Hellanoid 4 Hardcore Gamer

"Resistance: Retribution - PSP"

2009-04-05T03:22:00.000-07:00

Take control of former British Royal Marine James Grayson following the events of Resistance: Fall of Man as you join up with the European resistance to take back the continent from the hideous Chimera. But all is not as it seems, as Grayson discovers that the Chimera have a new way of converting humans to their brood during his mission of vengeance. Fight the Chimera on the go or sync your PSP up with Resistance 2 on a PS3 to infect Grayson with the Chimera virus for all new ways to play and control him. Keep an eye on our Resistance: Retribution launch center for the latest news, previews, videos, and more!

"Wheelman - XBox 360"

2009-04-05T03:15:00.000-07:00

"Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 - PS3"

2009-04-05T03:07:00.000-07:00

We recently got the chance to get an updated look at Activision's follow-up to the wildly popular Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2. Developer Vicarious Visions' president, Guha Bala, was on hand to give us a look at the game's first level and a peek at some more characters from the roster of playable heroes. The demo showcased the game's ties to the Civil War storyline that ran through Marvel's books last year and the visual polish courtesy of the new graphics engine.

The first level is essentially a prologue to the main game. It sets events in motion that lead to the drama of the Civil War. The action revolves around Nick Fury leading a group of heroes into Doctor Doom's homeland, which has seen some political upheaval that has left the good doctor out of his job of national despot. While a Doom-less Latverian government may sound like a good thing in theory, the reality is that the new leader, Lucia von Bardas, might actually be worse. In order to verify his suspicions, Fury gathers up a small strike team of heroes to go have a look at things. Things go wrong, as if they could go any other way, and the team finds itself busting heads as it makes its way to the castle. The level demo was split into two parts, a run through the surrounding villages around the town and a miniboss fight against Electro. The hands-off demo showcased a few different hero configurations that featured familiar faces. Captain America, Spider-Man, Thing, Human Torch, Thor, and Wolverine were playable with Nick Fury in tow, and there were two newcomers to the roster, Songbird and Iron Fist. The mix of heroes showed off some new power fusions, which continue to be cool and very useful, and the new interface.

The start of the demo follows Fury, Captain America, Spider-Man, Iron Man, and Wolverine as they arrive in Latveria and start busting heads. The journey to the castle was broken up with some team changes as our demoer swapped in Human Torch, Thing, Thor, Iron Fist, and Songbird to show off the different fusion possibilities. Captain America and Thor's fusion has the thunder god blasting Cap's shield with lightning, which works as a deadly clothesline to take out any enemies in between the two heroes and can move with them as they move in tandem. Thor and Human Torch create a fiery tornado that clears enemies. Iron Fist combines with the Torch to create a radial chi- and fire-powered blast field to clear surrounding enemies. Iron Fist's fusion with Captain America has the two heroes performing a conga line of doom and plowing through enemies in a charged rushed. Iron Man and Song Bird's fusion has the metal avenger blasting his repulsors into a prism of sonic energy that blasts out deadly shafts of refracted light perfect for clearing mobs. The battle with Electro also let our demoer showcase the aforementioned fusions and had the added fun of Electro zipping around teleporting to different parts of the map and charging up on massive solenoids that had to be destroyed in order to defeat him. The battle looked challenging and full of quips, because, like all villains, Electro sure does like to go on about stuff in the middle of a fight.

While the variety in fusions may seem a bit daunting initially, the game's new interface helps a lot. Though there are a ton of fusions, they break down into specific attributes, such as elemental or healing, that will appear when you hold down the controller trigger to initiate the move. When the button is held down, you'll see a button over each member of the team and the fusion type possible with them. Another facet to the new system is the equipment system, which has changed from the last game. Whereas the last game had you equipping items on your heroes as well as assorted team bonuses, MUA streamlines the system. Your heroes will level up and earn powers as before, but this time out you'll also earn new abilities that seem to be passive, such as Wolverine's health regen. As far as equippable items go, you'll now collect team boost items that offer various group enhancements, such as all members of your team doing fire damage. There will apparently be more than 150 team boosts to find or earn in the game, and you'll be able to equip up to three at a given time, which should be handy. Our favorite new system in the game is the quick menus you can call up during the game to tweak your hero or team. These are especially handy in multiplayer as they can be called up without bringing the action to a screeching halt like in the last game.

The visuals are looking sharp thanks to the new graphics engine and the revamped art style. The combination of both give the game a bit more of a realistic style that is reminiscent of the work artist Gabriele Dell'Otto did in the Secret War miniseries. One of the coolest artistic touches in the demo was the makeover on Electro's costume, which is probably the coolest it has ever looked. This is saying something, considering there aren't many "cool" options open to a villain with green tights and a bright yellow headdress in the shape of three lightning bolts. Beyond that, the roster of heroes was looking sharp and detailed. The mobs of robot enemies weren't quite as detailed but were plentiful, which made for a good amount of onscreen chaos. The effects for the various powers looked sharp--maybe not quite as flashy as we were hoping for but still cool. The fusions were definitely a centerpiece to the visuals with dramatic camera angles and shiny effects punctuating the action. While the game's system camera was still a work in progress, we liked the smart movement in the demo, which brought the view in much closer in tighter quarters and zoomed out when the action moved to more open areas. If it works that smoothly throughout the whole game, we'll be very happy.

The audio was still a mix of final and work-in-progress effects and music tracks, but it already has a good vibe to it. The score has the big sweeping sound you'd expect from a Marvel: Ultimate Alliance game. The effects fit the action but don't quite have the kick you'd want right now, especially during the fusions, but we reckon that will change once the game gets polished. There's plenty of voice during the game, and it all helps give combat a busy feel that works.

We're very hopeful about where Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 is headed. The roster is shaping up nicely, and the gameplay looks like it's doing a good job of covering its bases in terms of what fans want while adding some new content. We especially like the mix of fan service--we doubt Iron Fist and Songbird are as widely known as Spider-Man and Wolverine--and gameplay enhancements. Comic fans or fans of the original Marvel: Ultimate Alliance should be looking forward to this one. Look for more on Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 in the coming months.

"Just Cause 2 - PC"

2009-04-05T02:31:00.000-07:00

One of the most appealing qualities of the sandbox action genre is the ability to traverse an entire gameworld at will, free of the restrictions of linear level design. But oftentimes, you're still restricted to the realm of realistic physics when traversing that terrain. That's not the case in Just Cause 2, an upcoming sandbox action game that lets you bounce around a vast Southeast Asian island using a combination of a parachute, a grappling hook, and a deft talent for leaping between speeding vehicles. We recently took some time to see a demo of Just Cause 2 to see that recipe in motion.

This demo was guided by a member of Avalanche Studios, the Sweden-based developer currently working on the game. It began with protagonist Rico Rodriguez falling through the sky with nothing more than a rocket launcher strapped to his back to let you know that he intends to cause some pain when he hits the ground. But it took a good long while before that happened, which gave us the chance to get a lengthy look at the island of Panau--the game's 1,000-square-kilometer setting--from on high. It's a vast collection of varying climate zones that features impressive-enough draw distance to scope out a good stretch of it while going for a leisurely skydive.

Why start the game with a skydiving sequence? As it turns out, the parachute is a critical part of your repertoire, considering that you have the ability to deploy it as often and rapidly as you want. (You'll need to exercise a little suspension of disbelief regarding why Rico never needs to stuff it back into a backpack.) It works well in conjunction with the grappling hook, Rico's other powerful toy. The grappling hook operates similarly to what you've seen in Lost Planet or Bionic Commando: simply aim the reticle at a nearby surface, fire, and you'll quickly zip right there.

But of course, there are a few key differences. For one, you can cut the grappling hook short in midswing and use it as a way to slingshot yourself up into the air, at which point you open the parachute to sail off to a distant location--or just shoot your enemies from up in the air. The developer guiding the demo was able to perform an impressive string of movements that included zipping up and over armed guard towers while latching onto ledges for cover. Another use is slightly more diabolical: You can tether bad guys to objects by latching your hook onto them and then a second object. Feel like hanging an enemy from a light post like Spider-Man would? Go right ahead. Feel like tying him to a moving car and shooting him while he's being dragged at top speed? Probably not what Spider-Man would do, but have at it.

Speaking of vehicles, the way you're able to leap from, to, and over them plays a big role in the fluid sense of movement in Just Cause 2. At one point, we witnessed Rico float down onto a moving car with his parachute, yank out the driver, launch off of a bridge, eject, and float down onto an airplane about to take off from its runway. And of course he stole that one, too. You can also hop from one moving car on the road to another, or just parasail from them if you don't want to get your hands dirty. Combined with the ability to fling yourself into the air using the grappling hook, this sort of acrobatic movement should make Just Cause 2 feel like a fairly unique sandbox action game. But given that this was a hands-off demo, we'll reserve our judgment until we see the learning curve that goes with pulling off all of those maneuvers.

All of these abilities will be put to use in a storyline that assigns Rico the goal of overthrowing the island nation's dictator, Baby Panay. Rico's method for doing this is simple and straightforward: cause as much chaos on the island as he can. Chaos is a sort of currency that unlocks key story missions by drawing the attention of all local factions and giving you new opportunities to earn friends and enemies.

As with any sandbox action game, you'll also find plenty of weapons and vehicles. Weapons available to you include an array of destructive black-market firearms and explosives, and the vehicle tally comes in at north of 100. You can upgrade your skills in both departments by collecting packages scattered around the island--an incentive to search around instead of just focusing on missions.

If you enjoyed Mercenaries 2's style of straight-to-the-point, morally bankrupt sandbox action set in a tropical locale, it looks like Just Cause 2 should offer similar frills with an added emphasis on fluid mobility. We're waiting to see what else the game will offer in terms of side missions, considering that one of the criticisms of the original was its lack of stuff to do outside of the main story. We should have more on Just Cause 2 in the coming months. No release date has been announced.

"Wolfenstine - PC"

2009-04-05T02:21:00.000-07:00

"Dark Void - PC"

2009-04-05T01:48:00.000-07:00

While Dark Void might not have the name recognition of other games in the Capcom library, it's generated a fair amount of buzz thanks to an intriguing combination of gameplay types. Developed by Airtight Games, Dark Void looks to offer a mix of cover-based combat, perspective-altering platforming, and ample flying. The man with the challenging task of scoring all those gameplay elements is Bear McCreary, better known as the composer of the new Battlestar Galactica TV series. We recently spoke with Bear about his role crafting music for the game.

