RSS Feeds
|
US Edition
Babblebaby
|
Defamer
|
Gizmodo
|
Kotaku
|
Lifehacker
Last time we checked in with High Voltage at PAX, they had only just gotten their hands on Wii MotionPlus. So I wasn't too surprised to see that there really wasn't much being done with it at the Nintendo Media Summit - but my proverbial socks were knocked off when I saw how much they'd done with the graphics in that short amount of time.
Sega is going to sit on this game 'til it hatches. We've seen screen shots, we have videos; and if anyone can give me an accurate count of times "black and white and red all over" has been used to describe MadWorld, I'll send you a cookie.
But nobody besides PR reps is allowed to touch the freaking game. Lucky for me, I know one of these PR reps - Mabel Chung gave me my second job as a tester at Sega way back in the day. She might not cut me any breaks with the no-hands-on rule, but she will give me a reasonable explanation (which you have to click the jump to hear):
Oblivion had tons of girlie things for me to do. I could pick pretty flowers, collect pretty crystals and buy pretty clothes. Fallout 3 is distinctly un-pretty, but what did you expect from an irradiated post-apocalyptic Earth? The only flowers you'll find here contain death, and you can forget those fancy brocade gowns.
I never played the first two Fallouts and have very little sentimental attachment to Pip-boy, Vault 101, or Dogmeat. When early impressions of Fallout 3 labelled the game as "Oblivion with guns," I thought: sign me up. But many diehard fans and purists don't want that. They want an experience that's true to the spirit of the original Fallout, a game that builds on the innovations and atmosphere that evolved in Fallout 2.
After being filled in by Manfriend, I was able to take a look at Fallout 3 and judge for myself if it has more in common with Oblivion than it does with Fallout. And after three hours with the game, I've decided... it's 50-50.
Saying "peripheral-free" is like saying "castrated" when it comes to music games. Isn't half the fun of playing Rock Band the plastic instruments?
But there must be market for people (parents) who don't want to deal with a plastic drum set and two guitars cluttering up the living room - and for these spoilsports comes Ultimate Band on Wii.
Ever since my initial experience with the concert tour during GDC 07, I've been a big fan of the Video Games Live concert series. The combination of classic video game tunes played by a symphony orchestra and classic gaming imagery, both shared with a couple thousand fellow gamers is something that everyone should try to experience at least once. That having been said, I was a bit skeptical regarding a CD release of the music from the event. How could a measly 10-track disc compare to the massive gaming music event? It can't really, but it can give you a better appreciation of the music. Hit the jump for brief, track by track impressions of the Video Games Live Volume One CD.
I was about ten minutes into the Saints Row 2 demo on the Penny Arcade show floor last week when it hit me: The game didn't feel like a GTA rip-off.
It was still free-roaming and featured detailed 3D avatars. It still had plenty of running and gunning. But the vibe, the feel of the game didn't have the same GTA-ness to it that, to many, marked the first Saints Row a Grand Theft Auto clone.
I actually mentioned this to the Saints Row folks on hand and they agreed with me. Even the marketing for the game has been geared toward differentiating the free-roaming shooter from GTA.
But it's hard to put your finger on exactly how the games are different when playing Saints Row 2. It sort of feels that GTA and Saints Row were both heading down the same road and at some point GTA veered off in one direction and Saints Row headed off in another.
I've been following the the game X-Blades ever since it was the Russian hack and slash title Oniblade, and not just for the adorable, barely-dressed anime-girl protagonist Ayumi. I was enthralled by...okay, I'm completely lying here. It was all about Ayumi, with her flowing blonde hair and her long legs that go all the way up to her oversized head. With the amount of information I had, she pretty much was the game as far as I was concerned. Well I finally got my hands on her X-Blades at the Games Convention and Leipzig in order to see if there was any substance behind all that style.
Before I got my turn playing the game, the TopWare Interactive rep manning the booth explained to me that X-Blades had added story and RPG elements to the original game, but the hands on time I spent was all about the action. After waiting what seemed like an eternity the guy before me finished playing, cleaned up his area, and left me to my own devices.
Quantic Dream's David Cage walked us through a Heavy Rain demo at Games Convention last week, giving us a taste of how the game actually plays. While much of the presentation touched on facets of Heavy Rain's "rubber band" storyline and little things, like motion captured eye movement, Cage paused often to talk up the PlayStation 3 game's control scheme.
We've already written about the driving game inspired character control — the R2 button moves her forward, with the left analogue steering her head and shoulders — so let's focus on how everything else is done.
The main problem with seeing a game on the show floor at a consumer-friendly gaming convention in Germany, is that everyone speaks German. It makes sense, considering 99% of the people coming through to play their games are German, but boy does being in that 1% other bracket suck. Case in point, Ascaron's Sacred 2: Fallen Angel. I've been dying to get my hands on the isometric action RPG for more than a year now, and when I finally have it cornered it turns out to be the German language version. Rather than let the fact that I couldn't read any of the text get me down, I decided to pretend that I could instead. With a cheery grunt-nagen I got my 10 minutes of Sacred 2 on.
When the demo kicks off, you get to choose between five different characters, the Seraphim, Shadow Warrior, High Elf, Dryad, and Temple Guardian. While three of them are relatively attractive women, I instead went with the Temple Guardian, since he looked a bit like an undead robot Anubis, Egyptian god of the living impaired.
Condoms. Seriously, that's what the Boingz look like: jelly-filled condoms.