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More Super Street Fighter IV characters revealed

Matthew Vice

Nov 30, 2009

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Capcom has recently released some shots and footage of more new characters for their upcoming Super Street Fighter IV versus fighter. Well, “new” isn’t exactly the right word to describe them. All three of them are from the Street Fighter Alpha series: Adon, a Muay Thay fighter with a grudge against Sagat, and Final Fight stalwarts Cody and Guy. For interests sake, Guy has been around for a while in the Street Fighter Alpha series and other spin-off games, but this will mark Cody’s second appearance in a versus fighting game, because he only ever appeared in Street Fighter Alpha 3.

Guy is fast and flighty, and very Vega-like in his applications.

Cody is a bit of brute, and he has access to a knife which increases his damage - but he can be made to drop it even more easily than Vega drops his claw.

Adon is nimble and hard-hitting. A good character for beginner and average players - he lacks projectiles, though.

Retro review: The Settlers 2

Richard Jenks

Nov 30, 2009

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[quote]

The Settlers series is a grandaddy that brought aspects of gameplay which still feature in titles to this day, and part 2 (TS2) is arguably the best of the series.

The primary game mode follows a group of Romans who find themselves marooned on an island, and they must establish settlements and explore before discovering a way home. Gameplay is pretty straightforward, revolving around the gathering of wood, stone, food, and various ores, plus the manufacture of goods. Raw and refined resources are the primary focus of TS2, and good management is paramount – especially considering that many types are strictly limited. You can grow and harvest all the trees you please, but when you run out of iron – that’s it. It can be particularly frustrating if you exhaust some vital ore well into a level and are forced to start over.

Buildings of varying sizes and functions can be constructed according to the availability of space. Every structure must be linked to the road system, which allows helpful serfs to fetch and carry goods. Here things can get interesting – each road has flags, with one serf between each flag. More flags, more serfs, and the faster goods get transported – a dense city will have hundreds of peons scurrying around like ants. However, each flag occupies precious construction space, so a balance must be struck. The route and number of roads combined with flags determine efficiency, so layout becomes critical when space is limited.

While TS2 has a strong military element and most levels require the defeat of enemy forces, the implementation is rather simplistic. Soldiers are the only unit type (but can be trained), and combat consists of simply choosing units, then selecting a target and letting the combat play out. Building military structures expands your control zone and permits you to launch attacks into opposing territory.

TS2 can be tricky at times due to the lack of any useful resource requirement indicators. Nowhere are you told what is needed to build or run a particular building, and only by trial and error can you figure things out. You might find yourself scratching your head over a half-constructed building, and only by scrutinizing the various detailed information screens would you discover that workers lack the necessary tools. While modern games allow us to take information exposition for granted, it does provide a barrier to entry for TS2.

The overall pace of gameplay is rather slow. It can take ages for industries to get up and running smoothly – and even longer for their fruits to become available. You will probably spend a lot of time waiting for things to happen, anywhere up to 3 hours per level.

Graphics are simple and colourful, and can go all the way up to 1024 x 768 (which was, like, HUGE in 1996!) with a lot of detail, considering the game’s age. You’ll see sheep and rabbits gambolling about, foxes hunting, and idle serfs reading the newspaper. On a par with many retro titles, music in TS2 is annoying right off the bat and is best left switched off. Decent-quality sounds accompany many occurrences in the game, providing the expected atmosphere. Occasionally, the timing of construction, forge, wood cutting, and other noises will create a cadence not unlike a pseudo-industrial remix, which is good for a chuckle.

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Square Enix says consoles are set for extinction

Miktar

Nov 28, 2009

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Wada In an interview with MCV, Square Enix chief Yoichi Wada had a great many things to say with his meatflaps, most of them about consoles, console games and the future. Being a Time Lord, Wada has a great deal of insight into the far-flung tomorrow of the day after.

“In ten years’ time a lot of what we call ‘console games’ won’t exist,” he said. Wada warned that “all the distributors and sales firms will suffer a big negative impact” from, to quote MCV, “a new era in which interactive entertainment switches from software run on hardware in the home, to server-based offerings, game streaming, and digital distribution”.

“Somewhere around 2005 the console manufacturers’ strategy shifted,” he said.

“In the past the platform was hardware, but it has switched to the network. A time will come when the hardware isn’t even needed anymore.

“With that, any kind of terminal becomes a potential platform on which games can be played – that’s exponential growth in the potential of gaming. The potential size of the market is enormous.”

