February 2010 Archives

A new trailer for the upcoming High Moon developed title, Transformers: War for Cybertron, has been making the rounds and one of the things that's surprising about it is that everyone actually looks like a stylized Generation One character.

I'm actually happy that the designers are hitting the G1 designs again as a big fan of the original series. While I understand the positives that Michael Bay's interpretations have done for the franchise in bringing it to a new generation, one of the things I wasn't as much a fan of were the redesigns for the characters. Or in picking Hugo Weaving over Frank Welker for Megatron, but that's just me.

Other fans haven't been as forgiving, though. On the Transformers Wiki, there are even a few entries focusing on the terms that have come out in the wake of Beast Wars, the Armada series, and Bay's films...terms like "trukk not munkey", Pokeformers, and Bayformer, so it's not unusual to see how much love (or hate) fans of either side have for the franchise. There are even those that take the extreme stance in standing forever vigilant against anything that might see it ruined FOREVER.

But the game looks like it's going to try and bridge some of that with some fantastic action backed by old-school awesomeness. And Megatron doesn't look like a walking splinter farm in this one, so I have hope.

Quantic Dream's Heavy Rain can leave you feeling drained and beaten. As the name implies, it aims to soak you in sheets of emotional precipitation, doing so not with hurricane force, but with unrelenting, constant pressure.

Stories are the lifeblood of almost any game that doesn't involve a ball. Told well, they can keep the player sucked in for hours, jostling everything from their psyche to their moral compass. A poorly done story turns the experience into a chore, also shining the spotlight on the game's other problems.

Thankfully, Heavy Rain leans more toward the former, while also doing as much as it can to forward Quantic Dream's efforts to advance a gameplay style past the "acquired taste" phase of acceptance.

If you had bought Mass Effect 2 as a brand new game, you would get an access code to the Cerberus Network which came with a few pieces of free DLC as a nice bonus.

It was also another way of making a brand new purchase a far more attractive option than a used one since the code could only be used once. If you wanted the goodies but bought a used copy, you'd have to pony up $15 for a fresh code. It's also part of a trend in trying to make new copies of games more attractive to buyers than used ones. And Bioware is raising the ante with even more free DLC for would-be operatives.

According to the announcement on Bioware's Mass Effect 2 site:

"Free to all Cerberus Network members, the Firewalker pack includes 5 all new missions featuring the Hammerhead. Hovering over the battlefield at up to 120 kilometeres per hour, the Hammerhead also boasts a guided missile system ensuring accuracy even during aggressive maneuvering."

It won't kill the thrill of finding a favorite oldie at rock bottom prices, but it certainly gives another reason to buy a new copy depending on how much you think the DLC is worth it since it's still the complete game without all of the additional stuff. But getting a heaping load of free fun on top of what is already there? Now that's fan service.

Open up a game nowadays and you might get a warranty card disguised as a manual. Get a new computer, and you might get a fold-out poster showing where all of the color coded plugs go. But hop into the Nostalgia Machine, and you might discover how weighty manuals were back then when they couldn't stuff all of that information into a game or when companies needed to explain how PCs worked with ring bound booklets.

But how about a manual that ranted against the idea of DRM before it was known as DRM? A post on Ironic Sans (thanks BoingBoing), a site run by professional photographer, David Friedman, has a few snippets of a manual for the Franklin Ace 100 from the early eighties that rants against copy protection. Seriously. And this was from a PC manufacturer. Here's an excerpt:

The rest of the manual was also as humorously written and you can read the whole thing on Ironic Sans. Though the writer probably couldn't foresee the impact that technology such as torrents, FTPs, usenet, IRC, would bring to the table in conversations on piracy, some of what he says resonates pretty strongly almost thirty years later when brought up against draconian approaches like Ubisoft's online DRM.

It's also too bad that no one can get away with even a little humor within manuals due to someone that might take it seriously. It's probably along the same lines of why the trash talking in ads between console manufacturers had died out. For example, I can bet that you won't see a PS3 ad making fun of how many discs it takes for Xbox 360 owners to play FFXIII in the same way that Square had openly mocked cartridges (and the Nintendo 64 at the time) with a two page spread for FFVII.

But it would probably have been funny.

I played through Mass Effect 2 as a nice guy, so this clip showing Commander Shepard in full-on Jerk Mode let me know what kind of fun I missed out on.

I should also mention that it's a sometimes violent, but utterly spoiler-filled, clip, too, in case you're still trying to make your own way through the galaxy as either a friendly savior or a coldly ruthless space cowboy. But if you ever wanted to know how a recorded store endorsement could go horribly wrong, sit back and just wait for it. Shepard's in top form here.

