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Dragon's Dogma: The Kotaku Review The small room in the front of the Q Entertainment offices was packed with people, but the only sound came from the television.
A steady beat filled the room, vector graphics filled the screen, Tetsuya Mizuguchi sat slumped in his chair, playing his game.
A person, made up of crisp lines, swam through the screen, drifting above and then into a canyon of red and orange lights, the beat steadily climbing. Miz shifted the thumbstick of the controller resting in his hands around, highlighting targets, steadily tapping a button with a finger, effortlessly slipping though the code he wrote.
By the second level Sawako Yamamoto, who sits quietly across the table from Mizuguchi, is bopping her head to the beat as she sits entranced, watching him play the game.
A city scape of linear buildings drift by, the music continues to pulse. Five minutes into the game and half the people in the room are silently rocking out to the music, there feet tapping, heads bobbing.
It was a quick trip from our hotel to Q Entertainment where we had an early morning appointment with Mr. Rez himself, Tetsuya Mizuguchi. We discussed quite a few subjects that my esteemed colleagues will be filling you in on later, but I’m going to concentrate on Rez as, much to my delight, I was given the honor of being the first person outside of the Q offices to actually play it.
Man do I feel bad for Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb right now. Seems he was all set for his flight to Tokyo to attend TGS when he discovered his passport was missing. No passport equals no Tokyo, and as anyone who has ever tried can attest, getting a replacement passport on short notice is no easy task. Thankfully both TriXie and VideoMonkey will be there to cover the event for Xbox.com, but Larry will be heading back to Seattle tomorrow to spend the week catching up on work. As a public service, I offer this advice: Be very careful with your Passport. And go make a photocopy of it right now and keep it in a safe place so you can have all the details handy if you need to get a replacement.
Having never been outside of the continental U.S. myself, I’ve heard nothing but horror stories involving passports. When I finally get my own, I am having it surgically grafted to my chest. And that’s one to grow on.
Major Nelson grounded [Major Nelson's Blog - Thanks Ben]
As I promised yesterday, here are some more shots of The Eye of Judgement press kit. Not shown in the following gallery is the table mat on which cards are placed and the EyeToy stand (included so that the tiny camera may stare in silent contemplation and malevolence at our puny human lives. Oh, and at the table mat).
Sadly, the review discs only work in a review PS3, so I won’t be playing it anytime soon. Which is no big deal, as I had a ball of a time with it at SCEA’s HQ in Sydney yesterday. Good times, good times.
Because working with video is what they do, GameVideos has gone ahead and cut together footage of Ninja Gaiden II for the 360 and Ninja Gaiden Sigma for the PS3 together to give us an idea of the differences between the two. Right off the bat I notice that the camera is a bit more dynamic in II, working more to enhance the action than simply portray it. The environments look far more detailed as well, and the animations seem a tad more fluid. Now that I’ve seen them side by side, Ninja Gaiden II is looking like a definite improvement over Sigma. Nicely done, Team Ninja.
Being a bit of a toy collector myself, I used to subscribe to ToyFare because it was an excellent bathroom reading material. Then one day they realised I had never actually paid for my subscription, which is why the folks over at bits, bytes, pixels and sprites caught this highly detailed NECA figure of Altair from Assassin’s Creed. It’s due out in November to coincide with the game’s release, and will most likely end up a one-shot. Assassin’s just don’t lend themselves well to plucky, action-figure friendly sidekicks.
Assassin’s Creed…. in action figure form! [bits bytes pixels & sprites]
I’ll be honest – I’ve never played a Dreamworks Animation game. Say, anything to do with Shrek, for example. I can’t imagine that I ever would.
Bee Movie, on the other hand, did hold my interest when Activision showed it off at Activate Asia in Cairns recently. It’s more than just based on the Jerry Seinfeld-helmed movie of the same name. From what was shown, aptly-named developer Beenox has gone to the trouble of recreating the events in the film, blow-by-blow, for the PC and console title – with the help of Seinfeld, no less.
It should go down well with the little ones, even if the resulting product is extremely linear, and I reckon it wouldn’t be too bad for a single play through.
Here’s a gallery of PC and PS2 shots for your perusal.
It seems sort of odd to me to have a video game cross-promotion that encourages you to injest the friends and loved ones of the game’s protagonist, but that’s exactly what Konami and Nestle Waters North America are doing with the “Green With Envy” campaign, which pairs up young Dewy the water droplet with Aquapod Natural Spring Water for kids. A nationwide contest and sweepstakes is being launched that could net health-conscious families an ‘eco-adventure’ to Costa Rica and copies of the game itself. Behind the sweepstakes is a multi-million dollar print, internet, radio, television, and in-store advertising campaign to help deliver a health message to children and of course, sell video games. Dewy art is appearing as we speak on bottles of Poland Spring, Deer Park, Zephyrhills, Ozarka and Ice Mountain tap spring water. If I were in charge that would involve the titular character proudly proclaiming, “I Keep Your Innards Moist!”, which is why I was never allowed to play in any marketeer games. *sniffs*
In all honestly, calling E For All’s announced 2008 show dates a conflict with PAX 08 is like calling getting poked in the eye with a sharp stick a conflict with free candy. Obviously people are going to pick one over the other, and in E For All’s situation it truly is a case of move it or lose it. It’s like they are trying to perfect some kind of twisted game expo that no one wants to go to. They’re afraid a few people might show up this year, and they’ve decided to fix all of that by scheduling the event opposite PAX next year. The point I am trying to make is Penny Arcade’s Robert Khoo is a lot more diplomatic than I am. FiringSquad recently interviewed Khoo about the whole messy situation. But I’ll be honest with you – since PAX started I’ve seen my fair share of consumer shows come and go (take IGNLive for instance). It’s super hard to run one of these things, and I’d be surprised if E For All lasts longer than this year.
Over at the official Hellgate: London home page, you’ll find a rather fetching link that’ll let you sign up for the game’s upcoming beta. Note that in order to use the link, you will need to create an account at the website.
Hellgate promises to be parts Diablo, Doom and MMO, so it has to be good. And if it isn’t, well, here’s your chance to make it better.
