Archive for March 3rd, 2010

In a presentation last weekend where Activision and Bizarre Creations announced a May 25th release date for “Blur,” they unveiled a multiplayer demo that laid out a unique combination of options that will not only allow Xbox Live Silver account holders to compete with one another; they’ll allow players from 360s and PlayStation 3s to challenge each other via Twitter. As one of the game’s senior developers explained, those concepts emerged from needs the team found in their own lifestyles.

“A lot of us have kids and family and stuff, but we’re finding that as we’re getting older we’re just not able to get everyone together to play at the same time,” lead designer Gareth Wilson told MTV News.

In response, his group at Bizarre concocted ways for “Blur” players to issue challenges and responses to friends via a challenge system that doesn’t require any two players to have XBL Gold accounts or the same brand of console.

“I’ve got a friend from university who lives in Australia, and I can’t play with him, because he’s available at night time when I’m sleeping,” Wilson said. “So the Friends Challenge thing was really, ‘How do we get people together to play who might not be able to.”

Wilson walked through the process of issuing such challenges in a couple of scenarios.

“In the single player mode when you finish a race, it records all of your stats and information,” he said. “You can choose what you want to put into your challenge and send it to your buddy. He receives that as an Xbox Dashboard message, so he could be playing another game, he could be watching TV on Netflix.”

Since no matchmaking occurs within the game, no Silver account is required. Similarly, the Twitter method requires no Gold either, though it does require an Internet connection. The option gave Bizarre a strategy for integrating social media in a way that wouldn’t cause over-sharing and constant updating.

“With the Twitter integration, the one thing we didn’t want was for it to be this horrible, spammy thing,” Wilson stated. “The main reason for having it is so that people on different formats can compete with each other.”

While simultaneous head-to-head play on the 360 may require a Gold account, budget-driven households will get a second option from the new settings. The innovative approach will definitely be worth a look.

What do you think of Bizarre’s use of Twitter and 360 messaging for “Blur”? Do you think you’ll give a try? Share your reactions in the comment section below.

The Xbox 360 “Splinter Cell: Conviction” Special Edition Bundle became a reality today, and it looks like the black king to the white queen “Final Fantasy XIII” Bundle. Boasting a similar set of specs with a 250GB HDD and two controllers, the only difference looks to be the game in the box and color of the plastic.

The new bundle will hit stores in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand for US $399 in early April, according to Major Nelson, who unloaded the official announcement and images on his blog.

Among other interesting things you might not have known yet, but lurk in the comment thread on that post, is a listing at GameStop for a standalone 250GB HDD. It’s listed for a March 23rd ship date, and I may be more inclined to scoop that up than I am to drop cash on a whole new system — although if you’re in the market for one, the console in this bundle is sleek, because black goes well with any room’s color scheme.

Are you considering a “Splinter Cell: Conviction” bundle? What other games coming out this year would you like to see packaged with a 250GB HDD? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

If you’ve been living in a submarine for the last year, you may not know that some “Street Fighter 4” owners were vocally distressed about Capcom’s decision to forgo additional fighters as DLC in favor of releasing an entire new game called “Super Street Fighter 4.” The details are nearly non-existent, but it sounds like those concerns may get an answer in the form of something special available exclusively to those who have purchased both titles.

“The problem is that it gets a new title ID, which means no cross-play with the original consumers,” Capcom VP of strategic planning & business development Christian Svensson told Gamasutra. “And the other part is designing the game around, figuring out who has which package, even if you could do that.”

Svensson’s reasoning there makes a valid point about why “Super Street Fighter 4″ needed to be released as its own game, and I get that. But he doesn’t directly address why they couldn’t have released a character or two as DLC for “SF4″ as well. Nevertheless, a lot of Street Fighter fans are going to be interested in the fruits of his non-announcement.

