Archive for October 5th, 2006
Where’s My Too Human?!
At E3, Silicon Knights’ Too Human didn’t meet the hype, and the game’s demo wasn’t quite ready. Following its outing, the game got pushed back to next year, and the title didn’t make an appearance at X06 in Barcelona. Rumors swirled, and Silicon Knights president Dennis Dyack commented on an IGN developer blog, writing:
As you may have noticed we did not show in Barcelona. This decision to not show at X06 was made immediately after E3. We made the decision to next show the game when we are ready and we knew that X06 would not be the right time. When we do decide to show the game, our goal is to give everyone a true impression of the game—one that includes story, audio, game play, artwork and technology. Things are going very well and Too Human is shaping up to be our best game to date.
Kudos to Dyack and co. for addressing these rumors and for waiting until there’s solid product to show, instead of something half-baked like at E3.
Silicon Knights Addresses Rumors [1Up]
Uwe Doing BloodRayne Sequel
Chowderhead “filmmaker” Uwe Boll recently confirmed that he will inflict visual pain on the world once again by making yet another movie based on the video game BloodRayne, so expect an official announcement soon. The prequel hit theaters last year and sucked. The end. Since the box office disaster that was the previous BloodRayne film, Chowderhead has spent his time beating up overweight internet geeks to prove he isn’t a crappy director, but rather a small, insecure jerk. Hey Uwe, your movies are still rotten camp, and the intertubes still hates you.
Uwe Is A Doo-Doo and Is Making Another Bad Movie [Eurogamer]
Rebuttal: Gears of War Not Perfect
Joystiq is reporting that contrary to how the slew of rosy reviews may make it seem, Gears of War still has some defects.
“You hold A to run, but you also press it to duck. If you run near a car you stop running and duck behind it. It doesn’t seem like a glitch to me. It seems like the game doesn’t know if you want to run or duck behind the car.” Is Gears of War going to be a huge hit? Daniel has his doubts, “No not in this state. Not in its present form.”
That sounds like a fairly huge problem, not being able to run past cover. I’m not seeing any reports on the options menus, or even if anyone saw any, but perhaps this is a problem that can be solved with different keymapping.
Fans react to Gears of War at the Match Made in Hell [Siliconera, via Joystiq]
Sony Needs A Major Nelson (We Nominate Kaz)
“Major Nelson” is the online person of Microsoft’s Larry Hryb. His Major Nelson blog acts as a go-between the company and fans and press alike. Alex Donaldson PS3 RPG Site questions whether Sony needs a similar figure. He writes:
Sony’s only problem now would be who? Right now I don’t see Ken Kutagari [SIC], Kaz Hirai or Phil Harrison being a particularly strong public figure with the fans. Despite all this, I think getting one would be a step in the right direction for Sony’s online service, whatever it may be called.
We thought that Sony already had a Major Nelson tagteam with Kaz and Ken, but no says Alex. “Just for one moment imagine a blog run by Kaz Hirai—do you feel it could work?” he points out. Who cares if it would work? I’d totally read the Kommander Kaz blog. Sony, make it happen.
Sony’s Major Nelson [PS3 RPG, via Major Nelson ]
Gamer-Only Network Tough on Lag, Soft on Skin
Grey gamer site 2old2play has a comprehensive rundown on the upcoming gamer-only sorta-ISP, GameRail. GameRail promises to deliver a special Internet tube specifically for gaming, and if their numbers are accurate then we’re looking at something incredible:
A company called GameRail is building a dedicated fiber optic network that will piggy back on the Internet and is specifically designed to only carry gaming traffic. How much faster is it? Using a ping command which is a network diagnostic utility, it would take you around 80-100 milliseconds for your ping to travel from the east coast to the west coast and back on today’s Internet. Using the dedicated GameRail fiber optic network, pings around 30ms are seen. When you consider light travels 1000 miles every 8-10ms on a fiber optic line, the fastest this could possibly be with no hops is 25ms. So this is a very significant speed increase.
GameRail is currently offering a free beta test signup, and while they are currently limited to PC, they promise eventual, universal compatibility.
A Final Solution to Lag? [2old2play]
Post-Massacre Gears of War Playtime Reports
Yesterday, after being forced to sit through the latest Texas Chainsaw Massacre flick, gamer audiences in Chicago were allowed to play Gears of War on the theater screens. All reports I’ve read have said the same thing: Massacre boring, Gears of War amazing.