You're best known for your work in Battlestar Galactica. How has the transition been from Battlestar to Dark Void?

Well, it's been very exciting because not only is the medium different--I'm going from television to games--but the style of the music is actually quite different as well. So I've really gotten to explore new sounds that I haven't been able to use on Battlestar, so it's really exciting.

From a creative perspective, is there anything you learned or tried out in the later seasons of Battlestar that you've carried over to Dark Void, or are you starting with a blank slate?

I think that in the later seasons of Battlestar I learned things that I'm going to carry with me for the rest of my life, and certainly into Dark Void. The interesting thing about my score for Dark Void is not how it connects to my recent work, but for me it's how it's connected to older film scores. Dark Void gave me an opportunity to experiment with the orchestral language that I haven't been able to use on Battlestar, the kind of film scores that I used to love when I was growing up. So in many ways there's an element of this that feels very contemporary, and I think people who know my work from Battlestar will very easily be able to identify Dark Void as being my work. But there's also a grander orchestral presence. I really was a lot more inspired by Elmer Bernstein, and Jerry Goldsmith, and Bernard Herrmann, and even John Williams--these composers that traditionally worked in a more orchestral setting than I do on Battlestar.

What sorts of elements in particular do you think people might recognize instantly as your own personal work versus elements that might take them by surprise?

I'm not actually the best person to judge what defines my personal style, because I obviously can't listen to my music objectively. But the percussion riding is very intense. The score has a very tribal, energetic, aggressive sound. The drums are just mean and nasty. A lot of the same soloists that I work with on Battlestar and Terminator [The Sarah Connor Chronicles]--and all my projects, really--are also working on Dark Void. So you'll hear sounds that are musicians that I like to work with on everything I do. They're certainly part of the Dark Void sound. But there's also a lot of aspects of the Dark Void score that are, for me, totally unique.

Going into this project, did you know much about the game itself, or were you more looking at Capcom's track record as one of the more successful and well-known publishers out there?

I've been aware of Capcom as a company my entire life. I grew up playing Mega Man, Mega Man 2, Mega Man 3, and Mega Man 4, so just the idea of working with Capcom was really exciting. But aside from that, when I had my first meeting, I saw some of the early footage of the game. I saw some early production drawings, and that basically sold me. I can't say that I was entirely sold on doing any game. I've been waiting for the right game to score, and Dark Void was absolutely the right game. When I saw the design and found out the story, I knew this was something I could put music to. I knew that this was a universe that needed a really iconic, signature sound. Honestly, I knew that it would be fun, but I really didn't anticipate how much fun I would have writing this music. I really got to explore and let my creativity go crazy because I'm used to working against picture. Now, to be able to look at these drawings, and look at the characters, and listen to the ideas for the story, and just write music on my own without time constraints, this was very liberating for me.

As you've seen the game in its varying states of completion, from original concept art on through the more completed state that it's in today, has that affected the sound that you've gone for? Has the sound evolved as the game has?

I can't say that it has. And part of the reason that it hasn't really changed is that I did the bulk of my writing at a very early stage. There really wasn't much of the game for me to look at. I had gone up there, I had gone up to Airtight where it's being developed, and I got to play a little bit of it and see where it was going. I basically wrote the music imagining what I thought the game would look like. It was very incomplete. I had lots of production drawings. And I would say the production drawings were my biggest inspiration. After the score was finished, I started seeing more complete footage of gameplay, and I remembered thinking the footage is looking as good as the music sounds. In many ways, I wouldn't have written the music any other way. I feel like the music fits perfectly. I was scoring for very incomplete footage, which was fun.

Was that much of a challenge compared to scoring for a TV show that's still going through the editing process?

Initially, it was. I've got to admit, the first couple of days, I kind of sat in my studio and didn't know what to do. But once I made that leap and let myself go for it, it was not a challenge at all. If anything, it was liberating--that's the word I keep coming back to. It was liberating to write music without time constraints.

Let's talk about the specifics of the sound for a bit. Why the decision to go with the orchestral score versus some of the synthesizer or spacey guitar effects you hear in a lot of science-fiction work?

Well, I hate synth orchestra. I hate it. You'll never hear it in my projects. I'm always very concerned when I hear that in games especially. I'm a gamer, and I must say that my pet peeve is, I hear orchestra in the main title and a couple of big cues, but in a lot of video game music there's still fake orchestra all over the place. So in Dark Void, you're not going to hear that. Ever. There's live orchestra on virtually every cue, and on the cues that don't have live orchestra on them, there's just no orchestra. There's other instruments. And that's where I borrowed my philosophy from Battlestar, which has always been rather than doing synth orchestra, you write for whoever you have and whoever you can get to come in and play.

As for the orchestral side of it, I was a little nervous at first because I got hired, I think, because Battlestar was so successful. I'm very well known for a certain kind of sound. And when I looked at the project, I felt like it needed a bigger orchestral sound. I didn't think that the kind of sparse, minimal approach on Battlestar--although Battlestar isn't really sparse or minimal anymore--but certainly the thing that I thought I was known for wouldn't work on Dark Void. I remember speaking with the producers and the developers and saying, "I know why you hired me. I don't think that sound is going to work. I think that this needs to be bigger. I think that this game needs a sense of grandeur, it needs something that only the full orchestra can bring." And they went for it. In fact, my first demo went over great. It set the tone for what would become the most lyrical, adventurous, and honestly one of the most beautiful scores I've ever written. The use of themes in this game is the same way I approach film or TV. It's a very thematically interwoven score. My hope is that it's a very rewarding score. I want gamers, when they're done playing this, to be able to identify the themes for each character. To be able to identify the musical elements that are in the score, associated with the various parties and characters and places that you go. That kind of development isn't something that I hear in a lot of games. I really felt strongly, and still feel strongly, that a game is a long experience and anything I can do to make the experience more worthwhile and more entertaining, the better.

One of the biggest challenges for you to put that into effect is the technological differences of the medium. In TV, you've got a set cue where the song will start playing at the same point every time. But in the game, it depends on the player's progress. A lot of times, if the player is moving slowly, he or she will be exposed to that song again and again and again. It loses its effectiveness as it repeats over and over. How have you dealt with that? I know you've toyed with the idea of resequencing different tracks so they play dynamically. Is that right?

That's exactly what I was going to say. As the player takes the game slowly, it's not going to repeat. You're not going to hear the same thing over and over again. As the game goes on, the music will adapt and evolve in ways that, I hope, will keep players on their toes. Because I think that repetition in video games is a major problem in the experience. Ultimately, no matter how exciting a piece of music is, once you've heard it three or four times, it becomes comforting. It becomes something you settle into ... But in a game where you're supposed to be in danger, where you're in combat, it doesn't help to have the music become so familiar ... My goal is that when you play through a certain level, and if you play through it again, it wouldn't be exactly the same. It would be close, but not exactly the same. Not enough that you could predict what could happen, and it's that unpredictability that would heighten the experience.

One of the other challenges that exists for you with this game is that one of the big selling points for Dark Void is that it's not a one-dimensional game. There are lots of different gameplay types: shooting, flying, rocketeering, dogfighting. What sorts of challenges does that pose for you as a composer?

In the initial stages, it was an issue. When we were first talking about the game, they were telling me you could fight on foot, you could fight in the air, so the obvious decision was, let's have music for when you're on foot and music for when you're flying. Which is a nice intellectual idea, but in practice it didn't work. Unlike in a lot of other games, these different styles of gameplay are up to the player. The player can stop flying whenever he or she wants. So in order to do that, you'd have the music starting and stopping every five seconds if you wanted to fly and then walk, fly and then walk. So we threw that idea out the window. And what we did instead was, I approached it almost like a really long movie or miniseries. And I looked at it like one giant arc, because our character goes through a major shift from the beginning of the story to the end of the story. I approached it more thinking about what the character and ultimately what the player is going to be thinking about. So the combat at the beginning of the game is very sparse and mysterious, because you're in this strange new place. It's intense, but it's not crazy. It's more about the atmosphere. And as the game goes on, you start learning more about your environment, you start learning more about the other people there with you, and the score becomes more complex.

Is there any type of video game genre, or story or themes, that you're interested in working on in the future outside of sci-fi action?

Yeah. Honestly, there are so many games that would be fun, and so many genres. I'm a big fan of the Metal Gear Solid series. The thing I really admire about MGS4 was the time and attention that went into the cinematics in that. I know that a lot of people felt like it was too much, but I didn't think so. That idea that the cinematic part of it can be as much of the experience as the gameplay part of it is something that I find really interesting. Maybe that's not a genre necessarily, but a style of game that I find interesting would be something that has more in-depth cinematics ... Because as a composer, you get to do both--you get to do the cinema and you get to do the interactive quality. It just depends honestly on what comes my way.

PS3: - Wolverin"

2009-03-21T18:32:00.000-07:00

"PS3: - Guitar Hero: Metallica"

2009-03-21T18:31:00.000-07:00

"PS3: - Wanted: Weapons Of Fate"

2009-03-21T18:28:00.000-07:00

"The Chronicles Of Riddick: Assault On Athena"

2009-03-21T18:20:00.000-07:00

"XBox 360 - Resident Evil 5"

2009-03-16T03:38:00.000-07:00

Thirteen years ago, Capcom helped revolutionized the action-adventure world with Resident Evil, a game that would define an entirely new genre dubbed "survival horror." In the years that followed, the series continued to build upon the standards set by the first game, until 2005, when Resident Evil 4 radically departed from its predecessors and broke new ground as a more action-oriented game. Resident Evil 5, the latest offering in the long-running series, expands on the action-heavy formula of its forerunner and is built from the ground up to support cooperative gameplay. Though it can no longer be considered a survival horror game, Resident Evil 5 manages to retain and effectively translate the most important aspect of that genre--tension--into its new mechanics, crafting a fun, collaborative experience that will keep you on your toes the entire time.

Ten years after the destruction of Raccoon City, former S.T.A.R.S. Alpha team member Chris Redfield is an agent of the B.S.A.A. This paramilitary anti-bio-organic weapon organization travels the globe to seek out and destroy Umbrella's creations, which have fallen into the hands of terrorists following the collapse of the multinational pharmaceutical company. When Chris gets a tip that a known weapons dealer will be making a big deal in the remote African nation of Kijuju, he heads there to put a stop to it and learn what he can about the mysterious doomsday project known only as Uroboros. Chris is joined by Sheva Alomar, a local B.S.A.A. agent, and together they battle wave after wave of infected villagers, horribly mutated monsters, and even series archnemesis Albert Wesker.

