Archive for February, 2010

Update: Microsoft released an official statement regarding the demo shown in New York. Here's what they had to say:

The proof of concept "Project Natal" demo shown in New York last week was not new, nor was it intended to show incremental progress. We wanted to share the same E3 experience with those who weren’t able to experience “Project Natal” in June. However, the “Project Natal” development team has been hard at work perfecting the technology over the past eight months and will continue to do so. When "Project Natal" launches this holiday, the experiences will be in keeping with Xbox 360 standards of performance and will transform living room entertainment.

Original Story: Microsoft was showing off Project Natal last week in New York. It was nothing new, just the familiar hand ball game that was demoed at E3 last year, but it did give me an opportunity to get a closer look at the progress that's been made since last summer. Specifically just how close the motion capture is to real life (which is something that Kotaku discussed today). I brought with me a trusty stop watch so you can get an idea as to how long it takes for your movement to be recreated on-screen.

I had a pretty large sample size, sitting through 5 demos, capturing about 40 different movements from a variety of journalists. Across those 40 movements, the fastest life-to-screen transition was .08 seconds, while the slowest was .12 seconds. A tenth of a second was the consistent average, though.

What that means is that, in its current state, Natal is not instant, one-to-one motion capture. It's close, very close, but once you start playing you'll undoubtedly notice a tiny delay. It's to be expected, certainly. Even high-end Hollywood studio motion capture devices have a slight delay, and a camera sitting in front of your TV doesn't come close to the fidelity of 30 cameras in a massive studio.

Interestingly, it would appear that the demo being shown in New York is identical to the one shown at E3, right down to the delay. I wasn't allowed to film the screen, but this exclusive CNET video from last August does feature person-and-screen footage and it gives a great sense of what you can expect, delay-wise. The appropriate footage kicks in at 2:05:

So is this a problem? Not really. It's true that games like "Wii Sports Resort" have all but done away with the delay, but that was three years after the release of the Wii, and they had to introduce a new hardware peripheral to make it happen. In theory Natal's delay could be mitigated by firmware updates and better programming over time. Also, I'd be shocked if Microsoft showed the same ball demo at E3 2010, and for all I know they're sitting on the killer app that features instant motion capture right out of the gate.

Even if they aren't, though, Natal is undoubtedly a game-changer. There's something innately freeing about not having to hold a controller, and I can definitely foresee a Wii-esque revival of non-gamers getting back into the action. After all, a tenth of a second isn't that long, right?

Keep in mind, even if I had known to talk to Sherles at the right time, you wouldn't have seen it due to the recording issues from that portion of the game. So HA. The following a 100% snag playthrough of Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness for the Gamecube. All Pokémon will be captured at the first opportunity, for realz this time. Pokémon and all related titles are (c) Nintendo, Game Freak, and Genius Sonority. I played the game, I didn't make it.

No bile-belching zombies, no Ned, no loot box, no problem. The third "Bordlerlands" add-on, "The Secret Armory of General Knoxx" doesn't build on the two previous pieces of content. Rather, it focuses on what makes "Borderlands" great: the items, the grind, and remarkable locations and foes. So, yeah, I liked it.

The Basics

"General Knoxx" is a continuation of the core game. Beginning in a post-Vault Pandora, you'll learn that the Atlas Corporation and their Crimson Lances plan to return to the loot-rich planet en masse. The goal is to stop them, and thanks to the guidance offered from a red-armored broad named Athena, it's possible to obliterate their fresh and evil foothold.

In short, "General Knoxx" is about killing people across several environments connected via a series of high and snaking highways. The size of each locale makes driving a necessity, but the numerous opportunities to abandon car and enter into bullet-spewing sections rife with the promise of drops and potential gore are the real driving force behind a package that ultimately feels and plays like the extension of the RPG it was meant to be.

The Highs

One More Time With Feeling
EXP matters again. "General Knoxx" expands the level cap to 61, and thus keeps its new foes, locales, and loot interesting. The larger cap also makes you much more prone to partake in the piles and piles of filler fetch quests that line the DLC to such an extent that you'll spend over ten hours doing them all.

Different Places, New and Old Faces
Starting from a hotbed of Pandora, T-Bone Junction, you'll blast through numerous scorched landscapes and industrial constructs, each with the slightest yet appealing twists -- a touch of graffiti or damage here or there, or even surprise oases of doom, despair, Lancers, and loot. Combined with set pieces like "The World's Largest Bullet," these touches on the locales make for a unique experience.

New and familiar faces are scattered throughout. Each has its own quirks, building off the sporadic, downplayed humor in the core game. Some characters are too over-the-top, but some, like Scooter and General Knoxx, will elicit a chuckle or two while you're blowing off the heads of more than a dozen fresh, DLC-specific villains.

More "Borderlands"
A flawed gem, "Borderlands" managed to incite loot-grind fever. This brings back that wicked feeling, getting you interested in the game and its elements all over again. You'll even want to bring friends, too. The addition of a four-person car, and the relative difficulty of the level 50 and above content, encourages cooperative action, which is still the game's best feature.