He explained that Square Enix is preparing for this change by ramping up production of social and browser games at its Japanese studios, and also closely monitoring 2010’s beta roll-out of PS3 MMO Final Fantasy XIV.

“Social and browser games are going to grow dramatically – especially in areas like Asia which does not have as big a console market,” he said.

Sony Europe’s president Andrew House, disagrees. “Make no mistake, when you’re looking at PS3 games and you’re seeing the shift in the sheer size of the data that’s becoming available, the packaged media business is not going away any time soon,” he said.

Feature review: DJ Hero

Miktar

Nov 27, 2009

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[quote]

This is the story of the world’s most honest rhythm game. The popularity that music games have enjoyed in the last few years rests upon their central conceit, a contract established with the player that is simultaneously sublime and silly: that by picking up a downscaled plastic (toy) instrument, you too can live the dream. You can stand in your living room, in your undies, if that’s how you roll, and pretend you’re a rock star while virtual crowds cheer you on. It’s the lie inherent in that which even people who love these games have to laugh at; that pressing buttons on a specially-shaped controller is supposed to in any way really equate to the act of performing music.

With the exception of the simulated drumkits in Rock Band and Guitar Hero World Tour, music games have remained relatively dishonest about how much like the real thing their play mechanics are. It’s all artfully orchestrated to make you feel real; and that’s not a criticism. That’s what all video games do, in their own way, each to its own degree. Sometimes, simulated hyper-reality can feel better than the real thing, and let you do things you couldn’t do in real life if you tried. Then there’s DJ Hero.

Take These Broken Wings

What a traditional DJ does is to take someone else’s content and make a unique performance out of presenting it in a new way. And God said “let there be mash-ups and scratch”. The mechanics of DJ Hero are, by providence and design, far closer to what a real DJ uses in his art, from a pure play mechanic point of view. But metaphorically, the process of mixing and mashing is also much closer to what a player does in a game world simulation than something like Guitar Hero is to actually being Van Halen.

What FreeStyleGames has done is to design a very good, though not flawless, experience around the fateful similarity of the DJ to the gamer. Perhaps because it’s more honest about, and closer to, the activity it represents, the gameplay concepts feel more relevant; less fake, less arbitrary. There’s an intensity in playing DJ Hero that arguably goes beyond the Plastic Guitar games in terms of the euphoria and sense of “being there”. Will Townsend, DJ Hero producer, said that he wanted to capture the rush that a DJ feels on stage and at the center of the party; it’s an experience unique from any other kind of musical performance. See more about how the hardware in DJ Hero accomplishes this in the controller section. It’s really not business as usual.

Hear The Voices Sing

But that’s the thing about music games: ultimately, they’re only as good as the music they offer. That’s where DJ Hero’s other shoe drops and the second half of what makes it a unique experience falls into place. Understand that in DJ Hero you’re not playing along to a collection of popular and classic music that you already know and love: here you are presented with a whopping 93 new, original works that you’ve never heard before this game came into existence. That’s what the “mash-up” has brought to the game – the 102 licensed music tracks in DJ Hero are remixed into new works, and the fundamental nature of what a mash-up is gives DJ Hero much of its flavor. Compared to the stately, cautious reverence that rock-oriented games display towards their meticulously converted and presented songs, mash-ups throw dignity to the wind. They’re sarcastic. Playful. Satirical. Wildly inventive. They were what people got their jollies from pop culture with before there was YouTube.

DJ Hero shamelessly wallows in that playful irreverence. Coming directly out of recent music games such as The Beatles: Rock Band, that turns out to be a stunning breath of fresh air. The wild CG intro to the game reflects this, depicting a gigantic alien record player’s boom arm destroying a hip-hop flavoured city as teams of brave DJs fight to stop it with the power of scratching and feedback loops. DJ Hero has a permanent smirk on its face, but it’s not shallow and calorie-free satire. There’s still an appreciation for the source material here – just no worship at the altar. (Unless you’re referring to the Daft Punk appearances in the game, who practically oversee the festivities as bio-mechanical patron saints of the mix-board.)