The core combat mechanics haven't fundamentally changed since Resident Evil 4--the action still unfolds from an over-the-shoulder perspective, certain battles or cutscenes are accompanied by brief quick time events, and you still have to stop moving to fire your weapon (though you gain a bit more mobility thanks to your newfound ability to walk sideways). Resident Evil 5's slow movement and gunplay take some time to get used to, and folks expecting a run-and-gun game may find the action too sluggish for their tastes. Fortunately, this slowness isn't really an issue within the game, because enemies are deliberate with their attacks and are better handled with a cool head and steady aim.

Regardless of how similar the combat in Resident Evil 5 is to its predecessor, the addition of a second character makes encounters feel quite different. Teamwork is necessary to take down more-powerful enemies and bosses, and having someone there to watch your back goes a long way toward keeping you alive. Furthermore, there have been radical changes to the inventory management system. The immersion-breaking briefcase from the previous game is gone, and enemies no longer politely wait for you to rummage through your things because bringing up your armory doesn't pause the action. At any given time, you can store up to nine items per character, four of which are bound to the directions of the D pad for easy access. This new system works extremely well and successfully conveys a sense of urgency whenever you go through your gear. It's often necessary to trade items with your partner, and keeping track of who has what at all times is crucial, because rummaging through your things while a boss beats on you is painful.

Sheva's artificial intelligence makes her a competent companion, though her degree of skill seems to rely more on her armaments than anything else--she is extremely good at using burst fire with a machine gun, for example, but tends to waste ammo when equipped with a handgun. That said, at no point does she feel like extra baggage that needs babysitting (unlike some of the series' previous companions), and she can hold her own in a fight. Sheva really shines when there's someone else controlling her. Resident Evil 5 supports both split-screen and online co-op play through Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, and exploring Kijuju with a friend greatly enhances both the experience and the fun factor. Every game has the potential to go multiplayer, since split-screen is as simple to initiate as hitting Start on a second controller, and other online players can join in on a free-for-all or invite-only basis if your game session is set up to allow this from the get-go.

Despite these conveniences, there are some frustrating hurdles that need to be leaped over before a partner can begin playing. Co-op isn't drop-in, so if someone joins, gameplay is interrupted and immersion is broken to some degree. For split-screen, this means immediately returning to the main inventory screen to confirm armaments and then restarting from the last checkpoint. With online co-op, it's a bit more troublesome, because the player who joined has to sit on the sidelines until the host either restarts from the last checkpoint or continues on to the next. Another major problem is that players' main inventories are isolated from one another, and though you can trade healing items and ammunition, weapons are off-limits for exchange, making some battles more difficult if you're playing with a less-well-equipped partner.

Resident Evil 5 isn't a survival horror game, but that doesn't mean it hasn't learned a great deal from the genre. Tension is the central element of survival horror games, and in the past it has been conveyed by the gloomy settings, the sense of isolation, and the frustratingly clunky camera angles and controls--all RE5 does differently is convey this feeling through other outlets. Having a partner introduces new types of tension, because you're forced to rely on each other's support, find ways to manage both of your inventories during battles, and cover larger areas since enemies can appear from almost anywhere. Waves of enemies wax and wane with just the right frequency, and while the brightly lit environments make them less scary, they can be tough to deal with because they attack in large numbers and are smarter, faster, and stronger than their counterparts in previous games. Major encounters and boss fights are doled out with excellent pacing, and since you're never sure what to expect around the corner, you have to remain vigilant. The active inventory management system helps keep that anxiety up as well.

RE5 is easily one of the most visually stunning games available, and its huge variety of environments are meticulously detailed in every way. There are lots of large, open areas, and you’ll constantly be on the move through them since there are usually so many enemies. In-game cutscenes are top-notch (though sometimes a bit over the top), and Chris and Sheva are incredibly well animated, especially their faces. Though the dialogue is often full of the series' trademark goofiness, the voice acting is competent, and when paired with the excellent facial expressions, it breathes a great deal of realism into the characters. Likewise, the fantastic orchestral soundtrack heightens the gameplay with everything from the low-key, ambient tracks that play during downtimes, to the frantic, upbeat songs that accompany the massive boss battles.

On the first play-through, Resident Evil 5 lasts about 12 hours, which is considerably shorter than its predecessor. Once you're finished, though, there's still plenty to see and do. There are hidden B.S.A.A. badges scattered throughout most levels to find; you can strive to get better scores or times in each chapter to show off on the online leaderboards; and there are three initial difficulties available with a fourth unlockable. In-game points can be spent on collectible trophies of various characters and enemies, on additional costumes and graphics filters, and on special infinite-ammo versions of guns that you've fully upgraded. Finally, the Mercenaries minigame returns in a format very similar to its last incarnation in Resident Evil 4 but with support for co-op.

Resident Evil 5 successfully builds on the foundation of its predecessor while taking it in a drastically different direction. Having a partner introduces new degrees of gameplay depth and dramatic tension that make the game that much more exciting to play. Though the slow, deliberate movement and shooting may not appeal to everyone, this new sequel’s frequent large-scale battles and co-op play still offer a fun and exciting adventure.

"PC - Watchmen: The End Is Nigh"

2009-03-16T03:26:00.000-07:00

With all the critical acclaim for the Watchmen comic series and all the hype surrounding the new movie adaptation, it's possible that folks might have certain expectations for the new video game set in the same universe. However, if you are hoping to find some of the comic's depth and maturity here, or are looking forward to reliving your favorite scenes from the movie, you will be sorely disappointed. Watchmen: The End Is Nigh is a shallow beat-'em-up game set years before the events of the comic. Its narrow scope may disappoint some, and the Watchmen veneer isn't very deep. Yet thanks to lively, brutal combat and impressive visuals, Watchmen: The End Is Nigh is a fun, fist-flinging romp for the few hours that it lasts. The $20 price tag is a steep one, but for anyone who enjoys a good old-fashioned beat-'em-up, The End Is Nigh delivers.

Pretty much all you do for the entire game is beat up bad guys, and the combat is good enough to stay fun throughout. Whether you're playing as Rorschach or Nite Owl (the only two playable characters), the fundamentals are simple: light attack, heavy attack, block, and throw. Peppering your opponent with attacks works well, and there are some nice animation touches that make even this basic combat enjoyable. Throwing enemies is particularly delightful, whether it be into a crowd, off of a ledge, or into a wall. As you progress, you'll encounter tougher enemies that block your basic attacks, so you have to use the various combos you learn along the way in order to stun them or knock them down. These combos add new animations to the mix and are generally a bit nastier than your normal attacks. However, the best animations are the finishers, which you activate by matching the button prompt that appears over the head of a weakened enemy. The camera zooms in during these brutal flurries, allowing you to appreciate every blow. While Nite Owl's no slouch, Rorschach is the clear standout here: his finishers are so manic and so vicious that you can't help but cringe and cackle with delight as he just keeps hitting a guy who is clearly unconscious.

Basic attacks, combos, throws, and finishers make up the bulk of your fighting move set, but Rorschach and Nite Owl have a few other tricks up their sleeves. They can each counterattack easily, disarming any armed opponents and positioning themselves for a strike. Rorschach will even hold onto these weapons, and his brutal finishers get even nastier when there is a crowbar involved, though watching him wield a knife like a bludgeon is a bit silly. Each hero also has two special attacks that drain energy from a meter in the corner of the screen. Rorschach can do a short bull rush or freak out and do more damage for a short period of time. Nite Owl's grenade stuns anyone nearby, and he can use the electric charge in his suit to zap a large radius of foes.

As you fight your way through the rough areas of town, you'll encounter a few different breeds of thug and lowlife, some tougher than others. It's easy to die if you get yourself surrounded and try to punch your way out, but judicious use of counterattacks and special moves should be enough to get you out of any tight situation. There are throwaway actions here and there, like lever-pulling or valve-turning, and an oddly tricky lock-picking minigame that seems a bit out of place in a game that's all about brute force. Despite these extraneous tasks, a creeping sense of repetition looms over The End Is Nigh, and it's possible you'll grow weary of pounding your way through wave after wave of goons. Though the game mixes up your enemies' fighting styles in order to make you use your entire arsenal, the action can often teeter on the edge of button-mashing boredom. Those inclined to revel in the perverse joy of cracking skulls will be able to keep repetition at bay, but the relatively simple gameplay will quickly wear thin for others.

For all its merits, the combat wouldn't be nearly as fun if it wasn't paired with top-notch graphics. The sharp character models are fashioned after the movie costumes, and the smooth, realistic animations make the action exciting and extremely satisfying. You'll chuckle when Rorschach jams his hands in his overcoat immediately after furiously maiming an entire biker gang, and both he and Nite Owl pack a wickedly pleasing punch. There are occasional physics-based oddities, especially when throwing your enemies, but the animation is still consistently impressive. The detailed environments provide a rich setting for your beatdowns, and stark lights and deep shadows (occasionally too deep) create a dramatic look. The quasi-animated cutscenes provide a few pages' worth of story across the six chapters of the game, and the sinister machinations at work fit nicely into the Watchmen universe.

Though you can have some split-screen fun with a friend, it's baffling that there is no online cooperative mode. That would have made the $20 price tag a little easier to swallow, but as it stands the price feels a bit greedy. Those inclined to tire of repetitive gameplay will find the price of entry too high, but there is some value here. The impressively animated combat is fun and brutal, and the sumptuous environments provide the perfect pugilistic playground. The many unlockable combos provide some replay incentive, and the combat is surprisingly fun to come back to even after you've beaten the game. Though it may be shallow, overpriced, and likely to disappoint anyone hoping for more weighty fare, Watchmen: The End Is Nigh is ultimately a simple, well-crafted game that will please those looking to dish out some good old-fashioned beatdowns.

"PC - Sims 3"

2009-03-16T03:10:00.000-07:00

The Sims 3 is finally coming this year, and with it, the renewed hopes and dreams of everyone who's ever wanted to make little computer people have little computer one-night-stands, or make them die horribly in little computer kitchen fires. The third installment of this phenomenally popular series will bring with it new features and improvements to the older stuff--such as better graphics, with enhanced lighting and shadowing, and tons of expressive new animations--but what exactly will be different between The Sims 3 and The Sims 2? We'll take a look, and also dive into the enhanced goals and ambition system, which, if used properly, may grant your sims superhuman powers--such as the mind-blowing ability to never have to go to the potty again. (No, seriously!)