The Lows

Enough to Make Newton Cry
Using one of the three DLC vehicles can be as hazardous as crossing one of the massive, circuitous landscapes on foot. The vehicle physics are busted, while the controls remain fickle and unrefined. You'll spin your cars in circles, flip them over, miss ramps, clip through rocks, and even get stuck in them. The car is often a danger rather than convenient transportation. You might often find them scarier than the occasional gigantic soul-sucking monster.

Why Do I Do These Things?
The overarching mission is made clear, but other facets of this new Crimson Lance invasion are clouded in poor explanation. Events aren't bridged well, and characters lack layers of depth, too. But I suppose this is "Borderlands," after all.

Killing Can Be Too Easy or Hard
Level scaling has always been a problem with "Borderlands" DLC, and "General Knoxx" doesn't surprise. Foes' levels stay at whatever you started with and sometimes don't readjust if a higher or lower level user joins the match. This could be a bug on my end, but after several trials, I'm forced to believe the scaling is broken.

The Verdict

"General Knoxx" feels like "More Borderlands: The Sequel to Borderlands," which is just fine. The new missions, characters, foes and landscapes bolster a piece of content that recaptures the vibe and core grind of "Borderlands." Grab it if you want to fall in love again or need to ignore your cats for a few hours.

A year after Microsoft released their Xbox 360 on the gaming world, Eidos published an open-world action romp from developer Avalanche Studios called "Just Cause." There were some great ideas at work, many of them revolving protagonist Rico Rodriguez's deploy-anywhere parachute and associated stunt work, but the experience was marred by unwieldy gameplay, lackluster visuals and experience-ruining bugs.

Now Rico is preparing to return, bringing his brand of CIA justice to an entirely new part of the world. The Caribbean-set Banana republic is replaced in "Just Cause 2" by a fictional island in Southeast Asia's Malay Archipelago. And if the preview we tooled around for an hour-plus with is any indication, the previous game's Suck is replaced by generous helpings of sweet, delicious Win.

Captain Hook
The stunt-based gameplay that helps "Just Cause" stand out from other open-world outings is amped up considerably in this sequel, thanks largely to the fact that the grappling hook gets its own, dedicated button. You can fly a great distance with ease, keeping your parachute aloft by grappling the ground and pulling yourself along. Plus, the hook has quite a range on it, which makes negotiating the game's more vertically-oriented environments a snap.

It's A Jungle Out There... And A Desert And A Snowy Mountain And More
If the previous game had a running theme, it was the abundantly tropical environs the adventure took you through. Even just looking at the overhead map in "Just Cause 2," you can see multiple terrain types and locations: snow-cover mountains, sun-drenched beaches, remote villages, industrial facilities, desert landscapes... and of course, a little bit of jungle.

Best Of All, It's FUN!
For anything else about the first "Just Cause," the combined weight of its issues made it not all that fun to play. It's clear after only a few minutes of getting a grasp on the controls that this is not the case in the sequel. "Just Cause 2" feels generally tight to control and it features big explosions, generous loot payouts and a nearly overwhelming abundance of things to do, most of which have a direct impact on your progress through the game. The night and day difference is apparent almost immediately, and it only deepens as you play further.

Fans of "Sonic the Hedgehog" are a salty bunch. After seeing some leaked footage of "Sonic 4" hit the internet a couple of weeks ago, fans were displeased, and are voicing their displeasure with a boycott. But this is no ordinary boycott. Brace yourself:

"Fans of the sonic series are like most sega fans, we want their old games brought back to the glory days when sega was pretty much the power in video games. Seeing the gameplay of sonic 4 has made many of us realize what we already knew, "Sonic 4" will simply not be anywhere near as good as the original sonic games. Either way, We will decide to finally show sega what the fans truly want. A real sonic 4, as long as sonic 4 stays the way it is, we will not buy it, we will in fact buy sonic 1 on release in protest of sonic 4, till we end up with a re tool, or change, we want sonic in hd, not sonic RUSH HD. We will not buy a future sonic game, till we get a true successor to sonic 1/2"

Yes, you read that right. To protest their displeasure about "Sonic 4," fans will be purchasing the original "Sonic the Hedgehog." Game, set and match. Take that, Sega. You'll never be able to walk around with all that money weighing you down!

I'll admit that I wasn't super impressed by the leaked footage of "Sonic 4" either, but it isn't really fair to judge a game off a shaky cam of someone playing for the very first time. Thankfully we needn't wait long to find out whether the fans are right to complain. "Sonic 4" is hitting XBLA, PSN and WiiWare this summer.

(via Destructoid)

Now that the "StarCraft 2" beta has been officially released into the wild, I'll bet you're all wondering just when the final version will start appearing on store shelves, thus continuing Blizzard's meglomaniacal reign. According to the latest Blizzard podcast, the plan is to remain in beta for about three to five months, which would place the release of "StarCraft 2" somewhere in the June to August timeframe.