Once we got past the bore fest that was Texas Chainsaw Massacre we got see in my opinion what is the must have game of the holiday season. The controls were great, even though you had to adjust for them, and the game is just plain old fun! My only complaint would be that I wasn’t able to play it again.
- Antonio Mercer (Chicago, IL)
You will find more reviews on Endangered Gamer, Jystiq, and probably everywhere else. I don’t think any Kotakunauts got their hands on it, since we all live very far away from the various selected cities, but everyone says the same thing: super badass totally sweet oh my god rad.
Hilariously, the marketing scheme to get geeks in seats for Massacre probably backfired, as no one is talking about the movie except to breathlessly mention how crap it was before delving into their Gears descriptions. Of course, it probably boosted the opening day numbers quite a bit.
Gears Of War - What The Fans Had to Say! [Aeropause]
Alice in Marioland
I have several Threadless tees, and while their “girly shirts” are really not that girly (actual shape might be cool), I can forego a decent fit for the incredible artwork that goes into many of the designs.
This one was linked over on Destructoid and it’s up for votes for only one more day. It’s one of the most witty cultural mashups I’ve ever seen, and while the Alice is ripped directly from the original books, the guy is long dead and the visual vocabulary is much stronger with an authentic Alice in there.
Alice in Marioland [Threadless]
Justice League Heroes Gameplay Vid
The latest promo vid from Justice League Heroes, demonstrating the familiar powers of familiar characters. Superman’s eyebeams, Wonder Woman’s lasso and bracelets, etc. Is it me, or do these character renditions seem vaguely gross…sort of uncanny and bleh?
Killzone: Liberation Hands-On Impressions
Killzone: Liberation kinda took me by surprise.
I was anticipating it, but mostly because the idea of putting Killzone onto the Playstation Portable as anything but a straight first-person shooter port sounded interesting.
I had no idea.
The game, which is played from a third-person isometric point of view, is a handful of hotness. It manages to blend action, stealth and a tiny bit of puzzle into something you can play in the sort of bite size chunks meant to be on a portable. Which is to say, it’s one of those few Playstation Portable titles that make the whole system really seem worth it. This is a game designed for the portable, not one stuffed into it.
Sure, there are problems. The aiming system, which is a sort of loose lock-on that requires you to aim in the general direction of your target, is mostly solid but can get quite sloppy at times. And some of the specialty weapons, like the Crossbow and Sniper rifle, really need to have a different aiming mechanism. But all in all Liberation is my new steady.
I’ve been playing it pretty much non-stop since I got it and have managed to work my way through 14 or 15 of the game’s 16 levels. The level design is mostly brilliant both when taken separately and as a whole. The developers, Guerilla, found just the right difficulty level to make the game border on hand-clenchingly difficult but still be addictively fun to play. But it’s the range of things you are doing from level-to-level that make this such a pleasure to play. There are levels where you really need to sneak through, defusing laser trip bombs, avoiding mines, slipping past guard, and there are levels where you just have to load up and take out the trash. You even get to drive vehicles like a tank and hovercraft. The game has a freaking jetpack. A jetpack man!
Gameplay mechanics are probably the game’s Achilles heel, while it is not so bad as to distract, it was the one thing I found at times frustrating. The occasional sloppy aiming got me killed a few times, and taking out a sniper with a sniper rifle of your own that doesn’t have a zoom can be annoying.
Fortunately the movement is concise and quick to respond and the automatically controlled camera angle is exceptional.
The game, due out on Halloween, does feel a bit short, but it supports in-room multiplayer and, sometime after launch Sony promises to release a free add-on that will make online WiFi multiplay possible, something I heard is just this side of addictive.
If the Playstation Portable’s games keep shaping up like this I think there’s a very good chance that Sony might be able to turn this portable around. And I hear Lumines II makes buying the PSP worthwhile all over again.
2.71 PSP Downgrader Released
Tipper Cyanide reports that the newest PSP firmware downgrader is out, and will work on firmwares 2.71 and lower. And apparently it’s easier than ever:
If you’ve found it difficult to use the downgrader, with all the messing around with dumps, or if you’ve been left out because you couldn’t find a dump, Dark_AleX has just made all of it a piece of cake. Now no messing around with dumps, checking to see if it’s the correct one. The latest downgrader by Dark_AleX allows you to downgrade your 2.71 PSP to any version upto 1.5.