Let's start with the game's customization and editing tools, which are being expanded greatly for The Sims 3. In The Sims 2, there were only two body types ("normal" and "fat"), a handful of preset skin colors, and a handful of preset hair colors. There was a fairly robust set of tools to tweak facial features, primarily based on preset options (a bunch of preset eyes, preset noses, and so on); the most detailed likenesses were created by advanced players using tools outside the game (such as Adobe Photoshop). However, in The Sims 3, facial features will pretty much all have various sliders that will offer much more in-depth tweaking options.

The Sims 3 will also have sliders that will let you choose customized gradients for skin color (to better represent different ethnicities, as well as blue-skinned aliens, green-skinned witches, or what have you); gradients for primary and secondary hair color (for those talented stylists who really want highlights in their hair); a slider for body type that will let you choose how lean, muscular, or fat your characters are; and the new "create a style" swatch tool, which will let you edit and save various color patterns, and then apply them to anything in the world that has a pattern. If you care to, you can make a sim with a leopard-print shirt, a rideable leopard-print bicycle, and a leopard-print refrigerator. (We actually checked on this last part, and we're pleased to report that the leopard-print bicycle totally works.)

Buy and Build modes have been tweaked in The Sims 3, and neighborhood lots will also work differently. Previously, furniture for your house was sorted by function and type; now they'll have a revamped room-specific sorting list as well. The larger part of the story of the Buy and Build modes will be the use of create-a-style to paint all of your furniture, as well as your house, with whichever patterns you want as freeform wallpaper and carpeting--such as with, let's say for the sake of example, leopard print. (We tried this, and you can absolutely have leopard-print sofas in a room with all leopard-print walls.) Swapping in custom-built items created by the fanatically loyal Sims community will also be made easier in The Sims 3 with a built-in application that runs out of the game's launcher (as opposed to having to quit the game, open up a Web browser, and pulling up the "Exchange" community site, which is being updated to include YouTube-like and Facebook-like functionality, such as blogs, friends lists, favorites lists, and user ratings). In addition to uploading and downloading furniture, customized sims characters, and housing to and from the community site, The Sims 3 will have an in-game movie-making tool that will let you upload and download videos to and from the Exchange. More details on that at a later date.

Furthermore, outdoor lots have been changed so that there will now be only one huge, continuous neighborhood (rather than the separate neighborhoods of The Sims 2), within which time is constantly running. Likewise, your neighbors' lives are constantly changing concurrently. The neighborhood view in The Sims 3 has been changed to be an actual real-time 3D space that shows context-sensitive icons that tell you exactly where you need to go if you plan to go out to a gym, restaurant, store, recreational area, or wherever else. Like in The Sims 2, there will be outdoor "lots" outside of your sims' homes where you will still, in fact, send your sims to work out, have a romantic dinner date, buy groceries, or just play in the park. The difference is that in The Sims 3, the neighborhood view is actual 3D space, so you can seamlessly move from your house to a lot, or from one lot to another, without having to hit a loading screen. In fact, if your have a bicycle or car, your sims can immediately hop on and take a ride; if not, sims will be equipped with a mobile phone that they can use to automatically call a taxi to whisk them away to where they're going in real time (not by sitting on a loading screen until they magically reappear at their destination).

There will also be new public events in The Sims 3, such as music concerts, movie premieres, pool parties, barbecues, sporting events, outdoor fishing, and the most civic-minded public activity in a Sims game to date, attending a public protest at SimCity Hall, where your sims can voice their discontent with the administration's legal mumbo jumbo by angrily shouting their own nonsensical "simlish" mumbo jumbo.

The management of sim characters and relationships will also be tweaked and streamlined for the sequel. Previously, you had to manage each of your sims' "motives" (personal needs) such as hunger, fatigue, and needing to go to the bathroom; many of these needs are now automated, and if neglected, sims will take care of themselves. You'll also be able to drag and drop garbage items into the trash to keep your house clean (rather than having to order your sims to manually pick up each old newspaper and clear each dish).

And previously, your sims would start relationships with their neighbors by using "socials," various types of social interactions such as chatting, telling jokes, and so on, and you'd raise or lower your relationship with another character by repeatedly doing either something that the other character liked, or didn't like, until your relationship number reached 100 (the highest level) or -100 (the lowest). In The Sims 3, as we've mentioned in our earlier coverage, you can't simply choose to "chat" with another sim 87 times until he or she falls in love with you; you'll have to vary up your responses, and you'll have different conversation options available depending on your character's personality traits (for instance, having the "evil" trait will let you literally steal candy from a baby) and even on your character's career path (for example, aspiring politicians can ask for campaign donations).

One of the biggest changes in The Sims 3 is the "traits" system, which helps you determine your sims' personality (previously, you used sliders to select how messy or neat; active or lazy; shy or outgoing they were, and that combination would assign your sim an arbitrary horoscope sign, such as Leo or Taurus, that determined personality). Another of the biggest changes is the new-and-improved goals system, which has expanded way beyond The Sims 2's "aspiration" system (which gave sims a handful of daily goals to work toward filling a fulfillment meter to "platinum" level).

You can choose up to five "traits" for your adult sims that will define their personalities, how they interact with their neighbors, what kind of career paths might be more suitable for them, and which characters might be more or less compatible with them. EA's Sims team has done a great deal of fine-tuning on the design of these traits to ensure that they work for different kinds of Sims players. For ambitious players who want all of the advantages, traits such as "ambitious," "schmoozer," "charismatic," and "genius" can give you a head start along certain career paths and put you in a better position to be popular in the neighborhood; for players who are more interested in either creating purposely disadvantaged characters, or creating characters who resemble people they know in real life, there are disadvantageous traits such as "absent-minded," "inappropriate," "unlucky," and of course "insane."

In fact, here's a full and complete list of the 65 traits in The Sims 3 for you to look over: absent-minded, ambitious, angler, artistic, athletic, bookworm, brave, can't stand art, charismatic, childish, clumsy, commitment issues, computer whiz, couch potato, coward, daredevil, dislikes children, easily impressed, evil, excitable, family-oriented, flirty, friendly, frugal, genius, good, good sense of humor, great kisser, green thumb, grumpy, handy, hates the outdoors, heavy sleeper, hopeless romantic, hot-headed, hydrophobic, inappropriate, insane, kleptomaniac, light sleeper, loner, loser, loves the outdoors, lucky, mean spirited, mooch, natural cook, neat, neurotic, never nude (yes, from Arrested Development), no sense of humor, over-emotional, party animal, perfectionist, schmoozer, slob, snob, technophobe, unflirty, unlucky, vegetarian, virtuoso, and workaholic. Enough traits for you?

Along with new traits for your sims, The Sims 3 will have a revamped life-goal system built around "lifetime wishes"--a single long-term goal that you can choose for each of your sims that will eventually grant that character ultimate happiness. You build up to lifetime wishes with periodically updating regular "wishes," which take the form of basic tasks that will unlock minor rewards and increase your sim's overall morale with a "moodlet"--a minor condition that contributes to your characters' overall mood. Evil sim just stole candy from a baby? Ahh, that's a good moodlet: +15. Having to listen to the annoying sound of the crying baby? Ugh, that's a bad moodlet: -15. Working toward your lifetime wish will win your sims "lifetime happiness points" that can be spent on extremely powerful items, such as a teleport pad, or on astoundingly superhuman abilities, such as iron bladder, a complete immunity to having to go to the bathroom. No, seriously.

And here's a full list of the game's 32 lifetime wishes: professional author, world-renowned surgeon, become a superstar athlete, CEO of a megacorporation, hit movie composer, heartbreaker, rock star, the tinkerer, become a master thief, forensic specialist: dynamic DNA profiler, become an astronaut, master of the arts, perfect mind/perfect body, gold digger, star news anchor, living in the lap of luxury, jack of all trades, surrounded by family, renaissance sim, chess legend, the culinary librarian, golden tongue/golden fingers, international super spy, super popular, presenting the perfect private aquarium, celebrated five-star chef, illustrious author, swimming in cash, the perfect garden, leader of the free world, the emperor, and become a creature-robot cross-breeder.

And that's a lot of new stuff going from The Sims 2 to The Sims 3. We're looking forward to playing this new sequel and trying out everything that it has to offer--and it'll offer quite a bit. The Sims 3 is scheduled for release in June.

"PC GAME - Stormrise"

2009-03-16T02:33:00.000-07:00

Have you heard of these "real-time strategy" games? The ones where you hoard piles of resources, build up a bunch of buildings, then churn out a little army of toy soldiers to go beat up your opponents' toy soldier armies? Yeah, those. They're pretty popular on the PC, but game developers seem to want to bring them to modern consoles too. The next game to make the attempt will be Stormrise for the Xbox 360, PS3, and the PC. The game will take place in a war-torn, futuristic world, where the last remaining resources on the planet are contested by two factions; the Echelon, a faction of high-tech soldiers with attack choppers, tanks, and mech suits to hunker down in open areas and lay down gunfire from a distance; and the Sai, a fantasy-themed faction that uses magic powers and beefy melee units to circle and flank...then beat the daylights out of their enemies up close and personal. We tried out the Xbox 360 version of the game, which will take another swing at the longstanding issue of mapping precise RTS control onto the limited sticks and buttons of a modern console controller.

Developer Creative Assembly Australia seems to want to capture as much of the power and elegance of the PC's traditional mouse-and-keyboard control scheme and map it onto a console controller--and streamline out most of the other stuff that doesn't fit. Like with a traditional RTS, you have to amass resources to spend on buildings and armies, but you'll do so by capturing resource nodes, similar to the nodes in the Warhammer: Dawn of War series. Interestingly, the nodes will all be connected in a continuous network across the map, so in order to be able to capture and continually hold a certain node, you need to have a ground unit capture that node, and you also need links to other nodes in your territory, similar to the node capture system in Unreal Tournament 2004's Conquest mode.

The idea is to encourage players to continue fighting until the bitter end, because instead of matches where one player eventually controls the vast majority of the resource nodes on a map and takes all the time in the world to amass an army while the already-outclassed, losing player sits there and waits for the inevitable, a player who is losing significantly can sneak behind enemy lines and cut off the connection to their wealthy opponent's forward nodes, which will suddenly cut down on the dominant player's resources and give the losing player a new lease on life. Creative AU apparently wants to encourage players to be sneaky, since the game's 3D maps will feature multiple elevations. Many maps will have subterranean passages and ruined skyscrapers to perch on in addition to ground-level operations, and both playable factions will have access to flying units that can clear the tallest skyscraper.

