Friday, September 21, 2007

Halo 3 Hits The Web

11:30PM Mike Fahey | With Halo 3’s street date being broken left and right, you knew it was only a matter of time before it showed up in torrent form. Sometime in the past 24 hours, a 6.14GB torrent file for Halo 3 began circulating on the interwebs, hacked and ready for play on illegally modified Xboxen around the world. Checking around myself I found at least 15 separate torrents running for the game, meaning that on top of those lucky enough to be on the receiving end of retailer error or stupid enough to pay exorbitant eBay prices, hackers and pirates (not the good kind) are added to the list of early players. This also means that if you don’t want the game completely spoiled for you, you’ll probably want to go into hiding in a mountaintop cave right about now. Halo 3 leaked online [GamesIndustry.biz] More »

Omega Five Hands-On Impressions

11:00PM Michael McWhertor | Hudson’s Xbox Live Arcade shooter Omega Five may have been unfairly lost in the noise of the thunderous announcements of Rez HD and Ikaruga for the Xbox 360, but anyone interested in shmups simply must take a moment to learn more about the game. Developed by a five-person team at Natsume, Omega Five immediately won me over with one of its playable characters. She’s not only sporting some revealing Brazilian cut bustier get up that’s apparently perfect for space battles, she immediately cemented the game’s similarities to my personal favourite arcade shooter of all time, Forgotten Worlds. Unlike Forgotten Worlds, you won’t purchase weapon upgrades from shops. However, there is an undeniable series of moments, enemy types and aesthetic decisions that invoke memories of Capcom’s futuristic shooter. More »

Greenberg Says Current Xbox 360s Are “Improved”

10:00PM Brian Ashcraft | That’s Xbox Group Marketing Manager Aaron Greenberg. A group of us chatted with him at Microsoft’s TGS hotel, touching base on the 360 quality woes. But relax! Aaron says things are getting better. No, things are better. Says Greenberg: We have made all the improvements in our manufacturing process… All the consoles on the market have those improvements…. [We will] repair the console sent to us with these improvements. It should be similar to buying a new console off the shelf. So no need to wait for that new fancy chip! Or something. More »

Echocrome Hands-On Impressions

9:00PM Luke Plunkett | Got lucky this morning. Despite an influx of students today, which has increased both the numbers of attendees and the potency of the showroom floor’s odor, I walked past the Echocrome stand to find it deserted. Everyone else’s loss! While simple in premise, the game’s also super-easy to get to grips with, as players only do one thing: rotate the camera. Doing this changes the perspective of an escher-like 3D space, allowing a little drawing figure to get from one end of a level to the other. The simplicity extends beyond the controls, with no on-screen clutter, a clean white colour scheme and simple, nice music. Should be one of the better PSN games coming over the next few months if they don’t make the levels too hard. More »

NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams Hands-On Impressions

8:00PM Michael McWhertor | Sega’s inexplicably capped Wii-bound sequel NiGHTs: Journey of Dreams is playable on the Tokyo Game Show floor, a welcome change from the hands-off demos the company ran at E3 this year. Also a welcome surprise, the next Nights adventure features a shockingly simple control scheme. The game features no noticeable motion control options at all, using only the analogue stick for directing Nights and the A button for speeding him up. B speeds up Nights. As does C. Maybe even Z, too. It’s not too complicated. Gameplay is similar to the Saturn game and involves plenty of balletic aerial maneuvers, guiding Nights through a series of rings, picking up scattered bonuses, paralooping around blue orbs, the typical fare one engages in when in a jester suit. The level on hand at TGS started off on foot, with human boy William, but just for a moment. More »

Simple Series Coming To XBLA?

6:30PM Luke Plunkett | I was just over at D3’s booth checking out some of their Simple series of budget games. Most of them were pretty good, considering their cheap, cheap price, especially their new line of Wii games. Remember: these games might look basic, but they’re cheap and the company churn out around 119 of them a week, so the law of averages dictates that you’re bound to see one you like sooner or later. Right now, you (provided “you” are Japanese) can see them on the PS2, DS, PSP and Wii. Soon, though, you might be seeing them on your 360 as well. I asked the D3 (the Simple series’ publisher) PR rep taking me around their booth about the possibility of the series appearing on the 360 or PS3, and she said no, no they had no plans for that. But when I asked her about the possibility of the series turning up as downloadable titles on XBLA or the PSN, she nodded slightly, then said they had two cheap, easy games coming out soon on Xbox Live Arcade. D3 were still unsure whether to formally attach the Simple tag to them, but I was assured either way that they’d be simple, and I was assured they’d be cheap. If D3 turn these two games into a regular lineup of Simple games over XBLA, this is good news. If the games actually turn up outside of Japan, that’d be even better news. More »

Sega Rally Impressions

6:00PM Flynn De Marco | I went to a Sega Booth tour that really was nothing more than the guy gesturing me towards their booth and then walking away. After looking around I realised that all of the games were in Japanese and the ones that weren’t were already being covered by my colleagues so I went for the one game that was close and didn’t have anyone mobbing it which turned out to be Sega Rally for the PS3. While I love kart games, I’ve never been a big fan of “realistic” racing games. I like a little fantasy with my games, something that makes me forget that I live in the real world. But, I decided to put my reservations aside and take the game on it’s own merits. The track I tried out had an African Safari theme and the graphics were nice if not a little typical. It looked very real and the terrain physics were well done. As you raced around the track, your car would leave ruts in the dirt that would still be there when you came back around and would affect your driving. Tearing through puddles will cause you to slide around, but I would have loved to have seen some mud splashed on the screen for a little extra effect. Three times around the track and it was over, leaving me feeling a little blase’. Overall it seemed like a pretty decently put together driving game but with nothing terribly new or spectacular to really make it stand out. Fans of the genre may enjoy it as another addition to their library, but if you weren’t a fan before, I doubt Sega Rally will change your mind. More »