Of course it's worth noting that this is Blizzard, a company that is known for their impressively mobile release schedules. Especially with a game like "StarCraft," where balance and online play is so crucial, there's really no rushing the development process.

That said I think an August release is pretty likely. So long as the beta goes smoothly, that time of year, coming off the slow summer months, would be ideal and awesome for a horribly addictive RTS.

BioWare promised us that we'd be getting a lot of post-launch DLC for "Mass Effect 2," and it looks like they're true to their word. Apart from ides, March will bring with it the "Firewalker" DLC pack, which focuses on a vehicle known as the Hammerhead hover tank. Fancy! Here's hoping it doesn't control like the MAKO tank from "Mass Effect 1"!

The "Firewalker" pack will be free to all those clever people that registered for the Cerberus System, the in-game DLC delivery service in "Mass Effect 2." If you bought the game new, the package should've included a code, but if you bought it used you're gonna have to pay up to get access.

I played through "Mass Effect 2" twice, and finished it on Insanity the second time. It was an exhausting experience, but I think by the time this new pack rolls around I'll be ready to jump back in. Again, it just better not be as terrible as the MAKO.

Apple brought the hammer down on App Store titles deemed to be too sexually explicit in February, and the decision renewed curiosity about why the company hasn't joined other mainstream entertainment channels and flat out created an adult category for developers. The iPhone and iPod touch could be closer to hosting such apps than previously believed, though, as the App Store's submission software reportedly contained an "Explicit" option for a brief spell.

"It’s available for selection when adding a new app to iTunesConnect although I can’t see any sign of it in the actual App Store yet," an iPhone developer told Cult of Mac earlier this week. Other sites and sources verified the abnormality before it vanished, though another developer speaking to Gizmodo claimed to have communicated with Apple, who told them that the category was being considered but wouldn't "happen anytime soon."

With parental controls being introduced to the iPhone's latest firmware build, hiding images of girls in bikinis from unsuspecting minors shouldn't be be a problem for Apple going forward, so an Explicit category addition would make a lot of sense. It would also undoubtedly relieve scores of spurned app-makers who now find themselves absent from the market. A sanctioned Explicit section would allow for a lot more freedom in game development specifically, though, even if it will be interesting to see how such a move plays out in anti-adult game markets like Australia, where Mature ratings aren't even allowed for console games yet.

Do you think Apple should add an Explicit category to the App Store? Do you think they made the right move by removing apps deemed to be too sexy? Sound off in the comment section below.

PopCap Games' decision to bring "Plants vs. Zombies" to the iPhone just resulted in a lot of green for the "Bejeweled" and "Peggle" makers. After a modest nine days on Apple's App Store, the company claims the lawn defense title grossed more than $1 million, which will buy many, many extra slots, seeds and upgrades.

"'Plants vs. Zombies' is our latest major franchise to make the jump to iPhone, and from the early customer and critical feedback it appears to be a great adaptation of the game," PopCap's director of mobile business development Andrew Stein said in a press release. "There's always a concern when bringing a computer game to a mobile, pocket-sized device that something will get lost in the process, but in this case the overwhelming consensus is that 'Plants vs. Zombies' is even more fun on the smaller touch screen!"

One of Multiplayer's top five games of 2009 has already made its mark on 2010 for its new platform, and I'm in agreement with Russ that "Plants vs. Zombies" not only survived its screen shrink for the iPhone and iPod touch; it managed to become a natural fit on the devices.

I've been seeing the game at the top of the game rankings on the App Store pretty frequently this week, and PopCap's announcement definitely corroborates that success. Having played it on both the iPhone 3G and the iPod touch, I can safely say that its a much smoother experience on the touch and 3GS, as your lawn and rooftop's most crowded zombie moments benefit greatly from the extra processing power. Give it a look if you haven't already done so, though. You're missing out.

What do you think of "Plants vs. Zombies" on the iPhone? Are you surprised to read about its sales numbers? Sound off in the comment section below.

Mr. Game & Watch was sort of like the one-man Three Stooges team of LCD gaming in his day, appearing in Bollywood-caliber numbers of productions and varied roles, and his latest revival appears to be taking place on keychains. Unlike his recent Nintendo-sanctioned DSiWare and and DS cart releases, a new solar-powered product from TakaraTomy just features a dummy screen with an alarm clock to wake you up and remind you to toss your sausages and avoid octopus tentacles, but for the true Game & Watch enthusiast, it's a scaled-down homage to a gaming legend.

The Octopus-adorned key clingers will retail for about $11 when they come out in Japan this March, according to Newlaunches.com. You may have some difficulties tracking one down in the U.S., but since it runs on the sun, your one-time investment won't require further battery maintenance.

I might worry a bit about depending on an alarm clock that requires solar power, since most the occasions that require me to use an alarm involve extended periods of darkness. Still, it's a nice looking mini-replica and it will be out a lot sooner than Mr. Game & Watch's next Smash Bros. appearance.

Would you buy a Game & Watch keychain? How many of his classic handheld titles have you played? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.