Archive for January, 2012

Activision and Beenox revealed the first official screenshot for The Amazing Spider-Man game tie-in today on the official Facebook page and, unfortunately, it's not as action-packed as we had hoped. That's not to say it doesn't look good - the suit is nicely detailed to match what we've seen in earlier shots, but I just wish there was more to look at.

Thankfully, the trailer that was released a month or so ago does reveal quite a bit more than this simple still shot. If you haven't seen that particular trailer yet you can check it out below since were in a pretty trailer-y mood right now. If Activision and Beenox don't feel like giving us some cool artwork I guess we'll just keep staring at what we've already got.

The Amazing Spider-Man hits theaters July 3rd, 2012 and the game will land for Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, DS and 3DS around the same time.

[The Amazing Spider-Man on Facebook]

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By Jason Cipriano

Nostalgia is a funny thing, especially when it comes to gaming. Only a handful of classic games from the 8 and 16-bit eras can truly stand up against today's biggest releases. Unsurprisingly, if most games from the early 90s were released today, they would fall to the wayside for not having flashy graphics, or eardrum shattering sound like their modern-day peers. Fortunately, there are still a few developers out there that think that there is a place for the classic 2D sprites of yesteryear in today's gaming world. One developer in particular, Renegade Kid, just released Mutant Mudds in the 3DS' eShop, and in doing so proved that there is still room for retro flair on today's handhelds.

Mutant Mudds puts you in the squeaky clean shoes of Max, a young boy who's trying to prevent an alien invasion when he should be watching TV with his Grannie. After learning of a mysterious asteroid hitting the Earth, Max picks up his water gun and goes on a quest to blast those muddy baddies back to where they came from. Packing only a super soaker and an h20 powered jetpack, Max will need to survive 40 punishing levels to save himself and his family.

It doesn't take too long to really take in the full experience of Mutant Mudds; it's an unapologetic platformer that will remind gamers of classics like Super Mario and Mega Man. The one major difference between Mudds and its retro brethren is that this game takes advantage of the 3DS' 3D technology, meaning that 2D Max, actually has to navigate three separate planes in order to complete each level. Jumping back and forth between the foreground and the background become vital components of the gameplay, as most levels require these depth-driven maneuvering to capture the Water Sprite at the end of each stage. In addition to needing to go back and forth to traverse each area, there are extra-hard bonus stages, inspired by past Nintendo portables, hidden throughout each level.

Much like the Super Nintendo and Genesis games of the early 90s, Mutant Mudds doesn't offer a vast variety in terms of level or character designs (one of the few areas that the game is actually lacking in), but the appeal of Mudds really comes from its challenging gameplay. While it might not be the hardest game on the market, it is going to challenge today's gamers in ways that they may not be used to. For example, in each level Max only has three hearts - that's it. There are no health pick-ups to help you survive. There are no checkpoints to save your progress. Three hits and you're out. While most of the difficult aspects of Mutant Mudds aren't new to gaming, it's been a while since some of these challenging conventions have been dusted off, and they're particularly new to the eShop and the 3DS.

As if to cover all of the 16-bit bases, Renegade Kid have included an authentic soundtrack full of chiptune-esque tracks to accompany Max as he takes down the Mudd army. So, as a compliment to the pixel perfect sprites throughout the game, players are treated to an audio composition that rivals anything a SNES or Genesis could pump out.

Mutant Mudds joins Mighty Flip Force and Pushmo as one of the brightest stars in the eShop library. While its difficulty may be a high hurdle for some gamers that lack perseverance, Mudds is a great demonstration of how a small studio can make a great game for the 3DS. The mechanics are simple and classic, and the gameplay is divided up into short, quick levels (all under four minutes), which come together to make a really solid and addictive little title. One of the best things about Mutant Mudds is that it's a great game for anyone with a 3DS, not just the masochistic retro fans out there, although they are the ones that are going to most appreciate everything it has to offer.

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You can't keep a good, disaster-prone lawyer down.

First off, happy 10th birthday, Ace Attorney series. It was actually during an event commemorating this milestone for the franchise that Capcom announced the upcoming sequel and unveiled the game's logo below. While no details about either platform or release have been announced, my money's on it coming out next year with the approximately every two years release schedule the Ace Attorney games have stuck to of late.

Capcom did provide more concrete details on the Japanese release of Ace Attorney 123HD, the iOS and Android remakes of the first three games in the series, which will receive all-new up-res'd artwork. The iOS version will launch first with the Android port to follow, both releasing with the first two chapters available for free and subsequent chapters available for ¥600, or you can buy the whole shebang for ¥1200. Very cool for gamers who already own Ace Attorney on iOS is that they can upgrade their current games to the HD versions.

As such things tend to go, there's no word yet on a U.S. release for the HD remakes, but I'm pretty excited to be able to play these again in any event on my iPad whenever Capcom decides to bring the release stateside.

[Source: Andriasang]

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Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Soul Calibur V mark the beginning of onslaught of 2012 game releases.