“So, going $10 above Platinum/Greatest Hits pricing was sort of a nice compromise,” Svensson explained. “And we haven’t announced it, but for those who have purchased and played Street Fighter IV on the system that they play this on, there will be a nifty little special set of things that those people will have the option of enjoying that others won’t.”

Of course, this will surely ignite anger among those who didn’t buy the first game and want access to whatever the mystery prize is separately. Personally, I don’t belong to that subset of player, though, so I can’t wait to hear what Capcom has to offer.

What would you like to see Capcom present to owners of both SF titles? Do you think Svensson made the case for “SSF4″ as a standalone title? Share your reactions in the comment section below.

There’s a lot going on in the world of “Call of Duty” today. Earlier, in a shocking turn of events, the two studio heads of Infinity Ward were dismissed by Activision, and it’s likely to be related to the news that’s been released today, dealing with the future of the “Call of Duty” franchise.

Activision announced today that, in addition to two “Modern Warfare 2″ map packs and a full retail release from Treyarch later this year, there will be another “Call of Duty” franchise coming in 2011, and it won’t be developed by Infinity Ward.

Sledgehammer Games, formed by former members of EA’s “Dead Space” development team, will be helming a new “Call of Duty” game, which is said to bring the franchise into the action-adventure genre. That sounds like marketing speak for 3rd person shooter (ala “Splinter Cell”), but that’s just me speculating.

Worth noting that this doesn’t rule out the possibility of “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3″ coming in 2011, and that it’s still possible that Infinity Ward will develop that title, but given the recent shake-up over there, it’s doubtful we’ll be seeing the return of Soap McTavish anytime soon.

In addition to the new game announcement, Activision has started a new business group to handle all “Call of Duty”-related franchises under one roof, in an effort to protect what has become a very lucrative franchise for the company.

EA CEO John Riccitiello may have thought Sony’s PS3 motion controller would be called the “Gem,” but a trademark filed in Japan suggests that another name being batted about may have won out after all. So despite efforts by GDC to limit hardware announcements, don’t be surprised if you hear Sony call their device an “Arc” during their demonstration later this month.

The Japanese PlayStation Arc trademark was accompanied by a couple of other unrelated concepts, according to Siliconera. Until it’s official, there’s a lingering possibility that Sony could just be covering its bases to prevent anyone from grabbing the name, but given the timing of the filing, my gut tells me they’ve made their decision.

Besides, who are we kidding here? If the choice was between “Arc” and “Gem,” they clearly waffled between an implicitly action-oriented title that would have more appeal to a hardcore crowd and a name that associates the controller with puzzle and casual games. One name implies a strand of energy connecting two points, and the other sounds like a rare stone that will be shipped off somewhere to be used for jewelry. If Sony wants to cater to its base, Arc seems like the clear choice.

Which name should Sony choose for its PS3 motion controller? Do think they’ve settled on Arc? Share your reactions in the comment section below.

At the Nintendo Press Summit last week, there were about a dozen games being shown, but one kept grabbing my attention: “Super Meat Boy.” I’d seen the game before, and played a bit of an early build on the PC, but holding the Wii Remote sideways, NES style, brought me back to a simpler age of 2D platformers, which were the inspiration for the game. True, those games didn’t involve punishing difficulty, gallons of blood and a fetus wearing a tuxedo, but the basic concept is the same: Jump at the right time or you’re dead.

The developers of “Super Meat Boy” are known as Team Meat. It’s a two man crew made up of Edmund McMillen (who is in charge of level, art and game design) and Tommy Refenes (who is handling all the programming). That’s it, just those two guys. The basic framework of the game has already been finished, and now the level creation must start. That duty falls to McMillen, who has probably made thousands of platforming levels over the course of his career. So how does he plan to come up with hundreds of new levels for this game? Don’t worry, there’s a formula.

Step 1
Edmund starts a level by introducing a mechanic. The example he gave was shooting saws. “The introduction level has to introduce how the shooting saws work with the player,” he explained. “So it’s gonna be something simple, like it’s going to go horizontally across, jump over it, you’re done.”