Stormrise will also slim down some of the other aspects of traditional real-time strategy. For instance, the only building you'll do will be upgrades for nodes you've already captured, such as enhanced resource gathering, defensive shields, and turrets...right on top of the node itself. (But you can build only one improvement at a time, and there's no queueing of improvements, to encourage players to stay engaged in the action and building of upgrades, rather than setting a big, long production queue and forgetting about it.) Also, instead of building a town hall/command center-type structure, you'll start the game with a single summoning point from which you can immediately call in whatever armed forces you can afford, such as Echelon gunners, tanks, and choppers; or Sai foot soldiers, wizards, ogres, and flying dragons. Like with the Dawn of War series, you don't summon individual units, but rather, squads of units, and like any good real-time strategy game, you can create "control groups" of units (basically, a shortcut that lets you automatically select a group of your forces to give orders to)...and there's also a shortcut that lets you create a group for all units of the same type onscreen, so you can quickly and neatly create a single group for all your infantry, another for all your tanks, and another for all your choppers.

However, once you have a squadron selected, you'll still need to use the game's cursor (controlled by your left thumbstick) to choose the destination of your selected unit; so even though the game kind of looks like a third-person action game with a behind-the-back camera like a Tomb Raider or a Prince of Persia, there won't be any direct control of your units. Fortunately, there will be float-over icons above any and all friendly and hostile units that will appear on the horizon, so if you need to mass troops on a location, you can snap your cursor to the icon hovering over that hotspot and give a move order to send your troops in. Unfortunately, there isn't any "select every single unit you own" shortcut. This to discourage players from just turning off their brains and sending in all the troops at once; instead, Creative Assembly hopes you'll use each set of units smartly and will have effective control to send each into battle at the right time, and the right place.

The heart of Stormrise's control scheme is the "whip select" system, which has two layers. First, using the right thumbstick on your controller, you can call up a glowing pointer that "paints" the nearest unit it's pointing to; you can then press the A button to select that unit--this is Stormrise's answer for using a mouse to scroll across the map. The second layer of the whip select system is the way you can flick the right stick in any direction to jump to select the nearest friendly group or structure in that direction, such as the nearest captured resource node, or all the way back to your base. (From what we can tell, at launch, you'll have only the one base of operations that will require you to constantly hop back to it if you want to churn out more armies; it's possible that future updates such as downloadable content may add in features like forward spawn points).

We had the opportunity to dive into two different multiplayer matches, first as the tech-savvy Echelon, then as the magic-and-melee-focused Sai. It took us a few minutes to get used to the control and grouping systems, but once we figured them out, we found ourselves making aggressive starts to each match by continuously churning out new units while sending all available troops ahead to the nearest resource node. Having a well-balanced force seems helpful to making sure you can take on any kind of threat, but Stormrise's "technology tree" (the order of upgrades and units you can purchase for your structures and armies) are generally laid out in an easy-to-understand, linear way: Basically, the most powerful stuff is the most expensive, and also tend to have the best secondary abilities. The Sai dragon, for instance, is a deadly combatant that can tear up airborne enemies as well as bombard ground targets back to the Stone Age. Both of our matches seemed to go pretty quickly and not take much more than about 20 minutes, though they were one-on-one matches in smaller maps that we played using Xbox 360 system link.

For whatever reason, some game companies seem convinced that putting real-time strategy games onto consoles will mean unlimited success, pots of gold, ice cream parties, and all the best things in the world, which is why we're seeing more pretenders to this throne in games like Tom Clancy's EndWar, Red Alert 3, and Halo Wars. Stormrise's unique control scheme and fast-paced action seem like they could be the deciding factors in helping Stormrise ascend that throne...or at least get closer to a good, solid console RTS control scheme. The game is scheduled for release later this year on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC.

PSP GAMES COMING UP

2009-02-26T05:41:00.000-08:00

HAMMERIN HERO

As a title for a game in which you can unlock a variety of new occupations, Hammerin' Hero isn't entirely accurate. Yes, you'll begin this action-heavy side-scroller as a hammer-wielding carpenter on a quest to literally smash corporate greed, but the game's main draw is that you'll soon be crushing evil industrialists under such guises as a sushi chef, a professional baseball player, and a deep-sea diver. If that all sounds a little strange, it's because Hammerin' Hero is precisely that. But fear not: We've been spending some time with Hammerin' Hero in an effort to clear things up a bit before this PSP game's April 7 release.

The eccentric storyline goes like this: You play as a carpenter named Gen, a young man whose trade allows him to craft buildings with a ludicrously huge hammer. But when an evil corporation led by a man named Kuromoku comes rolling into town threatening to smash Gen's residential neighborhood in order to build more profitable structures, Gen takes justice into his own hands--by running and jumping from left to right smashing every bad guy he can. The Japanese neighborhoods that make up the game's environments are filled with all manner of evil construction workers, evil bulldozers, evil corporate helicopters, and so on. And your job is to smash them using a simple control scheme that allows you to jump, light attack, and heavy attack.

Every few levels, you'll unlock a new occupation that lets you do that job in a slightly different way. As a deep-sea diver, you can take out enemies from afar using an anchor on a chain, for example, while a DJ can toss records at people. More up-close-and-personal options include taking a full home-run swing with a baseball bat as a ballplayer or slapping enemies with a giant fish as a sushi chef. You commit to one occupation before the level starts, but you can visit your girlfriend and have her make you a magical bento box that gives you the ability to transform into another occupation midlevel, but only if you've picked up the necessary ingredients (for example, a tuna or a salmon) throughout previous levels.

The action in Hammerin' Hero is quick and challenging. The levels are short but are packed with a number of bosses for you to take on. And the environments are delightfully absurd, too. They start out ordinary enough, with levels taking place in Japanese residential neighborhoods and amusement parks, but eventually you'll get to a place like a live baseball game that requires you to fight your way through a demonic pitching machine and a spike-covered catcher who shoots missiles from his chest. Making things even more hectic is that you'll almost always see frantic civilians attempting to run from harm's way. The overall look of the game is chaotic, quirky, and thoroughly Japanese.

Hammerin' Hero is being brought to North America by Atlus. It may not fall into the strategic role-playing genre most people know the publisher for, but it's every bit as eccentric as their previous work. You can expect to see Hammerin' Hero released for the PSP on April 7.

DRAGONBALL: EVOLUTION

Namco had its upcoming PSP fighter based on the new Dragonball movie, Dragonball Evolution playable in its booth at New York Comic-Con. The game is being developed by Dimps, the studio that's been cranking on the DBZ fighters since the PlayStation 2, and feels a lot like those fighters. The unsettling aspect of the game is that the roster of fighters is patterned after the movie cast, so fans should prepare themselves for Goku to look more Canadian than he ever has. But once you get over the shock of Canadian Goku and Chow Yun-Fat (who plays Goku's mentor, Master Roshi) fighting, the game's got a solid feel to it. Dimps has changed the fighting system up a bit and scaled back the over the top attacks and flying. You'll still be able to do fast combos with punches and kicks, but some ki powered attacks, like Goku's kamehameha, will be more like the super moves in Street Fighter. You'll still be able to add some extra kick to your combos by hitting the ki button but you'll just trigger special melee attacks. This may sound a little straightforward but there's still some craziness to be had in battle with ki attacks. For example, Bulma drops motorcycles on you. While that's not quite the same as flying up in the air and unleashing a globe shattering fireball, at least it's something.

The work in progress game in the booth let us poke around menus and see the different game modes set to be included which should offer a decent amount of stuff to do. The arcade mode is a straightforward run through the roster with some light story sequences peppered through it. The story mode mirrors the movie's story and has you playing as different characters in each fight. The mission mode lays out character specific challenges for the members of the roster. The training mode will let you practice combos against a customizable computer opponent. Finally the game is set to feature an online battle mode, although it sounds like its local ad hoc and not proper online via infrastructure mode on the PSP but we'll doublecheck that next week.

If you can gloss over the movie tie-in Dragonball Evolution feels like another solid DBZ fighter from Dimps. The action is responsive, the fighting system is solid, and there's a decent helping of modes to try. The graphics don't look as sharp since the fighters are modeled after actual people and the stages are based on locations in the film. We reckon this one's going to be a tough sell even to die hard fans considering the reaction the movie's been getting, but at least the combat's solid. Have a look at the game in motion to see for yourself.

PS 3 GAMES COMING UP

2009-02-25T16:28:00.000-08:00

KILLZONE 2

Killzone 2's multiplayer maps are some of the best on which I have ever fought. Most of them feature winding paths, various chokepoints, and clever placement of capture points, so even on the larger maps, there is no reason why you wouldn't be right in the thick of the action. You know how some shooter maps are great for, say, capture the flag, or deathmatch, but not for other modes? Killzone 2's maps may excel in some modes more than others, but possess no intrinsic weaknesses. And that's for the best, because matches string multiple modes seamlessly together, keeping you constantly on your toes and forcing you to switch gears several times in a single game.

And yes, the review is coming this week! In the meanwhile, I thought I'd fill you in on all eight maps that ship with Killzone 2, so I can give you further reasons to salivate.

The dust blows past and rocky mesas rise from the desert sand. The derelict base in the center of this dusty purgatory is the perfect place for a skirmish, due to the three bridges that link the Helghast headquarters with that of the ISA. These overpasses create chokepoints where plenty of nail-biting firefights occur. However, a good squad will take advantage of an unoccupied bridge and bring the fight to the enemy. At the end of one bridge is a nice, tiny hiding spot where you can lie in wait for an unsuspecting foe, though there is no real camping in this game. Possibly my favorite map in Killzone 2.

Explosions and flaming artillery fire light the skies in this moody marketplace. The crumbling buildings above ensure that battles occur on multiple levels, particularly in modes like Search and Retrieve, a variation on capture the flag. In cases like this, you may have to collect a propaganda speaker from a cramped room and return it to a more vulnerable position near the market stalls. By keeping the action hotspots moving, Killzone 2's multilevel maps succeed extremely well.

The Helghan and ISA bases on this map are parallel to each other, but a large multistory complex separates them. A mode like Search and Destroy forces teams to cross wider areas and meet head to head inside the claustrophobic stairwells, where I've found the shotgun to be eminently handy. Across the way, ramps lead you into an edifice that gives you a bit more room to maneuver. This is also an incredibly atmospheric map where loose pages fly in the wind and lightning flashes across the dark, ominous sky.

This cliffside base hovers over the planet below, and if you look towards the nearby city, note the towering mushroom cloud and reddish hue swathing the land. The map itself is somewhat of a U shape, but a central complex keeps teams constantly engaged. Capture and Hold is particularly fun on this map, as the control points on either side are exposed not just because they are in the open, but raised on a platform accessible by a stairway on either side.