Head on over to QJ.net for the downloaded and report back when you’ve used it. I want all the gory details.
Dark_AleX’s Generic Downgrader- Now Downgrade to any PSP firmware from 2.71! [QJ.net]
Today in Joystiq: October 5, 2006
Joystiquery
Gears of War and chainsaws: a match made in heaven
Joystiq: now entirely legible on your mobile device
News
Totem Ball gesticulates onto Xbox Live Arcade
Wired reports on Gizmondo’s high-speed crash-up
Wii production exceeding expectations
Shell head and Stretcho highlight new Alliance trailers
Sony says no, Immersion says yes
Gears of War still buggy, complain ‘Chainsaw’ event attendees
Fable 2 is playable! … sorta
Logitech fills lightweight PS3 pad with air
Guitar Hero II setlist finds hell with Danzig, et al
Jigga Man makes his way to NBA Live 07
New tech puts the squeeze on texture files
Culture
Updated roundup of essential Oblivion mods
Where’s Sony’s ‘Major Nelson?’
Street Fighters mop and drive taxis, in the later years
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Clips: New MotorStorm PS3 Crash Trailer
Hot? Def, but how much is gameplay and how much is trailer fluff? If this is really how MotorStorm is going to look when I’m playing it on the Playstation 3 I can’t friggin wait.
The (Nearly) Full Guitar Hero II Set List
MTV’s online game show G-Hole recently spent some time with the Harmonix team talking them about Guitar Hero 2. While the story is kinda of interesting, what really takes the cake is that they inadvertently showed off nearly all of the songs for the upcoming game.
MTV has since cut out chunks of the song lists, but viewers were quick to write them down. Here’s the list from the Guitar Hero II forums which shows 38 of the 40 songs. The game also has 15 bonus songs.
Guitar Hero II New Songs Revealed By MTV [Video Games Blogger]
Opening Licks:
Strutter - Kiss
Mother - Danzig
Monkey Wrench - Foo Fighters
Shout At The Devil - Motley Crue
Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight - Spinal Tap
Amp-Warmers:
Heart Shaped Box - Nirvana
Message In A Bottle - Police
Woman - Wolfmother (artist not confirmed)
You Really Got Me - Van Halan (Kinks)
Carry On Wayward Son - Kansas
String Snappers:
Surrender - Cheap Trick
Them Bones - Alice in Chains
Search and Destroy - Stooges (artist not confirmed, but it damn well better be the stooges!)
Tatooed Love Boys - The Pretenders
War Pigs - Sabbath
Thrash and Burn:
Cherry Pie - Warrant
Who Was In My Room Last Night - Butthole Surfers
Girlfriend - Darkness (artist not confirmed), some say Mathew Sweet
Can’t You Hear Me Knocking - Rolling Stones
Sweet Child of Mine - GnR
Return of the Shred:
Killing In The Name - Rage Against The Machine
John The Fisherman - Primus
Freya - Sword (artist not confirmed)
Bad Reputation - (too hard to say, my guess is Thin Lizzy, but could be Joan Jett)
Jessica - Allman Brothers
Relentless Riffs:
Crazy On You - Heart
Trippin On A Hole In A Paper Heart - STP
Rock This Town - Stray Cays
Last Child - Aerosmith
Stop - Janes Addiction (artist not confirmed, but I really hope it’s Janes Addiction.)
Furious Fretwork:
Madhouse - Antrhax
Already confirmed songs:
Hangar 18 - Megadeath
Laid to Rest - Lamb of God
Misirlou - Dick Dale
Beast and the Harlet - Avenged Sevenfold
Freebird - Lyn Skyn
YYZ - Rush.
Psychobilly Freakout - Rev Horton Heat
New tech puts the squeeze on texture files
Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360
A company called Allegorithmic recently held a presentation at London’s Game Developers Conference and briefly talked about their advanced texture compression technology. The uninterestingly named ProFX and MaP Zone 2 programs aim to reduce the size of in-game texture files by up to 70% — with no image quality lost. One of the games utilizing the technology turns out to be Roboblitz which, like every other Xbox Live Arcade game, is expected to come in at under 50MB. Allegorithmic’s software supposedly reduced the entire game’s collection of textures to a size less than 280KB.