Step 2
But there are many ways to use shooting saws, right? “Now I want to also introduce the fact that these shooting saws can also come down vertically, down or up, so there’s another level with that.”

Step 3
Those are just the basics. Once the player has those concepts down he can really start to mess with them. “Later on in the game we’ll introduce that I can control how fast saws shoot and randomize the shooting and complicate things.”

To Summarize
“So it’s all about introducing the mechanic, exploring the mechanic and later revisiting it in a new way. So that way the player doesn’t get bored. In each chapter you’re gonna find three new things that aren’t in anything else, but the existing things that’ve been established from the previous chapters will still exist in those.”

Drunken Prom Date 2
What happens when you’re at the final chapter of the game and every mechanic has been introduced and layered on top of one another? That’s when you get to the nightmare level that’s tentatively titled “Drunken Prom Date 2.” The original “Meat Boy” featured “Drunken Prom Date,” the one and only level created by Tommy Refenes, who decided to make the most frustratingly, face-punchingly difficult level imaginable.

Once Tommy’s programming duties are out of the way, he has one task: Create “Drunken Prom Date 2.” According to Edmund, that can only happen when the entire game is finished: “In order for it to be created, the game needs to be done, because you need to see how impossible it needs to be.”

In case you’re wondering, Tommy only finished the first “Drunken Prom Date” once, and he created the damn thing. He promises that the second one will be nothing short of Hell on Earth.

A shortage of “Heavy Rain” discs in the U.K. isn’t the only oversight related to the game that’s come to light this week. It’s now been joined by leading lady Madison Page’s birthday suit. A glitch somewhere in the code reportedly allowed a user to walk around uncovered as Madison after activating a sequence he didn’t want to see. When he reloaded his previous save file, “Heavy Rain” left him in control of a character with no clothes.

The glitch occurred right after a scene with Ethan and Madison from “On The Loose,” according to Kotaku. Nudity already existed in the game from scenes that including showering and toplessness, but this odd manifestation would be the only known instance in the game where you can walk around freely with nothing on.

It’s been quite a while since we’ve seen a good “Hot Coffee”-style “mistake” made in a game. As always, you have to wonder how much of this revelation can be chalked up to errors and how much was just sort of passively overlooked by a developer or two. Whatever the case may be, I doubt the ESRB is going to rethink its M rating in favor of an Adults Only upgrade, since they would have already observed the shower scene. In the meantime, be careful not to corrupt any save files trying to replicate this discovery.

Have you tried triggering the “Heavy Rain” nudity glitch? Do you think it was a legitimate mistake? Share your reactions in the comment section below.

Activision gave E3 a preview of Bizarre Creations‘ new action/racing title “Blur” last year, and the game subsequently experienced delays that pushed its release into 2010 last September. Those extra months of retooling are about to end, however, as a multiplayer beta test has been launched with the full game’s final street date set for May 25th on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

“We are going to launch on May 25th in the U.S. — May 28th in the U.K.,” Activision’s U.S. PR manager for “Blur” Paul Murphy revealed at a media event in Liverpool, England.

Known for their work on the “Project Gotham” and “Geometry Wars” series, Bizarre visibly applied their racing experience from the first with the color and effects of the latter in a demo that was made available.

“What we wanted to do was make a racing experience where there was loads of overtaking, loads of packed racing, loads of battling cars and action,” lead designer Gareth Wilson told MTV News after the presentation.

Among those features are more than 50 cars ranging from vintage Volkswagen Beetles to modern Ford Focuses, Shelby Mustangs and Lotuses. Bizarre packed the tracks in “Blur” in an effort to keep gameplay fast and combative.

“The first thing was to put 20 cars on the track instead of eight,” Wilson explained. “The other thing we looked at was power-ups. Each of the power-ups is designed to be useful to attack the next person in front of you depending on where they are.”