The way shafts of light flood into the interior environs of this map is stunning, though the action is the real star here. Overhead walkways keep battles raging above and below, and Bodycount (team deathmatch) is especially enjoyable, since the tight, blocky design means you have to be constantly on the move.

This map competes with Pyrrhus Rise as my favorite battleground in the game. Winding stairways and underground tunnels provide plenty of chokepoints, and a gulley above which power lines shake in the wind offers plenty of team vs. team showdowns. As if there wasn't enough tension, bolts of lightning flash across the sky and even strike the surrounding buildings. Crank up the sound when playing on this one--you might actually jump out of your chair.

This dockside map is also great in Capture and Hold, thanks to exposed capture points stranded at the end of the walkways that hover over the water, and a center
control node on a platform above. Talk about intense action--the ensuing firefights are amongst the best in the game here, though a gaping hole in the central platform can help make for a quick getaway. Don't gaze at the pretty water for too long, or you'll be toast.

XBOX 360 GAMES COMING UP

2009-02-25T15:46:00.000-08:00

TOMB RAIDER UNDERWORLD: BENEATH THE ASHES

With new expansions for Grand Theft Auto IV, Fable II and Fallout 3 , the GameSpot Reviews Blog has been awfully busy with downloadable content of late. Tomb Raider Underworld is the latest game to be given the DLC treatment, with 'Beneath the Ashes' adding a new level, a new enemy and six new outfits. The result is an expansion that offers some memorable set-pieces, but it's short at around two hours and does very little to fix the existing problems from Underworld.

Beneath the Ashes takes place under Croft Manor, which is now a burnt wreckage after the events of Underworld. Lara is following a lead from her father's journal, who buried a sacred artifact deep under the country estate to stop it getting into the wrong hands. This isn't just some dusty old monument either--it holds the power to control the Thralls, an ancient supernatural army of warriors. Lara being Lara, she decides to investigate, and this mini-adventure takes her from the basement of her home right down to the ancient monuments underneath.

Beneath the Ashes does a good job of maintaining the same balance of adventuring, puzzle-solving and combat from Underworld. The action takes place completely underground, but the new level isn't short on huge expanses to cover. This is where the game is at its best--gradually figuring out your way through an environment, and then being rewarded with some spectacular views along the way. The expansion also has some great puzzles, including the best use of Lara's grapple rope yet. Where it all falls down is on the combat--frequent encounters with Thralls and giant spiders are unwelcome distractions from the business of tomb raiding. The combat is fiddly, the enemies are weak, while Lara's ability to fit a shotgun, rifle and uzis into her tiny backpack mean that it's all incredibly easy.

Lara Croft fans who also have a Princess Leia fetish have their prayers answered by this DLC, as it adds six new costumes including a gold bikini. Putting aside the impracticality of spelunking in a swimsuit for a moment, the bikinis are nicely designed, and show off the work that's been put into designing the character. They also demonstrate the great dirt effects that gradually build up on her body, while the confined spaces allow you to 'appreciate' the subtle breast physics.

I had plenty of gripes with the core mechanics of Underworld, so I'm sad to report that they're still present in Beneath the Ashes. The camera is as unruly as ever, refusing to move around solid objects to offer a better view of the world, while it's even worse in confined spaces, of which there are many. You have to wrestle with the camera as it makes simple mistakes, moving underwater as you're doing something above, and there are even bugs, such as an underwater corridor where Lara never needs to come up for air.

Story and characters have never been Tomb Raider's strong point, but if you are into the lore of the series, you'll get something out of Beneath the Ashes. The level features Lara's Shadow character from Underworld, plus an interesting plot twist towards the end. You also get to read Lara's father's journal, which not only helps figure out the puzzles, but also fills in some of the Croft family history. And if you're not into any of the exposition but are lured by the possibility of achievements, then there are 125 points offer for completing the level and finding all the treasures.

Another problem with Beneath the Ashes is that it's a victim of bad timing, releasing just after The Lost & Damned has set a new benchmark for downloadable content. True, Tomb Raider's content is half the price of GTA's, but it also offers a lot less than half the value and entertainment. For what it is, Beneath the Ashes offers a good Tomb Raider level and some revealing outfits, but I'd certainly rather have seen new gameplay mechanics or environments. If you're a die-hard fan of Tomb Raider then you've probably already added this to your download queue, but everyone else is likely to feel a little short-changed.

50 CENT: BLOOD ON THE SAND

It should come as no surprise to anyone that they made another 50 Cent game. Despite its chilly critical reception, 2005's 50 Cent: Bulletproof sold remarkably well. What is likely to surprise many people is that the new game, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, is actually quite good. The fast-paced gameplay, tight controls, and arcade-style scoring system form a solid base for the simplistic yet fun action. Layered on top of this foundation is a heaping helping of 50 Cent and G-Unit flavor; vulgar dialogue, ridiculous one-liners, and a whole lot of licensed music give Blood on the Sand the bravado it needs to stay entertaining when the action begins to wear thin. Neither the action nor the attitude are particularly inspired, but together they are enough to make this an enjoyable ride.

The premise and story serve as little more than a backdrop here, but that's just fine. 50 Cent and G-Unit play a concert and get stiffed by the promoter. Hoping to avoid Fiddy's wrath, the promoter offers them a BeDazzled skull. Everyone's happy until the crew is ambushed and the skull is stolen. It is then that you commence shooting anything that moves. 50 and his chosen G-Unit companion (Tony Yayo, Lloyd Banks, or DJ Whoo Kid) traverse a war-torn urban Middle Eastern landscape, slaying countless goons while pursuing one criminal figure after another. Though there are a few vehicle segments to vary things up, most of the locales kind of blur together in a blend of gunfire and earth tones. Regardless, they are impressively detailed and do a solid job of setting the stage for the explosive action.

50 Cent: Blood on the Sand is a third-person shooter, so you'll be running and gunning with your overly muscled character in full view. The only differences between characters are aesthetic; both 50 Cent and his G-Unit sidekick run at a good clip and can dive in any direction. They can also snap into cover with the press of a button, but this mechanic is a bit too sticky to be convenient. Fortunately, you'll rarely have to use it. Your character is very durable, and when things do get hairy, you can take advantage of the gangsta fire mode (read: bullet time) that makes it easy to lay out a squad of enemies in seconds.

The action is smooth and the controls are responsive, but it begins to feel repetitive after a while. There are a few bells and whistles to spice things up, such as counterkills, which are brutal quick-time melee attacks in which your character pummels, perforates, or otherwise brutalizes an enemy. However, the big incentive to keep playing is the scoring system. Every enemy that you kill earns you points, and killing them in quick succession will get a multiplier going. Additionally, you earn bonuses for the manner in which you dispatch your foes; scoring a headshot or taunting your enemies after you kill them will further boost your score. Even if you're not the kind of gamer who normally strives for high scores, Blood on the Sand's scoring system has a way of sucking you in. Your multiplier and kill bonuses are displayed prominently onscreen, and this visual reinforcement spurs you onward, motivating you to kill your enemies harder, better, faster, stronger.

To further quicken the pace, timed scenarios appear on the screen occasionally and challenge you to accomplish certain objectives within a certain time period. Target enemies are outlined in red, so you'll always know who they are, and completing scenarios will earn you souped-up rounds for your pistol and extra grenades. Red danger arrows also appear to steer you toward the action by indicating where your enemies are about to come from. When there is a lull in the action, you can busy yourself with hunting down collectibles that will boost your score significantly (five posters and five targets in each mission). There are also loot crates that earn you cash to spend on new guns, counterkills, and taunts. Between your score, timed scenario announcements, your health meter, the gangsta fire bar, danger arrows, your cash total, and your kill multiplier, the heads-up display can get very crowded. It manages not to intrude on the action overmuch, but it can be distracting, especially in this day and age when the minimalist HUD reigns supreme.

Nevertheless, this bustling HUD somehow fits well into the blustering swagger of 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand. The game is saturated with overblown gangster bravado, and it matches the over-the-top action perfectly. From the cutscenes in which 50 Cent vows to kill almost everyone he meets to the vulgar (and often amusing) banter between characters, it just doesn't quit. The only place vulgarity is omitted is in the unlockable music videos, which are incongruously censored. Fortunately, the music tracks are not. As you progress and unlock new songs, you can tweak your playlist in the pause menu. 50 Cent and G-Unit songs make a great backdrop for the action and really tie the whole package together.

Blood on the Sand is better enjoyed with a friend, and the well-implemented drop-in/drop-out Cooperative mode is a solid addition. It's easy to let people join your game, and just as easy to keep them out or boot them should they become a nuisance. Whether you play solo or cooperative, you'll get a solid 10+ hours out of the campaign, in addition to any high-score runs that you attempt for the sake of making the online leaderboards. The run-and-gun gameplay isn't particularly inspired, but the scoring system adds enough to keep you engaged. The pervasive attitude is so excessive that it borders on parody, but when underlaid with a robust offering of authentic songs, it works surprisingly well. This isn't the best action game you'll play this year, but that doesn't mean you won't have a damn fun time playing it.

STAR OCEAN: THE LAST HOPE

If you're a fan of Japanese role-playing games, then today's your lucky day as you should be able to find Star Ocean: The Last Hope, the fourth game in the spacefaring series by developers Tri-Ace, on store shelves everywhere. Though we try to have reviews ready on or before release, this time it simply wasn't possible and I've only recently been able to start on it.

In case you're wondering if The Last Hope is for you, know that it continues many Star Ocean traditions like having a strong and fun real-time combat system and providing a richly detailed universe that is meticulously explained via an in-menu dictionary. Fans will further enjoy the fact that this is a prequel rather than a sequel (for reasons obvious to those who have completed Star Ocean: Till the End of Time), and as it takes place at the very beginning of space exploration for the planet Earth, the entire game is steeped in a sense of discovery.

As Edge Maverick, it's your job to assist the Space Reconnaissance Force in their quest for a new home for mankind, as global nuclear war sort of made Earth not the most happening place to be. Because it takes place so early in the Space Date Calendar, you'll literally be going where no man has gone before as you explore the galaxy, so there's no need to worry about pesky rules like the Underdeveloped Planet Preservation pact since they don't exist yet! Throughout your journey, you'll be making history as you make those critical first impressions with the other sentient races out there too, so try not to mess things up.