As Funcom's MMOG, The Secret World, creeps closer to release by inches, the mystery surrounding the sleepy Maine town of Kingsport reaches another level with the discovery of a blog written by one of its characters.

There's some weirdness bubbling up from its streets, and here's the proof:

The author says it "might" be the Toad-Woman...or it might not. There are a few other 'photos' on the site that try to shed light on just what it going on down there, but if you happen to be driving along a lonely stretch of coastal road running through the New England States and have the itch for lobster, you might want to think twice about dropping by Kingsport. Unless you happen to belong to one of the secret societies that's trained for this kind of thing.

The Game Developer Choice Awards have picked coding guru, John Carmack, as this year's recipient of their Lifetime Achievement award according to the newshounds at Blue's News. With it, he joins other names such as Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear Solid, Policenauts), Wil Wright (SimCity, The Sims, Spore), and Shigeru Miyamoto (Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda) who have also won the annual award.

If you're not sure who he is, Carmack is the co-founder and technical director of id Software, the developer that many credit with single-handedly starting up the FPS revolution in the early nineties. The 3D engines that he developed for Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake along with his continual improvements have made an undeniable impact on the modern FPS. I can't even begin to count the hours spent in Quake II's multiplayer, or modding maps for Wolf 3D.

He also launches rockets in his spare time through the aerospace company he founded, Armadillo Aerospace.

It's been a long time in coming, but as a programming pioneer whose contributions have helped shaped how we play, it goes without saying that it's also as well deserved.

Bioshock 2 is the sequel to the "thinking man's" shooter which had shaken expectations within the slowly drowning underwater utopia of Rapture. The first game took place in 1960 and escaping it was the player's only goal after a mid-ocean airplane crash leaves him the only survivor. But in doing so, they also unraveled the city's fiction of shattered lives and lost, art-deco glory to individualism run amok.

I had meant to post this earlier, but got swamped. Everyone who's played ME2 has mined random planets for minerals. Minerals, as you know, contribute to research for weapons and ship upgrades. Some people, like myself, compare the scanning experience to that of maintaining a miniature zen garden, while others liken it to watching paint peel.

And there there are those who attempt to make hip-hop gold out of it. See. Love it. It even uses the music from the scanning / probing screen. Warning, there's EXPLICIT LYRICS, kids.

Tom Francis over at PC Gamer has a blog entry spelling out his experience with Assassin's Creed 2 on the PC. It's also one of the first titles to roll off the assembly line equipped with Ubisoft's new online-only service that I spoke about here and it's already sparked heated reactions.

Basically, Tom tested whether or not he could keep playing the game without an internet connection so he unplugged his network cable to simulate the effects of actually losing it, presumably in the middle of poisoning a few guards or while leaping across rooftops. He had to do it this way because he wouldn't have been able to even start the game if the launcher was unable to verify a connection in the first place.

Sure enough, the game reacted....in the worst way imaginable. It kicked him right out with a little message that said it had lost a connection to the server and was attempting to reconnect to restore the last checkpoint. The game uses the saves it has on the server to restore his progress. He notes that the saves are also local with an option to upload them or not, so in essence, the saves aren't all on the server - but he still needs to be online to even play the game.

So what will happen if their servers, your router, or even your cable service goes down? Exactly what happened to Tom. Assassin's Creed 2 doesn't even have multiplayer. The only reason to stay online is to play the game. You'll lose out on whatever progress you might have been making and be unable to play the game you paid for until the problem is fixed. And it isn't even a bug, it's a feature.

They won't be winning friends among the PC faithful that want to experience titles such as Assassin's Creed 2 with this approach despite the pleasant language Ubisoft's FAQ on the service is written in. I didn't even know that online saves were a feature that PC users desperately needed, but apparently Ubisoft has access to poll numbers that probably say otherwise.

Magic poll numbers that claim everyone's hard drive is liable to crash in the next 24 hours.

By Kristina Hernandez
Staff Writer

Have you caught the Flo yet?

PlayFirst, the creator of the popular Dash! PC game series, will launch its fifth installment, Diner Dash 5: Boom! this week.

This time around, its up to the player to rebuild a customized diner using 1,000 possible combinations using tips received after completing each level. (Tips can then be used towards the purchase of fixtures, decor and more, to create your dream diner.)

PlayFirst will release a special Collector's Edition on Thursday, which includes five advance levels of exclusive Diner Dash 5: Boom! game play, a strategy guide walk through to reach expert level, a behind-the-scenes digital art book (with sketch art and production concepts), an animated screensaver and wallpapers and a "Flo Over Time" Historical Retrospective.

