Dead Rising creator Keiji Inafune really wants to do Dead Rising 2. He told me that, saying “I really want to do Dead Rising 2.” We spotted the current Capcom Research & Development and Online Business head wandering outside TGS. Our conversation:
Ashcraft: So Dead Rising 2 won’t be announced next year? Inafune: Yeah. The original team has been split up and is working on different projects. Ashcraft: And you are probably busy with your executive role at Capcom? Inafune: I do really want to do Dead Rising 2. It’s just still hard to get games for the Western market approved. Ashcraft: But Dead Rising was a big hit abroad. Inafune: It wasn’t a big hit here in Japan. Ashcraft: Why is it hard to still get Western-geared games approved in Japan? Inafune: You live here. You know how it is. That’s why getting games for the Western market is still a challenge. So we need people like [Osaka-based Capcom producer]Ben Judd to bridge the gap between Japan and abroad. It’s really hard for people like Ben, I’m sure.
Microsoft Japan boss Takahashi Sensui walks by, says a brief “Hello”. Sensui notices me, smiles and tells Inafune, “Watch out for this guy.” Inafune laughs.
Ashcraft: Capcom has been cranking about a lot new IPs like Dead Rising, though — not just relying on sequels. Inafune: And there are a lot more new titles coming. A lot more. More »
We Love Golf! is not Wii Sports Golf rehashed. You still swing the remote to swing your club like you do in WSG, but that’s about where the mechanical similarities end—you know, aside from what’s inherent to them both being golf games. It’s deeper, enough so to justify being a whole game on its own. It’s also harder. It took me a round to get going, and even after that putting was still a total bitch. Why? It’s kind of hard to explain, but it has to do with the meter at the bottom of the screen that indicates your swing’s power. It’s not, to use that most overused of Wii control scheme descriptions, inherently intuitive.
The meter indicates power on a weak-to-strong, left-to-right basis (obviously). The circled orange club on the far right is your target strength, which changes depending on the remaining distance to the hole. The Wiimote icon is where the remote is relatively located in real space after you’ve begun holding down the A button to start your swing.
Here’s where I was initially thrown off: As you pull back, the Wiimote icon slides to the right. The “intuitive” thing to do is to immediately swat forward once the Wiimote icon touches the recommended sweet spot, right? But! You see the club icon on the far left? It lags behind your Wiimote’s trail by about a second, but that’s the icon you’re supposed to time everything by, not the Wiimote. Confusing, no? After you’ve completed the backswing motion (best done semi-slowly to sure up the match), the club icon rushes back to the left—when it lines up with the faded blue shadow is when you’re supposed to swing forward, so you have this weird mid-backswing pause. It made putting really annoying since timing the back and forth is hard in the short space you’re given. It makes sense after you’ve played it for a bit, but it definitely takes practice, and it’s really got nothing to do with golf—it’s simply a timing mini-game that’s vaguely similar to timing Super Strikes in Mario Strikers. I didn’t even try to get into the topspin and backspin mess, honestly. One other control issue is the way you switch views by tilting the remote up or down. It’s far too easy to accidentally switch to the larger field view; I noticed I wasn’t the only one by far who inadvertently flipped between game screens more than a couple of times.
Despite all of my initial “getting used to it” issues, I could see where it’d be a lot of fun after some more hands on time, at least if you’re into Camelot’s style of sports games, which I am. At the same time, I feel like the controls could be tweaked a bit to make it easier to start “loving” it immediately while maintaining the depth of the game mechanics. More »
newVideoPlayer("WipeOutHD_gawker.flv", 475, 376); Every new Wipeout incarnation looks just more beautiful enough for me to buy it. You know, when it’s not visually raped for internet streaming. More »
Treasure’s Nintendo DS sequel to the offbeat Dreamcast/Nintendo 64 shooter Bangai-O was available to play at a single kiosk at D3 Publisher’s TGS booth. Just one Nintendo DS! It almost seems criminal. Clearly D3 underestimates the rabid demand for this fruit collecting puzzle-shooter sequel to the game that sold well into the tens of thousands. However, despite the broad appeal of shooting stuff, Bangai-O Spirits was surprisingly simple to get your hands on at Tokyo Game Show. Wrapping one’s brain around the concept may take a bit more work. More »
We sat down with Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles producer Masachika Kawata yesterday to get up to speed on Capcom’s Wii shooter. Sorry, zapper. Since Umbrella Chronicles is so straightforward—painfully so at times—I wanted to know when the Resident Evil series was going to find its sense of humor. Meaning, when was a Resident Evil game going to take advantage of the Wii Fit balance board. Kawata told us his thoughts on the peripheral, saying “As a parody, it would be kind of fun to make Biohazard Fitness.” Oooh! That sounds just perfect.
Unfortunately, Kawata went back into casual gaming wet blanket mode, saying “Seriously, the game market in Japan has become too hardcore so I think something like Biohazard Fitness would actually broaden the market. Anything to break the market open is a welcome change for me.” You lost us at “game market”.
Honestly, Kawata, doing push ups to fend off the undead is a far, far better concept than shooting them (and you know it). More »
While Guilty Gear 2 is supposed to feature a mix of a 3D hack-n-slash and RTS elements, the demo only let us tear through a level of the cutting and killing variety. It is a combo-based H&S, though I’m not sure I plumbed its deepest depths or anything since it seemed fairly simplistic—in fact, I hope I’ve only skimmed the top because I’d expect a combo system with more complexity from Arc. That said, it was a lot of fun tearing through waves of fairly hapless drones with Sol’s signature moves.
The thrill certainly doesn’t come from how gorgeous the game looks. The graphics are adequate, but nothing special, which is disappointing considering the historical eye candy quality of GG visuals.
While I enjoyed the demo, I still walked away with the sort-of feeling I played a regular hack-n-slash with a Guilty Gear skin on top of it, ultimately leading me wonder how much of the enthrallment stemmed from the GG branding. The H&S mechanics are solid, but not mindblowing or genre-busting. In other words, it’s really cool to kill things as Sol. But the Sol factor’s a big part of that equation, at least for me. More »
newVideoPlayer("ProjectO_gawker.flv", 475, 376); Project O night continues! Earlier today, Luke got the pleasure of being the first Western journalist to see the newly dubbed Project O trailer, and now we’re sharing it with you. Because what the world really needs is more knights riding cows. Go Poncho!
We just got to speak with Yoshiro Kimura, producer at Marvellous and man at the helm of their super-group Wii title, Project O (reports of the game being named King’s Story are apparently premature, Kimura saying “no, that’s not its name, we’re still working on a name”). Which was largely exciting, as I’m largely excited about this game, even more so since he then said we the first Western journalists in to check it out.
Earlier comparisons, a lot of them based on the production team’s pedigree from the Harvest Moon, Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy series, seemed to suggest the game was a a strategy title, a nice blend of Harvest Moon, Pikmin and Black & White. Those are… close, especially Black & White, but think more along the lines of The Settlers than the other two and you’ll be getting warm. More »
It’s always a pleasure hanging with Goichi Suda. Guy’s super-nice. So anyway, there we were this morning, chatting about No More Heroes, when I asked what he was up to now that the game was about ready to ship. He said Grasshopper were working on a new title, and that it would be appearing on the 360. Cue a frantic little exchange between Suda and his translator, but hey, you can’t unsay stuff. He also said that the game would be a full, proper release, not an XBLA download. More »
