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Dragon's Dogma: The Kotaku Review This picture was taken with the lights off. Or when the lights flickered on. I forget. With a room full of cameramen, boom mics, a giant plasma TV and a hot hot Xbox 360, the breaker in the fancy Microsoft hotel room conked out. The 20 or 25 minute Lost Odyssey demo that Hironobu Sakaguchi played through looked gorgeous as usual with the in-game stuff being real time. The combat system features timing based attacks, which are used by holding down the right trigger and letting go at a precise moment. Sakaguchi pointed out that the cut-scene cinematics are pre-rendered, however. The rational? “It’s easier to make the spectacular scenes as a pre-rendered movie,” Sakaguchi points out. When asked if he could make a totally real time RPG by the next generation, Sakaguchi responded:
We could do it all in real time [on the Xbox 360] .
And how many discs will Lost Odyssey ship on? Four. Yes, four.
Competition among game companies is as fierce here as it is anywhere in the world… except for the Booth Babes, they’re not just supportive, they’re fans. This giggling trio took turns posing with each, two at a time, as the odd woman out snapped pics.
The 2007 winners of the Japan Game Awards, sponsored by Japan’s Computer Entertainment Software Association, have been announced, with Wii Sports and Monster Hunter Portable 2nd for the PSP picking up the Grand Award. Wii Sports brings it home for winning over “new demographic sectors, particularly women and seniors” while the Monster Hunter gets props for the other end of the spectrum as a “social phenomenon among junior high and high school students.” Check out the full list after the jump—a handful of 360 titles even made the cut, picking up both Global Awards.
newVideoPlayer("RemoteDemo_gawker.flv", 475, 376); More fun with bad vocal translation! Here’s the full PSP Remote Play demo from the stage of TGS. It’s not as flashy as their Leipzig GPS and voice chat presentation, but turning on and off your PS3 from anywhere in the world is, in all honesty, probably more useful.
I’ve said this before, but I’m getting pumped seeing Sony finally kicking some ass.
Get ready Kingdom Hearts fans. Square Enix announced today at TGS that they’re working on three new Kingdom heart titles. Each with awful titles. Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep is a new PSP adventure. Kingdom Hearts: Coded is a mobile game. Note that there are about a million mobile games on show here. Last one is Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, a co-operative (think Crystal Chronicles) DS game. Can you HANDLE that much Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts fans?
Getting ogled by a gaggle of camera-toting press and fanboys—some of whom are super creepy—isn’t the easiest job in the world. This model apparently got a little overwhelmed and needed a time out. We’re feeling the same way, minus the gross pseudo-stalking aspect.
newVideoPlayer("PSPremoteFuture_gawker.flv", 475, 376); After demonstrating the new Remote Play features on stage (turning on and off your PS3), Kaz Hirai ran through Sony’s future plans of PS3/PSP integration. He was short on details, but from the looks of it we’ll be able to remotely multiplay three PSPs on one PS3. Sweetness.
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There’s a little “museum” located just inside the hall, near the exit that leads to the press room, that has “exploded” consoles on display under a glass case. They’ve got a dismantled Xbox 360, PS3, DS Lite and PSP. While it’s kinda cool to check out, I think I would have preferred to see someone smash open the consoles like eggs.
Just what is the secret behind the high-tech interface found throughout Assassin’s Creed? Sorry, still no official details, but there is something to that modern-looking HUD, and according to Jade Raymond, all will be revealed within the first five minutes of play.
The session I attended consisted of Jade walking us through a new level in the later part of the game, where your goal is to assassinate William de Montfort, who’s been causing no end of trouble to Richard the Lionhart. The level followed the assassin as he first tries to sneak up to his prey. The action doesn’t end once the kill is done though. Maybe even more of a challenge is then escaping the area, which consists of a high-speed chase while trying to get out of the eyesight of surrounding guards (you get alerted through that high-tech interface).
One part we haven’t seen in these demos is that investigation is big part of the game — that’s how you get to the point where you’re ready to assassinate, and that means you’ll need to eavesdrop on the populace, and maybe even pickpocket your way to info.
As you’ve probably already seen, the game world is stunning, and all three cities that are featured in the game were created from detailed research of the period, and should be as authentic as you could expect from a game. Even better, everything is interactive, and you can grab and climb on anything that extends two inches.
Just how popular is Jade? Just look.
OK, so it’s not just Halo 3 — please, someone get Microsoft a new template for their door signs.