The result resembles “Mario Kart” racing with vehicles off your local dealership’s lot and neon-tinted blasts and sounds borrowed from “Iron Man” set in recognizable cities around the world. Stay tuned to Multiplayer as I role out more details on the gameplay and unique online play as revealed by the “Blur” lead designers themselves.

Do you think “Blur” will make waves in the racing genre when it launches this May? What do you want to know about the game before you consider picking it up? Sound off in the comment section below.

It’s been almost half a year since “Modern Warfare 2″ hit store shelves, and while it remains the most played online shooter right now, many are starting to look elsewhere for their online FPS fix. Elsewhere, in this case, is “Battlefield: Bad Company 2.”

The Basics

“Battlefield: Bad Company 2″ is really two games in one. The single-player game is a heavily scripted, mostly linear first-person shooter which features a squad of ne’er-do-wells as they try to save the world from a devastating weapon.

The multiplayer game is another beast entirely. It consists of objective-centric multiplayer modes which pit teams against each other to capture important points on the map. There’s also persistent character advancement, as you’ll unlock weapons and new equipment as you play.

The Highs

The Multiplayer Modes
There are only four multiplayer modes in “Bad Company 2″ but each of them are created in such a way that they engender teamwork, even among strangers. Conquest is the traditional “Battlefield” mode, which has two teams fighting over control of several points scattered across a massive map. Rush is similar, but it’s more of an attack/defend style, where there are only two points that must be captured and once they are the map shifts back to the next line of defense. The other two modes are Squad Rush (a smaller version of Rush which is infantry only, 4v4 maps) and Squad Deathmatch (standard deathmatch, but with multiple teams of 4 squad members…or 4v4v4v4).

Each of the modes has its own pace and tactics, but none of them feel tacked on or unnecessary. I often found myself jumping from one to the other, and all of them felt satisfying and worthwhile.

Persistent Character Advancement
As you play online you’ll earn points for getting kills, capturing objectives, repairing vehicles, so on and so forth. Depending on your class, those points will unlock new guns and equipment. Unlike “Modern Warfare 2,” the class you play will determine which unlocks you get first, so there’s almost an RPG-lite system at work in “Bad Company 2.” A similar system was at work in the first “Bad Company,” but this time around it feels streamlined and way more addictive.

Building Destruction
The destruction system from the first “Bad Company” has been improved to allow buildings to fully collapse, whereas before they would just be left as foundation skeletons. Apart from looking cool, this plays a huge part in multiplayer, as you can take out objectives by attacking them directly or simply by collapsing the building around them.

The Lows

The Single-Player Campaign
Unfortunately, while some improvements were made to the single-player campaign, it remains…lacking. Frankly it feels like a “Modern Warfare 2″ knock-off, but the visuals and gameplay are simply not on par with Infinity Ward’s effort. It’s also surprisingly linear for a “Battlefield” game, forcing you into funneled maps and objectives rather than letting you pick your point of attack. The first time you actually make a choice of where you want to go first is 5 hours into the game, and that choice doesn’t affect the way the mission plays out in any way. You’re better off looking at the single-player in “Bad Company 2″ as an added bonus on top of the multiplayer, but it’s definitely not worthwhile on its own.

Selective Destruction
It’s great that you can bring an entire house down and all, but it’s less great when the game decides which walls can come down and which can’t. For example, walls with ladders? Nope, they’re indestructible. Even if you’ve blown out ever other wall in the building, the wall with the ladder will remain, taunting you. Not very satisfying.

The Verdict

If you’re looking for an online multiplayer game that you can play with friends for months on end, “Battlefield: Bad Company 2″ is an excellent choice. It’s addictive, entertaining and fosters cooperation way more than its competitors. If you’re just looking for a single-player FPS, though, “Bad Company 2″ isn’t much more than a mindless romp, a strictly middle-of-the-road experience. If you’re looking for a little of both, though, it’s an easy recommendation to make.