Efficient compression techniques, if implemented correctly, could easiy be seen as a way to obviate the initial need for new storage mediums such as HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. However, the Bit-Tech article points out that designers are just as likely to fill the extra space to create even more rich and varied textures. Instead, the biggest winnner would be the world of digital distribution. Though broadband speeds are constantly increasing, nobody likes waiting for a progress bar to fill. Casual or arcade games could certainly benefit greatly from smaller overall file sizes as they vie for your limited time and attention.
[Via PS3 Fanboy, thanks to everyone that sent this in.]
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Duff Joins Sims, Doggie Style
The now very legal Hilary Duff is making her first video game appearance in the upcoming The Sims 2 expansion pack: Pets. Duff and her Chihuahua, Lola, will be hitting stores in digital form on Oct. 17 in North America and two days later in Europe. The game is coming to PC as a pack and to the PS2 and, later, the DS as stand-alone games.
“I’ve logged hundreds of hours playing The Sims games, so I jumped at the chance to be in The Sims 2 Pets,” said Duff. “I love creating Sims characters and guiding them through life, designing their houses and then blinging them out with cool furniture. Now, in The Sims 2 Pets, EA has combined two things I really enjoy –pets and The Sims!”
How’s that any different from her real life? I mean couldn’t she just hire a bunch of people to move shit around her house when she waves a stylus in the air or moves a mouse. See, I don’t see why super rich people have to play the Sims. It’s like slumming for them.
Nintendo Controller Evolution: the T-Shirt
Check out this wonderful t-shirt illustrating the march of evolution from Nintendo’s first D-Pad to the current Wiimote. It’s available for pre-order now from Splitreason.com for $17.95, who promise to ship it off sometime early this month.
Nintendo Evolution T-Shirt [Splitreason.com]
Jigga Man makes his way to NBA Live 07
Filed under: Culture, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Sports, Business
EA, Reebok, Champs Sports, and presumably Rock-A-Fella Records announced a cross-promotional deal today that allows NBA Live 07 gamers the ability to unlock rapper Jay-Z as a playable in-game character. How’s that for enterprise synergy? GameDaily has the skinny: “Those that buy the new Reebok S. Carter Basketball IV shoe at Champs Sports [available 10/11/06] will receive a code to unlock Jay-Z’s character for use in the game. Jay-Z’s in-game avatar will have the speed of Allen Iverson, the ‘ups’ of Baron Davis and the sharpshooter aim of Peja Stojakovic.”
Now that’s what I call a player mashup (dibs on digital Hova).
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New Bethesda Game To Be Announced November 1st?
Chris Kohler of Wired’s Game|Life blog drops this tantalizing hint:
At any rate, we’re getting info on a game that’ll be announced on November 1. So please look forward to that date, upon which you will be informed of everything. You’ll find out, for example, how I got a thick layer of desert sand all over my white Old Navy shirt. Suspense!
So circle that date on your calendars, Bethesda lovers. There’s all sorts of speculation that could go down, but I’m betting that the “game” being announced is an Oblivion expansion pack.
Vegas, and Things I Can’t Talk About [Game|Life]
God Hand Equals No Sleep
I didn’t go to sleep until 4 a.m. this morning and was back up at 7:30 a.m.
I’ve got a throbbing headache that seems to be in the squishy center of my medulla oblongata and it feels like I’ve got vaseline in my eyes. Thanks, Clover Studios, for the little devil ass-smacking you delivered to my sleep schedule and addictive nature via God Hand.
Bah!
God Hand [Clover Studio]
Joystiq: now entirely legible on your mobile device
Whether it’s a testament to the marvels of communication technology or a frightening demonstration of the internet’s ability to find you on a train, a special version of Joystiq can now be effortlessly accessed from your cellular telephones, your pocket computers and your dark electronic fruit. With a clear layout and a shunning of gigantic images, the more minute Joystiq will keep you updated on the gaming industry when you’re on the move and your DS Lite batteries have died.
The folks at Engadget assure us that it works on both Pocket IE and Blazer and that the site should automatically detect your device before redirecting you to Joystiq for Mobile. However, PSP users may have to enter the site’s address manually: http://m.joystiq.com
There are still a couple of bugs to be quashed, so if you see anything peculiar scurrying about on your phone, be sure to leave a comment. Our resulting foot stomp will be cruel and unforgiving.
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