Monday, September 24, 2007

Japanese Gamers Really Care About Halo 3

3:30PM Michael McWhertor | We don’t expect the lines in Akihabara or Den Den Town to reach the impressive levels of home, but don’t think that Tokyo Game Show attendees are turning up their noses at Halo 3, just because it’s on the Xbox Somethingorother. They waited, for hours—okay an hour at least—to get their hands on the game just a few days early. That 60-minute wait sign was quickly updated to 90 minutes after everyone in Microsoft’s booth grew tired of playing Zoids Alternative and Dynasty Warriors 6. Respect, Halo 3. Much respect. Sure, the waits for Biohazard: The Umbrella Chronicles (3.5 hours) and Devil May Cry 4 (just about all day) were a bit nuttier, but maybe the Japanese are warming up to Master Chief. We’ll know at about 10 AM on September 27th if Halo 3 will be the 360’s savior in Japan. More »

Onee Chanbara R (Like, For Wii) Hands-On Impressions

3:00PM Michael McWhertor | D3 Publisher’s slash-hit series Onee Chanbara does cowgirls in bikinis right. The amount of zombie eviscerating is arguably perfect. The gameplay? Ehhhh… So why not add an extra layer of sloppy controls to the Onee Chanbara formula courtesy of the Wiimote and nunchuk controller? That was, I assume, the thrust of the white board concept meeting at Onee Chanbara R’s developer Tamsoft. The TGS demo certainly gets the core elements right, there’s loads of pink juicy blood squirting at the camera and plenty of opportunities for our hero Aya to perform fan service acrobatics. But the Devil May Cry Lite action doesn’t impress. At all. It sounds great on paper, perform slashing and stabbing motions with both halves of the Wii controller, using each hand to control an arm. It quickly grows tiresome when battling not only hordes of creatures, but fighting the craptastic camera as well. Many sword moves were interpreted liberally resulting in plenty of pantie revealing cartwheels. Yes, that was a complaint. Onee Chanbara has never actually played that well, but slogging through the Wii version at Tokyo Game Show was more torturous than before. The only salvageable portions of the game—the campy blood sprays, the eyeballing of Aya, the progressively goofy kudos you get (”Sensual! Bluster! Ace!”)—they’re pretty much wearing thin by now. However, I will say that a zombie desperate enough to kick my ass, even if he’s comprised of nothing more than some hips and a pair of legs, still gets a LOL. Those who avoided the PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360 iterations may want to check it out for a laugh, but anyone looking for an action game on par with something like Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden or God of War will be disappointed. Anyone looking for a thrill should probably just tap into the terabytes of free porn available on the Internet. More »

Game In College, Have Poor Time Management, Watch Grades Drop

2:30PM Maggie Greene | While I’m all for the academic study of gaming, a lot of the “scientific” studies just kill me – if you spend too much time [insert time waster of your choice here] in college, your grades could drop? Really? And people actually get funding for this kind of stuff? The paper is being published by the National Bureau of Economic Research and was conducted at Berea College, where certain conditions meant that typical college time wasters weren’t present. Video games, however, were – and they found that people who brought along video games to college (or had roommates who did) spent less time studying (and had a lower GPA) than people who didn’t: …The study needed an external factor that influenced study time. It found it in video games, specifically by dividing the students based on whether their roommates had brought gaming rigs to school. About half of the males and a quarter of the females fell into this group. But the impact of access to gaming didn’t depend on the students’ gender: those with video games in their rooms spent about two-thirds of an hour less on academic work per day out of a mean of 3.5 hours of study time. That decrease closely tracked the amount of time that the students reported spending gaming, suggesting that there was a direct transfer of effort between the two activities. As Ars Technica points out, this is not really a gaming problem, rather a time management one. A life outside of academia is to be strongly encouraged (everyone needs an outlet for stuff not relating to books, lectures, tests, and essays), but it has to be balanced out with academic requirements. Isn’t this simple common sense? Deathmatch: video games vs. study time, a flawless GPA victory [Ars Technica via GamePolitics] More »

Original Fallout Concept Art

2:00PM Maggie Greene | In celebration of Fallout’s upcoming 10th anniversary, the people at No Mutants Allowed have been putting up information every two days since 17 September. Today’s nostalgic treat? Four pieces of concept art from the original. You can check out the other three here and can keep an eye on their other offerings at their 10th anniversary page. [Thanks 'Brother None'] More »

Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising Delayed (Again)

1:40PM Maggie Greene | Gamasutra reports that Perpetual Entertainment has announced God & Heroes: Rome Rising is being delayed again, this time citing the need for more beta testing. In the same interview, Perpetual CEO Chris McKibbin said that Perpetual will be laying off 30-40 employees (the last delay of Rome Rising coincided with more layoffs) and clarified the company’s relationship with SOE. As reported back in August, sources cited a changing relationship with SOE (with SOE moving from a co-publisher to a purely marketing role), but McKibbin clarified what he termed a “non-story”: Asked about reports that Sony Online had shifted from co-publisher to solely a marketing role with Gods and Heroes, representing a backing-off the project by Sony, McKibbin called it a “non-story that people spun a little.” He clarified: “There was no change in our relationship with Sony… part of the confusion comes from the difference between online games and packaged goods games. Perpetual has always been the financer and creator of Gods and Heroes. What [Sony was] doing initially versus what they are doing now is the same; marketing and distribution, and that’s it. We have a great relationship with them, and there hasn’t been any change with that.” McKibbin didn’t put a date on Rome Rising’s ship date, saying only they are aiming for an early 2008 release. Perpetual Announces Gods and Heroes Delay, Layoffs [Gamasutra via Worlds In Motion] More »

Elaborate Halo Case Mod

1:20PM Maggie Greene | “Brooza” sent us a link to this pretty amazing Halo case mod. Me? Not a Halo person, but wow. The original post at Maxconsole says in part: “The creator is mentioned to be from the UK and is called ‘Craget’ with the following unit taking him 2 months to complete in his spare time. There are no internal modifications apart from the base cooler that he fitted with some LED’s used to light up the case. The creator will soon put his creation up on eBay too.” This is the sort of mod I’d love to see some step-by-step pictures of. More »

Textfyre – The Comeback of the Text Adventure?

1:00PM Maggie Greene | Interactive fiction is a hot hot hot subject these days (at least in some circles), and plenty of independent takes have cropped up relatively recently. But David Cornelson, CEO of Textfyre, Inc., is setting out to see that interactive fiction gets a commercial resurgence, and has goals like getting a licence for Harry Potter IF game (hey, it would probably be better than the Wii version of the last game). Targeting reading-aged kids with an episodic format, Cornelson says to Gamasutra: I think I will be able to sell hundreds of thousands of games in a year and we’re going to expand into educational, subject-matter, library, and other markets and we will be the market leader in high quality text-based interactive educational entertainment. I have to wonder how successful text-based games are going to be when aimed at a generation raised on CGI, but stranger things have happened (though it’s certainly ‘an eyebrow-raising prospect,’ as GameSetWatch says). It’s an interesting interview and an interesting concept – we’ll see how it pans out in the future. Could it be that interactive fiction is no longer going to be the pet project of PhDs across the country? Though I really have a difficult time imagining this as a truly commercially viable concept. Textfyre’s Cornelson On An IF Resurgence [Gamasutra via GameSetWatch] More »

Shanda Says No to Men Role Playing Women Characters

12:40PM Maggie Greene | Shanda Entertainment – one of Mainland China’s heavy hitters in the gaming industry – announced that their subsidiary, Aurora Technology, has frozen accounts of male players who have elected to play as female characters in the King of the World MMORPG. Apparently there are no bans on women playing male characters, but women (and men-wanting-to-play-as-women) will be required to prove their gender via webcam. How exactly is this all going to work? And is it going to last? Who knows – but it certainly seems very odd and not prone to lasting long: Shanda (Nasdaq: SNDA) subsidiary Aurora Technology has frozen game accounts of male players who chose to play female in-game characters in its in-house developed MMORPG King of the World, reports 17173. Aurora stipulates that only female gamers can play female characters in the game, and it requires gamers who chose female characters to prove their biological sex with a webcam, according to the report. PlayNoEvil’s commentary points out that this doesn’t seem like it will last long: a webcam gender verification system seems to be fraught with potential problems and headaches, and Aurora is trying to remove at least one aspect that attracts some people to online, fantasy-based games: the chance to be someone or something else. Shanda’s Aurora Bans Transsexuals [Pacific Epoch via PlayNoEvil] More »