The game also marks the franchise's first-ever Facebook Connect where players will be able to "gift" special in-game sneakers to their friends on the popular social networking site, as well as post high scores and trophies and take screen grabs of their decorated diners to post on their walls.

The collector's edition will be available for PC and Mac download for $19.99, followed by a standard edition of the game, which will be available for download on both formats March 4 for $6.99. The game can be downloaded off PlayFirst's website at www.playfirst.com, as well as other fun titles including a personal favorite of mine, "Cake Mania."

Stadium Events is considered one of the rarest of the rare. It's a Nintendo game from the NES era from Bandai, but its so rare that only 10 of these things are assumed to be floating around still intact. And someone just opted to pay $13,105 for a copy according to BoingBoing. Why so rare? According to Wikipedia's version of events:

• It was launched by Bandai America at one Woolworth's store which doubled as a test market for them in 1987. That's ONE store.


• In 1988, Nintendo purchased the rights to the mat technology that it used soon after, tech that would become the Power Pad


• All copies were pulled from shelves and presumably destroyed


• Only 2000 copies were believed to have been produced and only 200 of these actually reached customers before being pulled


• Collectors believe that fewer than 10 complete copies exist today, only one of which is factory sealed.

So when this auction shows up with a photograph showing a version of Stadium Events in a pristine box, it's as if someone had just thrown up the video game world's version of a rare baseball card. NintendoAge, a huge fansite dedicated to NES collectables, news, and sharing stories about their favorite games, have also caught on to the auction and have even given the seller a bit of friendly advice given the "lottery ticket" she had stumbled upon.

It might seem bizarre to many people to spend that much on a game, even to some that love the industry, but to serious collectors that ply the 'net and local garage sales for those rare bits of video gaming history, they're just as valuable as the missing seven minutes to the 1937 film version of Lost Horizon.

Dante Alighieri should have been a game designer.

The Inferno section of the 14th-century author's famed "Divine Comedy" is proof. His depiction of Hell and its punishments featured intricate level design, a stable of potential boss characters and the kind of imagery that could spark an artist's imagination.

Enter Dante's Inferno from EA and Visceral Games, who provide six to eight hours of button-mashing fury, a feast for both the eyes and reflexes. But the shadow of the God of War series looms over it, as does a curious design choice near the end that made me practically abandon all hope for a classic finish.

Do you remember Tecmo Bowl on the NES?

Do you also remember the impossible that would regularly play out during the game against the AI such as eighty yard returns on a single play on every other play? That's like what Tracy Porter did during the Super Bowl...but having him do that magic in about as many times. But Tecmo Bowl holds a special place in the hearts of gamers that remember it as one of those titles, the ones that they look back on with a warm smile on their face. Flaws and all, it was great fun before Madden conquered the genre.

And here's how Tracy Porter's run would have looked like in the game thanks to one 8-bit fan. It's not using the original sounds of the game, but it uses the live broadcast replacing the live visuals with 8-bit goodness.

Dante's Inferno won't be coming out in the Middle East according to gaming site, GamesLatest, based out in Dubai. Following an "evaluation process which is based on consumer tastes, preferences, platform mix and other factors.", EA has apparently decided not to risk publishing the title in the region.

The article indicates that it likely ran the risk of getting banned in the same way that Darksiders and Bayonetta were due largely to the sensitivity that certain topics can elicit there. A ban doesn't mean that the game is impossible to get, but that it can't be sold where it takes place in. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that it can't get into the hands of players willing to import it, either.

It's not that surprising considering the Xtreme angle that the marketing for Dante's Inferno has employed to drum up excitement over the game despite the controversy it brought down on them from last year's E3 to the last minute changes to their proposed trailer for the Super Bowl. But its interpretation of Dante Alighieri's classic has also drummed up as much concern here, especially from those that had actually read the original work it is based off of.

One thing that I honestly don't think it's going to do is to get more players to look up the classic despite the efforts being made for the book. It'll bring more attention to it, that I have no doubt, but I'm not entirely certain that players will be hitting up Amazon to get to it, either. How many players do you know had read through Luo Guanzhong's Romance of the Three Kingdoms after picking up the latest iteration of Koei's Dynasty Warriors?

But you have to give them props for even trying to bring attention to a classic like this and it will be interesting to see just what kind of imaginative interpretation the designers bring to it, even if the kind of attention it brings doesn't necessarily fit between the covers of the original book. Or within the public boundaries of every culture.

The adage "don't mess with success" clearly isn't in Bioware's lexicon. And thank goodness for that.

The surprise of "Mass Effect 2" isn't that the RPG powerhouse has released another great game, the astonishing thing is that Bioware has managed to make so many improvements on such an extraordinary foundation.