And after all that, yes: the soundtrack rocks in a massive way. The source track selections are virtually perfect, and the mixes between them are pristine and creative, full of originality and energy. Some combinations will drop your jaw with the insanity of what songs are combined, only to result in the best mash-up beats you’ve ever heard. It really is the finest rhythm game soundtrack of the year, hands down – even the Beatles must step to the side, even if only slightly. And just to confirm, yes: there are 11 Daft Punk songs, a Daft Punk arena, and the electronic duo are actual characters you can select for yourself. The very fact that all this still doesn’t make DJ Hero feel like Daft Punk Hero is a testament to the gobs of music that’s here.

Uncharted Motion comic available now on PSN

Matthew Vice

Nov 27, 2009

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If you’re a fan of Nathan Drake – and let’s be honest, who isn’t? – then you might be interested in downloading the new Uncharted Motion comics that are available now on the Euro PSN – for free (well, apart from the ridiculous internet costs). Apparently there will be four parts in total, of which the first two became available yesterday. These motion comics are a prequel the first game, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, and give us a taste of what Drake was doing before we got to know him. Once again, Drake is voiced by big name voice artist, Nolan North.

For the uninitiated, a motion comic is a digital comic with some slight animation and voiced dialogue that plays not at all dissimilarly to a movie. It’s kind of like watching a really high quality animatic (a full pre-production cut-together) for a big CG movie that is still in production.

Seems like Drake is always getting the shinola kicked out of him...

Microsoft to face possible class action lawsuit from Abington IP

Matthew Vice

Nov 26, 2009

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Let's see if this will actually go anywhere.

It seems that enough Xbox 360 users in the US have been negatively affected by Microsoft’s indiscriminate ban of modified Xbox 360’s on Xbox Live to interest law firm Abington IP to start a campaign for a class action lawsuit against them.

Chief among their allegations is that Microsoft’s ban is “indiscriminate” and affects 360 owners who modified their consoles for legitimate reasons – reasons other than piracy. They’re also hinting at the fact that Microsoft conveniently held off this ban until after the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, a huge game release which was expected to bring them a flood on renewed subscriptions.

Seems like Microsoft just can’t stop annoying people, no matter what they do. Anyway, if you’re interested in more of the nitty-gritty details, then check out the full list of allegations at Abington IP’s website here.

Retro Review: Heroes of Might and Magic 3

Rodain Joubert

Nov 26, 2009

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[quote]

The Might and Magic games have always been great. From the glorious World of Xeen back in the golden era of RPG classics, to the incredibly buggy (yet still pretty gosh-darn fun) Dark Messiah, these games have made a long-term impact in an ever-evolving market. For this delightful little review, we’ll turn our discussion to what’s possibly the greatest game ever offered under this umbrella: Heroes of Might and Magic 3.

HoMM is a game series without peer. Sure, certain competitors do exist. There’s Lords of the Realm, Lords of Magic, and some other games which have tried mixing turn-based strategy and empire building with the intense tactical experience of a fully-controlled battlefield (seasoned with just a dash of RPG goodness). HoMM, however, remains the cream of the crop, and its third installment is the finest of the lot.

Pegasus vs. unicorn vs. green dragon. Aaaaaand fight!

HoMM3 takes place in the oh-so-magical and fantastical world of Enroth, where the likes of necromancers and demons are making life difficult in a way that only necromancers and demons can really manage. In response, the Various Nations Of The World are clumping themselves into tight little units led by heroes of varying spellcasting and swordarming capabilities, running around a colourful game world, following giant green arrows for some or other reason, and basically getting into a fight every time their green arrow leads to another tight little unit led by some spellchucking, swordfighting scallywag. Along the way, they have to control resource points, manage town construction, and recruit the biggest, toughest fighting force around.

That describes the overworld bit. The real joy lies in the battle scenes. Every time two armies clash, they’re confronted with a screen that puts both forces on a grid of honour and glory. Sometimes, you’re required to lay siege to a castle. On other occasions, you’ll be fighting on cursed or rocky terrain. The basic goal is to fight your enemy until somebody surrenders or gets annihilated. Units are well varied: some cast spells, others can fly, and others just pepper enemies with projectiles. Standing on the sidelines will be the aforementioned heroes who (in lieu of fighting directly) will contribute to the battle with spells, special abilities, and passive stats.

While the game is quite complex, it’s fun for players of all levels. Beginners can just purchase the basic units, make a beeline for the enemy, and start whacking them really hard with swords and magic arrows, while those who take it seriously will find an astounding level of detail that can help them turn the most seemingly useless spell or trait into something that can actually decide a battle.

The entire game screams two words: "adventurous" and "colourful."

