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Dragon's Dogma: The Kotaku Review Only announced a few days ago, Metal Slug 7 is tucked away in a quiet corner of SNK’s booth. Which is tucked away in a quiet corner of TGS. Which is a pity. Because it’s everything you’d expect of Metal Slug on the DS. As in, it’s great. Same old Metal Slug, same old controls, except now the bottom screen is devoted to a “map” of the current level, which is revealed as you progress. Can’t think of why exactly it does that, but I guess it looks nice, and I they had to put something down there.
As one would guess, any title marked as the sixth in a series probably isn’t going to offer a whole new ballgame, despite Dynasty Warriors 6 adding swimming, climbing and destroying walls to the well-worn mix. In the demo level no swimming was to be had, but I did get to break a wall, which was sort of not that thrilling. Killing hundreds of guys with a combo that stretched across most of the stage was fairly engaging, on the other hand—but aside from the endlessness of the combo, that’s the series’ admittedly formulaic bread and butter in the first place. Graphics-wise, it’s definitely easy on the eyes, even if it’s not the prettiest game out there (I played the 360 version, for the record). Overall, it’s fun—definitely familiar, but definitely fun.
On the PSP screen the silhouette of a small, spear-toting, single-eyed creature jittered and hopped across the screen left to right. To my right a woman dressed all in white smiled and pointed to the portable’s square and circle buttons, repeating something in a gentle Japanese voice.
The woman looked at the screen, pausing, for effect, before clapping four times in a steady cadence. She pointed again at the buttons and then looked at me.
Smile. Clap four times. Pause. Repeat.
Ah!
The Eye of Judgment set up over in the Sony booth is pretty big, there are six tables set up, two of which are set up for playing head-to-head online and the rest are designed to be played side-by-side on a single machine. At one end of the area was a large glass display case with a selection of some of the retails card packs and boxes. I hate to say this, because of all of the required equipment and space, but I’m really looking forward to this game.
Despite a great interview with the director, Soul Calibur IV wasn’t playable here at TGS. But fortunately we do have a new trailer to see! The game is looking really sharp and will be a definite addition to my collection. Who can resist shiny armor, sexy fighters and giant weapons? Now I just have to make the big decision: Xbox 360 or PS3…
2K Australia/2K Boston’s big man is willing to stand against the waves of critical abuse being tossed developer Factor 5′s way over the somewhat obtuse controls of their glorified dragon flying simulator, Lair. GameDaily.biz has an interview with the BioShock designer, where he states:
“Let me speak in these guys’ defense for a minute as a game developer. I’m sure somebody came to them at some point and said, ‘We have this motion control controller, and we have to make a go of it. And we really think you should try to make your game exclusively on that.’”
It’s not exactly a stunning retort, and maybe there’s some truth in his words, but I doubt it’s going to do much for Lair‘s aggregrated score of 58% on GameRankings.com.
BioShock Dev Defends Lair Motion Controls [GameDaily]
Back when I lived in New Orleans, my friends and I would get together on Friday nights and play video games until the wee hours. Eighty percent of the time the evenings were dominated by one game: Soul Calibur 2. My friends would practice during the week, becoming proficient enough with certain characters to come back on the weekend and kick some serious arse. When I heard I would be covering Soul Calibur IV, I was looking forward to checking out the game, but the reality of the situation turned out to be even more exciting: I would be interviewing the series’ director, Katsutoshi Sasaki.
At the very beginning and very end of each day of TGS, Sony’s army of pretty PlayStation ladies are on parade. Not a confetti and ticker-tape kind of parade. A military kind of parade. The ladies line up, in a terrifyingly straight line, and are barked at by their instructor. They respond enthusiastically, and then commence with the bowing. Imagine a Mexican wave, but instead of Mexicans, it’s a hundred Japanese women (note the equal height: these women were not born, they were crafted for this purpose) bowing their heads. Pointless, yes, but also strangely impressive.
newVideoPlayer("TakashiSensui_gawker.flv", 475, 376); We gave Takashi Sensui (Microsoft’s General Manager of Xbox) a chance to justify his holiday lineup. And unlike certain tall, bald and highly clonable Sony executives who outright refused, Sensui jumped at the chance to support his company.
During our shoot, either our autofocus went wonky or the booze really started kicking in. Sorry about that, but at least our camera didn’t puke on Sensui’s shoes.
