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Halo 3 Hits The Web
Posted by Mike Fahey at 11:30 PM on September 21, 2007
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]
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 
Sssshhhhhhhhh.......
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.
Doors opened for the second TGS press day at 10 am sharp. Immediately, a huge mob descended on the Level 5 booth, and the wait clocked in at 90 minutes by a few minutes after 10am. (Level 5 is of course the developer behind Professor Layton, Dragon Quest IX and Jeanne D'Arc.) Remember: this is a press day. So if journalists and industry types are willing to wait an hour and a half to get a free demo DS cart of upcoming Level 5 titles Inazuma Eleven and Professor Layton and the Devil's Box, just imagine how brutal the public days will be. Hell! Hit the jump for the mass of people. 
A family in Loveland, Colorado took their dog in to see the vet after it had started coughing up blood, which according to several popular veterinary web sites is a pretty bad sign. An X-ray revealed a large mass in the dog's stomach, which the family assumed was an old TV remote they'd been letting the pet chew on. Questionable taste in dog toys aside, the vet induced vomiting and bits of an old TV remote did come out, but only bits. There was something else in there...
I spied 
After the warm reception their red and black Reaper model received earlier this year, React is introducing two new models of wireless guitar controllers for the PS2. The blue, green and white number is called the Odyssey and is pretty enough, but The Legacy is the one that has me drooling. Not only does it have a very classy wood grain finish, but it also comes with a pair of wireless foot pedals. One pedal controls star power, while the other acts as a whammy bar. Perfect for those of us who constantly screw themselves up while flailing about to get star power going. Both new models should be available from Best Buy in November. 
The PlayStation store updated today with a ton of new demos, trailers, and a whole new game that Kotaku's Michael McWhertor called 
Remember that Resident Evil 5-is-racist brouhaha? The E3 trailer showed large numbers of black zombies getting killed, which set off a firestorm of controversy. Killing black zombies? Masked racism, critics say. According to our well-placed insider, there is a reason for that: Resident Evil 5 takes place in Haiti, zombism's spiritual home. Speculation was that it took place in either Africa or Carribean. And yes, according to our insider, the setting is apparently Haiti. Makes sense!
Finally 2K has seen fit to port Bioshock to the world's most affordable games console, joining Street Fighter as one of the premier titles available for the Etch-A-Sketch console. If fact, if you look closely you'll see that the game is actually running on the portable version of the system, which is a miraculous feat of programming if you ask me. 
With Halo 3 just around the corner, Microsoft has released a boatload of statistics regarding the state of Xbox Live and the 360, perhaps as a way to take a snapshot of before and after the game's gigantic launch week. The stats cover everything from Xbox Live play hours (3.2 billion, or 376,000 years), Xbox Live content downloads (over 290 million), games sold per console (6.3 on average), and just oodles more. The most interesting thing to me is that before this console generation, most of these stats didn't even apply to gaming consoles, so aside from being a big opportunity for Microsoft to pat themselves on their backs, it's an interesting look at how the face of console gaming has changed over the past few years. Hit the jump for all the numbers! 
I really liked the way they let you play LittleBigPlanet at the PLAYSTATION 3 booth: 3 at a time you sat down and played 4-players with your game guide (well, booth babe, if you prefer that terminology). This setup really let you experience the multi-player component of the game, and it's a blast. When one player couldn't make it to our platform, we went and helped him out with the obstacle, and that feeling of being a team stayed throughout. The character designs are cute -- made even more cute by the comments from our "game guide" -- and the levels are just gorgeous. Why aren't we getting this kind of art direction from XBLA?
Hot off the success of Bomberman Live on Xbox Live Arcade, Hudson is bringing the Bomberman Land triple threat in January with Bomberman Land for the Wii and PSP and Bomberman Land Touch! 2 for the Nintendo DS. Solve puzzles and quests in single-player mode, play 40-50 mini-games, or make some friends blow up real good in the Battle Pack Mode, which promises classic Bomberman action. The DS and PSP versions will both support single cartridge play, while the Wii version obviously won't. In fact the Wii version only supports 1-4 players locally, so until they get some online action going I'll stick to the 360 for my Bomberman fix. 
What SNK used to be know for? Fighters and Metal Slug. Witch-touching adventure game Doki Doki Majo Shinpan has changed that. The title has been a sleeper hit. SNK isn't forsaking the fighters, but is branching out. This February, the Osaka-based developer opened an Akihabara development branch. Doki Doki Majo Shinpan was originally conceived as an adventure cell phone game, but later shifted to the DS and subsequently reworked. "I was inspired by the touch panel, and it was a good fit", says producer Yoshiyasu Matsushita. 
Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction is fun, plain and simple. I got a hands on play session -- which meant hands on the new DUALSHOCK3 -- and had an absolute blast going through the demo level. The action is all there, everything looks as close to Pixar animation is we've seen in a new-gen game, and the controller rrrrrrumbles like it should!