"Originals" as in the games that were made for the first Xbox according to this open letter from Xbox Live's general manager, Marc Whitten. From the announcement, it sounds like this is being done in order to pave the way for more positive changes in moving forward with Xbox Live as a whole on the Xbox 360 and those changes simply weren't compatible with what was leftover from the old Xbox.

You'll still be able to play a majority of your old Xbox games on the Xbox 360, but forget about any multiplayer support that you might have enjoyed with them particularly if you're still hooked on Halo 2. On April 15th, it all ends, so get in as many of those online match ups as you can with your favorite classics before it's over.

And as big as Halo 2 is, Bungie's also planning to mourn the passing of an era in their own way with plenty of gaming goodness on April 14th, so be sure to keep an eye on their site for the latest news on how that's going to go down.

It's not a new WW2 game or a sequel to Cinemaware's Rocket Ranger, but it's an independent film called Iron Sky that has been developing over the past two years or so. Premise: In 1945, the Nazis fled to the Moon thanks to secret super science (and a base in Antarctica). In 2018, they're planning to come back and conquer the world. It's the kind of plot that Buck Rogers would have been proud of.

The film is being made by the same group that did Star Wreck, a Star Trek parody from Finland, and has also invited the 'net to participate in its making. How this works is that the filmmakers will create a few tasks that they need help on and basically anyone is free to contribute their own ideas by posting at the amusingly named Wreckamovie site such as what they would like to see in an official poster. There are also quite a few other films there that are also embracing this kind of fan-participation approach so if Nazis in space isn't your thing, there should be something else to help flex your imagination.

I've been keeping an eye on this production for awhile and they've already cast the parts with one or two names that I recognized such as the incredibly prolific go-to guy for evil, Udo Kier (Bloodrayne, Blade), and Gotz Otto (Tomorrow Never Dies, Der Untergang) as the head bad guy.

You can find out more about Iron Sky at their official site. As for when the movie is going to be done, they're aiming at a release sometime in 2011, so they've still got a way to go. But at least there's the trailer.

From Bethesda Softworks arrives an official press release for Fallout: New Vegas, a completely standalone adventure under development by the crew at Obsidian Entertainment. If you didn't have enough post-apocalyptic fun with Fallout 3, get ready to head back into the wastes with a completely new adventure this Fall for the Xbox 360, PS3, and Games for Windows for PCs.

Does that mean this is Fallout 4? Nope, but it takes place in the same world pioneered with the first Fallout (and continued with Fallout 3) when members of Obsidian had worked on it as a part of the development team at Interplay before striking out on their own.

Read that again: members of the original Fallout crew (i.e. the ones that came up with the whole Fallout idea) are working on this. It might not mean much to those whose first exposure to the series was with Fallout 3, but for old-as-dirt Vault Dwellers like myself, it's a big deal when Fallouts 1 and 2 were undeniably classic material. Where do you think Fallout 3 got the idea to be able to plant live grenades in people's pockets first? I'm also hoping they include the nuclear car from the second game. So much fun.

And in checking out the trailer, it looks like Obsidian is making more than a few nods in that direction. In Wasteland, considered the granddaddy of Fallout,urban legend held that the reason Vegas dodged a nuke was because the house had bet against one hitting the city...and no one wins against the house. The New California Republic flag waving at the end was a very cool touch. Haven't seen them since...Fallout 2.

Seems that the last century's been really good to them. Really good.

You can read the official release after the jump.

Funcom's upcoming MMORPG, The Secret World, has sent over a trailer showing off what's happening at Kingsmouth - a quaint little town where something nasty has happened like the dead coming back to walk the streets turning it into a smaller version of Raccoon City.

Last week, Ubisoft made waves when they announced how they were going to use a new DRM (digital rights management) scheme for most of their upcoming PC games. PC players will now need to sign onto Ubisoft's online service in order to be able to play the game they purchased over the counter in order to activate it...and need to stay online to keep it activated. As Arstechnica's Ben Kuchera had put it, "This is like having to show your receipt every time you want to turn on your television.".

According to Ubisoft's FAQ on the service, the "added services" that this approach has over conventional DRM is that it will allow you to install the game on as many PCs as you want, save your games online, and not use a disc to play it. There are a few problems with this approach that are worse than the disc-based Securom or key-based authentication that some methods use. At least when Steam cuts out, you can still play the game. Not so with Ubisoft.

Last Thursday, EA DICE has released a multiplayer demo for the Xbox 360 and a beta for PC players for their new shooter, the sequel to Battlefield: Bad Company, and I got a chance to play around with it on the weekend. The PS3's own public demo will be coming out later this week.

So do I like it? You bet. I kind of find myself wanting to play the demo over my full copy of MW2.