Title: Soul Calibur V
Platform(s): PS3, Xbox 360

This is the one with Ezio from Assassin's Creed in it, in case you're keeping track. I'll go into this more in my review later this week, but Soul Calibur V kind of represents where Namco stands as a company right now in terms of seeing their iterative games evolve—which is to say, not very much. I'd like to dig into the fighter a bit more before rendering final judgement, but I'm stuck with a feeling that Namco's sequelized fighting games are stuck in something of a rut right now and perhaps need a major shake up to move forward.

I don't necessarily think that the series needs a radical reinvention, but it feels like the weapons-based fighter (the only one on the market, mind you) is in need of further elaboration more than anything else. If you play Street Fighter IV or NetherRealms' Mortal Kombat, you're essentially playing the classic earlier games in those franchises but with an easy to quantify and identify "more" and "better" integrated throughout and not "prettier" simply laid on top (although all three games we're talking about here do look great).

Again, I'd like to spend more time with Soul Calibur V because I don't feel anything immediately, dramatically different, and I think it deserves further consideration before I write it off as Soul Calibur 4.5.

Title: Final Fantasy XIII-2
Platform(s): PS3, Xbox 360

On the other hand, Final Fantasy XIII-2 definitely feels like a modest but real break from its predecessor, at least if my time with the demo is any indication. You can be sure that the majority of reviews you'll read in the next couple of days will describe this rare sequel to an FF sequel as a direct response to fan complaints about Final Fantasy XIII, and rightly so, given how the checklist of changes in this game articulate what players felt was wrong with the 2010 title. That painful death march of linearity has been replaced in the very story itself with a broken timeline, while much of the hand holding of XIII feels like it's been excised.

What XIII seems to be saying is, you probably already know how to play this game, so here is some more, but you know, better. For what it's worth, the reviews for the game have been kind in the majority, and not just as a sigh of relief that it's not XIII.

Title: NeverDead
Platform(s): PS3, Xbox 360

Konami's character action game NeverDead is a game with a hook, you see: your character, is Bryce, a down-on-his-luck immortal demon hunter with the ability to deploy his limbs as weapons. Sometimes his head is one of these weapons and on occasion it can be exploded at wayward souls. The actual synopsis of the game on its site kind of sidesteps the tongue-in-cheek tone the game seems to be going for in its trailers and screens released to date. If I had to put the game into a box based on what we've seen so far, I'd say it looked like developer Rebellion had essentially remade Stubbs the Zombie for the Devil May Cry Set—kind of.

This is one of those early year titles like last year's Shadows of the Damned that might easily get lost in the shuffle of major titles, but it seems quirky enough that if the gameplay is solid, it might find an audience down the line.

On the downloadable tip:

Double Fine Happy Action Theater (XBLA)

Puddle (PSN, XBLA)

Rhythm Party (XBLA)

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Seemingly indefatigable group's spokesperson calls homosexuality "the biggest threat to the empire" in a recent radio address.

That would be the group's president, Tony Perkins speaking, by the way, voicing what he alleges is the anger of parents and gamers outraged at same-sex relationships in the MMO. During the course of his lengthy screed against the game and its developer BioWare, Perkins blind-cites 300 pages of forum posts from said outraged parents, although as of this writing I've been unable to locate them.

Here's what Perkins had to say about two consenting adult video game characters doing what comes naturally:

In a new Star Wars game, the biggest threat to the empire may be homosexual activists! Hello, I’m Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. In a galaxy not so far far away, Star Wars gamers have already gone to the dark side. The new video game, Star Wars: The Old Republic, has added a special feature: gay relationships. Bioware, the company that developed the game, said it’s launching a same-sex romance component to satisfy some complaints. That surprised a lot of gamers, since Bioware had made it clear in 2009 that “gay” and “lesbian” don’t exist in the Star Wars universe. Since the announcement, homosexuals have been celebrating the news, but parents sure aren’t. On the game’s website, there are more than 300 pages of comments–a lot of them expressing anger that their kids will be exposed to this Star Warped way of thinking. You can join them by logging on and speaking up. It’s time to show companies who the Force is really with!

Same-sex relationships with NPCs is a post-launch feature which has yet to be implemented into the game and is on the way. Prior to the game's release, a BioWare spokesperson explained that this was an element of the game that couldn't be implemented at launch because of the scale of the game's voice acting and design, putting it on the to-do list for the MMO. This in turn follows from a flap back in '09 where terms relating to homosexuality were being deleted from The Old Republic forum threads with community manager Sean Dahlberg stating that "[Gay and lesbian] are terms that do not exist in Star Wars. Thread closed." Hence, the quote attributed to BioWare by Perkins in his radio address.

In any event, if the company's history of games is anything to go by, it's unlikely that the FRC's nascent outrage will be a reason for the developer to omit this feature.

[Source: Game Politics]

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And it's all this guy's doing, obviously

Sometime in early March, the changeover is set to occur, with the 13-year-old game joining its sequel, EverQuest 2 as well as Sony Online Entertainment-published DC Universe Online in getting a tiered "freemium" model as Sony looks to keep the venerable classic MMO alive with a changeup to the F2P model beginning in March.