HoMM3 is currently available as a complete set of three games: the original Restoration of Erathia, its prequel (Shadow of Death), and another expansion pack called Armageddon’s Blade. Any one of these alone would stand as an excellent purchase, but having all three together makes this a shoe-in for anybody even remotely interested in this sort of game. I can’t think of a better way to introduce people to the genre, and I’ll eat my hat if anyone ever develops a title that does it better.

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Play old Atari at new Atari dot com

Miktar

Nov 25, 2009

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You can play six classic Atari games over at their new site here, click on this link, that’s right, just like that. Now you too can experience the genius that is Yar’s Revenge: “Atari’s best selling original title for the 2600, you are a Yar: an insectoid creature who must nibble or shoot through a barrier in order to fire his “Zorlon Cannon” into the breach and destroy the evil Qotile.”

Or, more likely, “Hey guys, we made this kind of game thing but we have no idea what to call it or what it’s about, so let’s just make something up”. Why it was ever Atari’s “best selling original title”, who knows. Perhaps there is magic in that there Zorlon Cannon we’re unaware of.

The Experimental Gameplay Project

Rodain Joubert

Nov 25, 2009

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We’ve mentioned the Experimental Gameplay Project on NAG before, namely for its focus on rapid game development. With a mandatory “one week only” rule for game creation, this project gives developers from all over the chance to explore and ever-so-slightly flesh out a lot of really cool game concepts.

Hey, who doesn't recognise this game by now?

The Experimental Gameplay Project (henceforth known as EGP, because acronyms are that much more awesome) started off in 2005 as a simple diversion for a few random grad students. These random grad students were keen to see whether they could make a whole bunch of games in just one semester, and eventually came out with more than 50. Due to their hard work and the successful promotion of EGP, they soon became not quite so random and their effort turned into an Internet sensation.

Then, for a while, they went silent.

After a period of dormancy, their brainchild emerged with a fresh coat of paint this year, and they’ve since been holding monthly competitions focused around broad themes such as “Failure” and “Art Game”, affording participants some flexibility that nonetheless encouraged them to get rather ingenious with their interpretations.

The competitions don’t restrict entry, don’t really have a way of tracking your dev time, and don’t shower winners with cash and other loot, but they still do their job well. After all, fostering a culture of creativity and experimentation is always more important than formalising and monetising it – and will probably lead to bigger and better things anyway.

Here are a few delicious examples of “success stories” that have emerged from EGP:

Yep, this is an actual game screenshot.

Crayon Physics Deluxe

Those who keep tabs on big indie trends probably know that Crayon Physics Deluxe won the grand prize at the annual IGF last year. A lesser-known fact is that, some time before that, it was sitting pretty on EGP as a wide-eyed and hastily put-together project that had no idea of the prestige it would one day enjoy.

World of Goo

Back in the days of oldschool EGP, a cute (but crude) little game called Tower of Goo took the indie community by storm. This humble glob of proto-code and simple gameplay eventually morphed into an indie commercial project (World of Goo) and single-handedly secured Kyle Gabler’s place as one of the most prominent indie developers today.

Proof that graphics don't have to be "good" to be "awesome."

Broken Brothers

More recently, an EGP game called Broken Brothers surfaced on the IGF entry list for 2010. It is made by one Michael Todd, who’s recently been crafting a slew of small, experimental videogames for people’s consumption, and featured quite prominently in a recent EGP competition.

Canabalt

If there’s anything notable about Adam Saltsman’s Canabalt (aside from the fact that it’s incredibly simple, addictive, and made with his own flixel framework), it’s the fact that the developer wastes no time. A few scant weeks after showing up on EGP, it tore its way through the online Flash scene and Saltsman announced that it was coming out for the iPhone. Whoah.

If you have some spare time (and even the slightest inclination) head over to EGP now and get experimental! Competitions are constantly on the go, and the experience may just be what you need to unlock that killer game idea.

Borderlands DLC available

Matthew Vice

Nov 25, 2009

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If you’re a fan of Borderlands and you’ve already played every single mission available, then you’ll be happy to hear that some brand new Downloadable Content for it should be available by the time you read this, on Xbox Live at least – PS3 owners who connect to the Euro PlayStation Network might have to wait until our Thursday update tomorrow or the next week.

The update pack is entitled The Zombie Island of Dr Ned, and it includes everything you need to spice a game up: more quests, more items and, of course, hordes of zombies to blast. How could it fail to be a winner?