggesting that we mirror Eddie’s UVs and introduce secondary diffuse and normal textures with independent tile rates to improve his pixel density.
The first-person shooter genre has grown pretty formulaic. Due mostly to the outstanding sales success of the Call of Duty franchise, most FPS games follow the same rote formula without any innovation, clinging to the old adage, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But that also means as soon as a game’s announced, you can already predict exactly how the game will look and feel. Though, after watching a demonstration and playing a short bit of Wolfenstein, I have five reasons why you shouldn’t file Wolfenstein away as just “more of the same.”
1) It feels like Wolfenstein
Ok, Wolfenstein does bring back some of the same, but it’s returning with the good stuff. This is a direct sequel to Return to Castle Wolfenstein after all. Heck, it takes place almost immediately after the end of that game (when hero BJ Blazkowicz killed the recently-resurrected-via-dark-magic Heinrich); Blazkowitz then zips over to the fictional town of Eisenstadt to take on more Nazi goons. The first mission — which takes place at a train depot guarded ferociously by Nazis — plays like pretty much every other Wolfenstein (or World War II) shooter: scripted events, claustrophobic corridors, loud Nazis — the works. Familiar weapons, such as the MP40, the Kar98k, and the ubiquitous grenade, are all present and useable. The controls feel like the expected variation of most every post-Halo console shooter.