At the basic level, with a free subscription, you can jump in to play with the occasional pop-up ad reminding you upgrade to the Premium, Gold subscription, but otherwise it's mostly the EQ experience you've known for over a decade now. The one-time $5 Silver membership provides some additional perks like more alternate abilities and more walking around money that your character can carry on you. Then, there's the $14.99 a month Gold subscription which provides pretty much unlimited access to the many in-game elements as well as full customer support (you can see how the tiers break down on this handy chart).

I can see this as a way for Sony to keep the lights on for EQ, although I'm surprised that there are enough players out there to justify putting the work into keeping such an old game alive. The F2P model seems to be working out for SOE, so I can understand the motivation to apply it here, although I'm baffled that there's much clamor among gamers to keep EverQuest around.

[Source: Gamespot]

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South Korea Contemplating Further Limits To Online Play For Minors
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A proposal is on the table which could limit minors from being online for more than three hours consecutively.

As a nation, South Korea is almost the go-to country when talking about the issue of gaming addiction, particularly when it comes to online PC titles. As this Time piece points out, if you're a hot enough online gamer in a title like Starcraft, there's an opportunity there for celebrity and modest wealth. There was even a pretty huge cheating scandal a couple of years back with an unlikely nexus of professional gaming and organized crime.

All of this is the long way of saying online gaming is kind of big deal South Korea. Now, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology is considering a proposal which would limit minors' access to online games to no more than three hours a day according to this Gamasutra piece. If the policy were enacted, it would join the six-hour evening block where minors are restricted from using their registered profiles online to game. The new regulation would ban underage players' accounts if they were logged more than the prescribed time, although there's no detail about how much of a cooling-off period these players would be required to take before jumping online again.

Again, this policy is simply up for consideration at this time, and we'll bring you news when or if it is actually enacted.

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Discuss this story in our Gaming forums! Follow @MTVGeek on Twitter and be sure to "like" us on Facebook for the best geek news about comics, toys, gaming and more!

A proposal is on the table which could limit minors from being online for more than three hours consecutively.

As a nation, South Korea is almost the go-to country when talking about the issue of gaming addiction, particularly when it comes to online PC titles. As this Time piece points out, if you're a hot enough online gamer in a title like Starcraft, there's an opportunity there for celebrity and modest wealth. There was even a pretty huge cheating scandal a couple of years back with an unlikely nexus of professional gaming and organized crime.

All of this is the long way of saying online gaming is kind of big deal South Korea. Now, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology is considering a proposal which would limit minors' access to online games to no more than three hours a day according to this Gamasutra piece. If the policy were enacted, it would join the six-hour evening block where minors are restricted from using their registered profiles online to game. The new regulation would ban underage players' accounts if they were logged more than the prescribed time, although there's no detail about how much of a cooling-off period these players would be required to take before jumping online again.

Again, this policy is simply up for consideration at this time, and we'll bring you news when or if it is actually enacted.

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Discuss this story in our Gaming forums! Follow @MTVGeek on Twitter and be sure to "like" us on Facebook for the best geek news about comics, toys, gaming and more!

A proposal is on the table which could limit minors from being online for more than three hours consecutively.

As a nation, South Korea is almost the go-to country when talking about the issue of gaming addiction, particularly when it comes to online PC titles. As this Time piece points out, if you're a hot enough online gamer in a title like Starcraft, there's an opportunity there for celebrity and modest wealth. There was even a pretty huge cheating scandal a couple of years back with an unlikely nexus of professional gaming and organized crime.

All of this is the long way of saying online gaming is kind of big deal South Korea. Now, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology is considering a proposal which would limit minors' access to online games to no more than three hours a day according to this Gamasutra piece. If the policy were enacted, it would join the six-hour evening block where minors are restricted from using their registered profiles online to game. The new regulation would ban underage players' accounts if they were logged more than the prescribed time, although there's no detail about how much of a cooling-off period these players would be required to take before jumping online again.

Again, this policy is simply up for consideration at this time, and we'll bring you news when or if it is actually enacted.

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Discuss this story in our Gaming forums! Follow @MTVGeek on Twitter and be sure to "like" us on Facebook for the best geek news about comics, toys, gaming and more!

The multi-genre oddity is also getting a special edition retail release filled with goodies.

March 16th sees the long-awaited release of The Binding of Isaac from Super Meat Boy creator Edmund Mcmillen at Retail.

Along with the bestselling Steam version, The Binding of Isaac is also getting the stacked retail release pictured below. Dubbed "The Unholy Version," it'll contain a DRM-free copy of the game, a Steam gift code, a 40-page "devzine," as well as the game's soundtrack. Here's the story synopsis for the very hard to pin down game:

When Isaac’s mother starts hearing the voice of God demanding a sacrifice be made to prove her faith, Isaac flees to the basement. Isaac must face monster filled dungeons, lost brothers and sisters, his fears, and eventually his mother.

The Binding of Isaac is a randomly generated action RPG shooter with heavy Rogue-like elements. Following Isaac on his journey, players will find bizarre treasures that change Isaac’s form giving him super human abilities and enabling him to fight off droves of mysterious creatures, discover secrets and fight his way to safety.

No price has been announced as of yet for the "Unholy Version," but we'll be on the lookout for an update on that front.

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