The Last Hope starts out with an in-depth tutorial of the new combat system, and covers basics like movement, attacks, skills, and more. From there, I was eased into the story and explored a new planet called Aeos that is similar to Earth in most ways, save for the presence of gigantic and really mean insects that are immune to railgun fire, but not swords or arrows for some reason. After taking out the first big boss on what may or may not be valuable beachfront property someday, Edge and his childhood-friend-slash-possible-love-interest Reimi made the acquaintance of Faize Sheifa Beleth, an Eldarian (read: space elf) skilled in the arts of Symbology and the Rapier. After this, it was off to yet another planet where the group was joined by Lymle Lemuri Phi, a powerful little girl that keeps a hellhound as pet.

Though it's way too early to say anything definitive about The Last Hope, the combat system--which just about has to be the strongest aspect of any JRPG because of the amount time you spend in battle--is fun, engaging, and nuanced. The addition of the blindside system to dodge and counter attacks adds a strategic element that is further enhanced by the bonus board, which lets you tailor post-battle rewards however you wish. Technically, the game is solid, though there are a few things to complain about: the camera system has some problems anytime there's an object between your character and it, the framerate suffers (just a bit) when you're performing flashy attacks on several enemies simultaneously, and for some reason enemies are only really visible on the field if they're within 10 yards or so. These issues are for the most part pretty minor though.

As mentioned previously, Star Ocean: The Last Hope is in stores as of today for the Xbox 360. If you're still unsure about it, be sure to watch Sophia's video preview below and check out our final word in the review that will be up soon.

PC GAMES COMING UP

2009-02-25T15:21:00.000-08:00

DIRT 2

The original Dirt--a rally racing game carrying on the legacy of the Colin McRae series--won over fans and critics with its combination of gorgeous visuals, varied events, and an impressive damage modeling system. In other words, it was a hit across the board, which naturally means that Codemasters is hard at work on a sequel. Known quite simply as Dirt 2, this follow-up was unveiled by the English publisher at a press event last night in San Francisco.

During the presentation, the big theme that Codemasters was hammering on for this sequel was the idea of off-road racing with an extreme sports attitude. What does that mean, exactly? The first game featured voice-over work by motocross legend Travis Pastrana, but this time around Codemasters is looking to go full tilt with the game's presentation. A teaser video revealed a scene from the player's RV, the hub where you control all your career mode exploits, and it was a raucous collection of grime, half-naked women, and general insanity. That should serve as a good hint of what the overall attitude will be.

But of course, this is still a racing game, and gussying up the user interface will take you only so far. Thankfully, Codemasters revealed some intriguing information about the type of racing you'll be doing this time around. The biggest chunk of information they let out is the inclusion of stadium rally events. They showed a gameplay video of a fictional stadium built around London's Battersea Power Station, with all manner of twisty dirt roads, puddles, and smoke stacks making up a very gritty and industrial-looking setting. Another similarly fictional stadium they mentioned is one set in Los Angeles for an event they're calling the Stadium King Shootout. Apparently, they've done work to the engine to make these stadium events feel quite massive, with crowd sizes going from 40,000 in Grid (a Codemasters racing game using the same engine released last year) to 120,000 in Dirt 2.

However, it's not just the number of fans watching you peel out and smash your front end that has been tweaked. A tech video shown during the presentation revealed some other enhancements to the game's engine. The biggie is probably advanced water physics: the game will be going beyond the rain-slick roads in the first game to include puddles that appear to be at least a foot deep. This new type of hazard ought to severely impact your driving ability and add a new dimension to the way you'll be racing around the course, because no longer will the optimal line around a corner always be the best one to take if it happens to bring you through a miniature lake.

In terms of locations, you can expect to see races held in London and Los Angeles, as previously mentioned, but also in some less expected spots, including Croatia, China, and Malaysia. Those Asian locales should come as quite a departure from the European-heavy settings in the first game. Another welcome departure is in multiplayer mode: you will now be able to take part in online matches against other drivers in real time. If that doesn't get you excited, you're probably not familiar with the first game's solitary, time-trial multiplayer, which felt like little more than a mean prank in the context of the great game built around it.

Fuel

It's fair to say that the sandbox racing genre hasn't taken off as quickly as action games set in a similarly open environment. But Burnout Paradise proved it could be done quite well, so now we're beginning to see more open-world racers come join the fray. One of the more intriguing examples is Fuel, a sandbox racer being developed in France by Asobo Studio and set to be released by racing megapublisher Codemasters. In it you pilot a variety of vehicles through a massive map depicting a variety of Western United States natural landmarks in the nasty, climate-changed future. We took an extensive look at the game last month during a visit to the developer's studio, though recently an updated build was shown off here in San Francisco at a Codemasters press event.

You can get the full rundown on Fuel in our most recent hands-on preview. Essentially, the game takes place in a giant map that covers 5,000 square miles of terrain. It's a diverse environment that encompasses all manner of settings, from dense forests to barren beaches with the rusted skeletons of cargo ships washed ashore. It's a big grab bag of natural landmarks plucked from the Western US, including Oregon's Crater Lake, Washington's Mt. Rainier, Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats, and Arizona's Grand Canyon. The scope is hard to put into words, but with a 40-kilometer draw distance, it's definitely a sight to behold.

So while the gameworld is a huge mash-up of rolling outdoor terrain that you can explore however you like in a free roaming mode, the career races take on a more traditional approach. The bulk of the races seem to be point-to-point checkpoint events where you'll be navigating from one glowing red column to the next, while some of the others we saw are circuit events that have you running several laps around the same area. In the case of checkpoint events, these points are usually spread pretty far apart, so you've got a good deal of room to navigate how you'd like to get to the next one. This usually involves a combination of sticking to the road or trail while, in the back of your head, weighing the pros and cons of darting through shortcuts that always seem to be taunting you. We had a lot of fun barreling down steep cliffs with a checkpoint at the bottom when the in-game GPS advised taking a series of cautious switchback trails, or cutting through a dense forest when told to stick to the asphalt road veering around it.

One of the neat things about that GPS system--a series of red arrows floating overhead--is how it adapts depending on what sort of car you're driving. It doesn't just have an ideal line for each race; it has an ideal line for which type of vehicle you're driving and how you're driving it. For example, because motorcycles can scale hills much easier than a sedan, you'll be instructed to take the occasional uphill cut between tracks while on a bike that you wouldn't get in another vehicle. And with 70-plus vehicles spanning different classes, like motorcycles, dune buggies, quads, muscle cars, and monster trucks, you'll have lots of vehicles to choose from.

At this point, the big question you might be asking is why place the game in an open-world setting if all the races are fixed events. That's where user-created races come into play. You can create your own events by dropping checkpoints anywhere on the map, so if you want to do an uphill endurance race straight up Mt. Rainier or a lap around Crater Lake, that's well within your means. These can then be shared online with others, and you can take part in 16-player online matches. But, as mentioned before, you're also given the ability to explore around at will.

So far, we like what we've seen of Fuel. Its artistic design is especially impressive, though one big flaw we've noticed is that the frame rate really chugs during big events. Still, it's a unique take on the off-road racing genre, and we're excited to get the chance to explore the entire gameworld. It's due for release on the PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 this May.

2008-03-11T23:33:00.000-07:00

The Game Engine

A game engine is the core software component of a computer video game or other interactive application with real-time graphics. It provides the underlying technologies, simplifies development, and often enables the game to run on multiple platforms such as game consoles and desktop operating systems such as Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows. The core functionality typically provided by a game engine includes a rendering engine (“renderer”) for 2D or 3D graphics, a physics engine or collision detection (and collision response), sound, scripting, animation, artificial intelligence, networking, streaming, memory management, threading, and a scene graph. The process of game development is frequently economized by in large part reusing the same game engine to create different games.

Overview

Game engines provide a suite of visual development tools in addition to reusable software components. These tools are generally provided in an integrated development environment to enable simplified, rapid development of games in a data-driven manner. These game engines are sometimes called "game middleware" because, as with the business sense of the term, they provide a flexible and reusable software platform which provides all the core functionality needed, right out of the box, to develop a game application while reducing costs, complexities, and time-to-market—all critical factors in the highly competitive video game industry.

Like other middleware solutions, graphics engines usually provide platform abstraction, allowing the same game to be run on various platforms including game consoles and personal computers with few, if any, changes made to the game source code. Often, game middleware is designed with a component-based architecture that allows specific systems in the engine to be replaced or extended with more specialized (and often more expensive) middleware components such as Havok for physics, FMOD for sound, or SpeedTree for rendering. Some game engines such as RenderWare are even designed as a series of loosely connected middleware components that can be selectively combined to create a custom engine, instead of the more common approach of extending or customizing a flexible integrated solution. However extensibility is achieved, it remains a high priority in games engines due to the wide variety of uses for which they are applied. Despite the specificity of the name, game engines are often used for other kinds of interactive applications with real-time graphical requirements such as marketing demos, architectural visualizations, training simulations, and modeling environments.
Some game engines only provide real-time 3D rendering capabilities instead of the wide range of functionality required by games. These engines rely upon the game developer to implement the rest of this functionality or assemble it from other game middleware components. These types of engines are generally referred to as a "graphics engine," "rendering engine," or "3D engine" instead of the more encompassing term "game engine." However, this terminology is inconsistently used as many full-featured 3D game engines are referred to simply as "3D engines." A few examples of graphics engines are: RealmForge, Ogre, Power Render, Crystal Space, Genesis3D, Irrlicht and JMonkey Engine. Modern game or graphics engines generally provide a scene graph, which is an object-oriented representation of the 3D game world which often simplifies game design and can be used for more efficient rendering of vast virtual worlds.

Hardware abstraction

Most often, 3D engines or the rendering systems in game engines are built upon a graphics API such as Direct3D or OpenGL which provides a software abstraction of the GPU or video card. Low-level libraries such as DirectX, SDL, and OpenAL are also commonly used in games as they provide hardware-independent access to other computer hardware such as input devices (mouse, keyboard, and joystick), network cards, and sound cards. Before hardware-accelerated 3D graphics, software renderers had been used. Software rendering is still used in some modeling tools or for still-rendered images when visual accuracy is valued over real-time performance (frames-per-second) or when the computer hardware does not meet requirements such as shader support or, in the case of Windows Vista, support for Direct3D 10.

With the advent of hardware accelerated physics processing various physics API such as COLLADA and PAL became available to provide a software abstraction of the Physics processing unit of different middleware providers and console platforms.

History

The term "game engine" arose in the mid-1990s, especially in connection with 3D games such as first-person shooters (FPS). Such was the popularity of id Software's Doom and Quake games that, rather than work from scratch, other developers licensed the core portions of the software and designed their own graphics, characters, weapons and levels—the "game content" or "game assets."

Later games, such as Quake III Arena and Epic Games's 1998 Unreal were designed with this approach in mind, with the engine and content developed separately. The practice of licensing such technology has proved to be a useful auxiliary revenue stream for some game developers, as a single license for a high-end commercial game engine can range from US$10,000 to $3,750,000 (in the case of Warcraft III), and the number of licensees can reach several dozen companies (as for the Unreal Engine). At the very least, reusable engines make developing game sequels faster and easier, which is a valuable advantage in the competitive computer game industry.

Modern game engines are some of the most complex applications written, frequently featuring dozens of finely tuned systems interacting to ensure a finely controlled user experience. The continued refinement of game engines has created a strong separation between rendering, scripting, artwork, and level design. It is now common (as of 2003), for example, for a typical game development team to have several times as many artists as actual programmers.

First-person shooter games remain the predominant users of third-party game engines, but they are now also being used in other genres. For example, the RPG Morrowind and the MMORPG Dark Age of Camelot are based on the NetImmerse engine, and the MMORPG Lineage II is based on the Unreal Engine. Game engines are used for games originally developed for home consoles as well; for example, the RenderWare engine is used in the Grand Theft Auto and Burnout franchises.

Threading is taking on more importance due to modern multi-core systems (i.e. Sony's PPE) and increased demands in realism. Typical threads involve rendering, streaming, audio, and physics. Racing games have typically been at the forefront of threading with the physics engine running in a separate thread long before other core sub-systems were moved, partly because rendering and related tasks only require updating at 30-60 Hz. For example, Need For Speed on the Playstation ran its physics at 100 Hz as compared to Forza Motorsport 2 running its physics at 360 Hz.

Although the term was first used in the 1990s, there are a few earlier systems in the 1980s that are also considered to be game engines, such as Sierra's AGI and SCI systems, LucasArts' SCUMM system and Incentive Software's Freescape engine. However, unlike most modern game engines, these game engines were never used in any third-party products (except for the SCUMM system which was licensed to and used by Humongous Entertainment).

FPS game engines

A well-known subset of game engines are 3D first-person shooter (FPS) game engines. Groundbreaking development in terms of visual quality is done in FPS games on the human scale. While flight and driving simulators and real-time strategy (RTS) games increasingly provide realism on a large scale, first-person shooters are at the forefront of computer graphics at smaller, more human scales.

The development of the FPS graphic engines that appear in games can be characterized by a steady increase in technologies, with some breakthroughs. Attempts at defining distinct generations lead to arbitrary choices of what constitutes a highly modified version of an 'old engine' and what is a brand new engine.

The classification is complicated as game engines blend old and new technologies. Features considered advanced in a new game one year, become the expected standard the next year. Games with a mix of older generation and newer feature are the norm. For example Jurassic Park: Trespasser (1998) introduced physics to the FPS games, but it didn't become common until around 2002. Red Faction (2001) featured destructible walls and ground, something still not common in engines years later (for example in Unreal Tournament 2004 there are still no destructible objects). Battlezone (1998) and Battlezone II: Combat Commander (1999) added vehicle based combat to the usual FPS mix[citation needed], which did not hit the mainstream until later. Tribes 2, Battlefield 1942, Halo: Combat Evolved and Unreal Tournament 2004 fully realized the potential for vehicular-combat and first person shooter integration.

What do we mean by ‘Virtual World’?

2008-03-11T07:32:00.000-07:00

Photosynth looks like an amazing piece of technology, but I’m not quite following Techcrunch’s logic in this post. It sounds to me as though they’re confusing a 3D environment with a virtual world. Photosynth may allow people to build a photorealistic representation of the world, so it easily goes that this is virtual but is that actually the same as what we mean by a virtual world?

The three basic rules for virtual worlds as I understood it were that it had to be persistent, social and have a dynamic economy. From Blaise’s speech it sounds like a social element in the form of tagging is planned and I guess it would be simple enough to implement chat/message functions as well. The ‘persistent’ bit would be straightforward enough, the world would be constantly changing as more people added photos to it and presumably those photos would also incorporate changes to the real environment such as grafitti, new buildings etc.

But I’m struggling a bit with the dynamic eceonomy bit. Maybe I’m being too conservative and a dynamic economy isn’t an essential component of a virtual world, or buying and selling, virtual or otherwise, could be added to the 3D representations of RL earth. Of course if in-world virtual goods were being sold there would have to be something to sell them too, avatars or 3D representations of people’s houses, businesses or flats (all sorts of issues here, but I’m not going to get caught up in that right now).

But I believe there is a fourth rule that makes a 3D space a ‘world’ and that isit needs to have some kind of mythology, in the broadest sense of the term. I came across Bob Sutor’s (IBM’s vice president of standards and opensource) blog at 3pointD, on it he is in the process of outlining 10 virtual world requirements. Although he’s only at number 4 so far, and he already agrees with me on the NPC and AI front, bt I’m also hoping he acknowledges the role of mythology.

Virtual worlds need a sense of history and ideals, they need to feel like they are more than just pretty 3D graphics and economies or they’d feel like a glorified Myspace or Ebay. Obviously this is easier for worlds like Lord of the Rings Online and World of Warcraft that have tight fictional boundaries, but in many ways it’s true of Second Life - it’s modelled on Neal Stephenson’s Metaverse and many of the residents view it that way. Whether mythologies exist for players of other MMOs I don’t know, and my argument hinges on that fact, but what kind of mythology would a 3D world based on photosynth have?

Would it ever acheive a status beyond that of a very accurate replication of RL earth or would it develop its own agency, a kind of alternative or counter-earth if you wish?

2008-03-10T22:34:00.000-07:00

Video Games

Video games are played at the arcade, at home on a television or personal computer, and as a handheld portable game. They are packaged in large consoles, game paks that can only be played on the same manufacturer's hardware (i.e. Nintendo, Sega Genesis, and Sony Playstation), and as CD-ROMs. Made up of a program that instructs the computer to display specific visual and audio effects, video games utilize cutting-edge technology in order to provide fast paced entertainment. Recent statistics show that 70% of all children in the United States have home video game systems. Over four billion dollars is spent on arcade video games annually.

History

A precursor to the video game, pinball machines were introduced during the 1930s and remained popular through the 1970s. In 1971, a video arcade game was produced called Computer Space. Invented by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, Computer Space was the first real coin-operated video game, but for various reasons, it never became popular. It did however, lay the groundwork for the next video game that Bushnell and Dabney introduced: the phenomenally successful arcade game Pong. Modeled after the game of ping pong, it was an electronic game in which players tried to hit a flashing dot passed their opponent's video paddle. With the success of Pong, Bushnell and Dabney started the Atari Company, and in 1975, they introduced a home version of Pong. In 1976, Warner Communication purchased Atari for $28 million and expanded its home line of video game cartridges.
At the same time Bushnell and Dabney were developing Pong, Ralph Baer, who was working for Sanders Associates, was designing a home video game system called The Odyssey. Developed in 1969, Baer's system was finally manufactured and distributed by Magnavox in 1972. The Odyssey was a package of 12 different plug-in games that were housed on circuit cards. Each game came with plastic overlays that, when placed over the television screen, simulated the appropriate background. For example, a plastic overlay of a hockey rink was included with the hockey game. The Odyssey also offered an electronic shooting gallery with four additional games and an electronic rifle. Eighty-five thousand systems were sold.
Rapid advances in electronics technology during the 1970s led to the development of more complicated games, such as Space Invaders and Pac-Man. Introduced in 1983 as a joint venture between the Namco Company of Japan and Midway of the United States, Pac-Man has sold hundreds of thousands of games and remains one of the most popular video games.
When personal computers became available, computer games were created. Many of these games were adaptations of arcade or home video game systems, however unique games were also developed. The computer game industry grew swiftly during the 1980s powered by various companies, especially the Nintendo Corporation. In the late 1980s, the CD-ROM was introduced. These disks could hold more information on them, and allowed the development of more sophisticated, interactive games. In 1995, digital video disks (DVDs) were first produced for home computers. Since they have a storage capacity over twenty times greater than CD-ROMs, they promise to revolutionize computer games.

Design

Design is the key aspect of making all video games. It is typically done by a team of skilled computer programmers, writers, artists, and other game designers. During this phase of development, they generate the game's specifications, which includes game type, objective, and graphics.
While creating a video game is rarely a step by step process, there are a variety of tasks that must be accomplished during the development phase. In the beginning, the type and objective of the game is determined. In general, games fall within six categories, or genres, including fighting, shooting, strategy, simulations, adventure, and run, jump and avoid (RJA). Fighting games require the players to battle with each other or the computer. Presently, they are the most popular and encompass such titles as Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. Shooting games involve battles in which the player tries to destroy enemy tanks, ships, or planes. Strategy games include such classics as chess, bridge or checkers. Simulations are games, which reproduce real life situations such as flying or driving. Adventure games are computerized versions of role-playing fantasy games. The RJA games are those like the Super Mario games in which a character tries to reach a goal while being impeded by various obstacles.
The action of the game is dependent upon its intended venue. An arcade game must have immediate action. A home version usually includes various skill levels in order to keep the player interested over a longer period of time. A handheld version of a video game is simplified to be played in miniature.
Raw MaterialsDesign is the key aspect of making all video games. It is typically done by a team of skilled computer programmers, writers, artists, and other game designers. During this phase of development, they generate the game's specifications, which includes game type, objective, and graphics.
While creating a video game is rarely a step by step process, there are a variety of tasks that must be accomplished during the development phase. In the beginning, the type and objective of the game is determined. In general, games fall within six categories, or genres, including fighting, shooting, strategy, simulations, adventure, and run, jump and avoid (RJA). Fighting games require the players to battle with each other or the computer. Presently, they are the most popular and encompass such titles as Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. Shooting games involve battles in which the player tries to destroy enemy tanks, ships, or planes. Strategy games include such classics as chess, bridge or checkers. Simulations are games, which reproduce real life situations such as flying or driving. Adventure games are computerized versions of role-playing fantasy games. The RJA games are those like the Super Mario games in which a character tries to reach a goal while being impeded by various obstacles.
The action of the game is dependent upon its intended venue. An arcade game must have immediate action. A home version usually includes various skill levels in order to keep the player interested over a longer period of time. A handheld version of a video game is simplified to be played in miniature.
Raw Materials