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Thursday, February 11, 2010 4:43 AM EST
Halo Legends premieres in San Francisco
It’s Wednesday night, and I just returned to my hotel room in San Francisco (I’m in the City by the Bay to attend X10, Microsoft’s annual showcase of upcoming video game wares) after sitting through the world premiere of Halo Legends, a series of seven Halo shorts created by a quintet of Japanese anime studios.
Available on DVD and Blu-ray—which means, amusingly, that a lot of folks will probably be playing the disc on a PlayStation 3 rather than an Xbox 360—as of Thursday, the project was overseen by Frank O’Connor, franchise development director with Microsoft Game Studios. He was on hand to introduce and provide insight into the making of the films, and noted that each piece is essentially an “answer to a question people have been asking about the Halo universe.”
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Tuesday, February 9, 2010 9:05 PM EST
Downloadable game spotlight
I’ve been neglecting the downloadable game scene for quite a while, if only because there have been so many major boxed titles vying for my attention. But I did manage to squeak in a couple of downloadable releases over the last week.
I’ll start with Hustle Kings, probably the best pool sim I’ve played, well, ever.
It looks terrific. I’m not talking about the corny clubs in which the tables are set, but rather the tables, balls, and physics. I could actually see details in the felt when viewed closely, and the high gloss balls looked real enough to touch. But it was the way they moved that impressed most. Balls bounce around in pockets, spin catches on the cloth, and rebounds off rails don't involve unrealistically perfect angles, but instead change based on ball speed and rotation. I've not seen another pool sim with more authentic physics.
I also like the interface. We’re given precise spin and power controls, and shot previews show not only ball vectors but also bounce and spin. I know some purists would rather eyeball it than see a perfect preview of their shot, but there is still challenge here. Players don’t just press a button to shoot once everything is lined up; they must either pull back and push forward on the thumbstick or stop a cursor rapidly moving round a circle to strike the cue ball. The only way to guarantee the shot will play out as foretold is to have perfect accuracy, and the more spin, speed, and banks you include makes achieving flawless accuracy much more difficult. It’s a great system.
Plus, there’s no shortage of ways to play. Career mode will take players through four increasingly challenging leagues that let players try just about every sort of billiards game I can think of, from standard 8-ball and 9-ball to 14.1 continuous and cutthroat. Each league also has a series of challenges, such as clearing a table as quickly as possible or making a specific trick shot.
You can also set up customized games for between one and eight players locally, or hop online and bet the money you’ve earned during your career in matches. I found hundreds of people playing live whenever I logged on, so there's no need to worry about finding a match.
Put simply, Hustle Kings is a must-have game for any billiards fan.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 8:15 PM EST
A BioShock 2 podcast party
My take on BioShock 2, which released today, is forthcoming (the review will appear in tomorrow's paper and as a standalone review online).
In the meantime, I recommend tuning in to the Games Day Podcast show Wednesday night.
I’ve mentioned these fellows before. Based in London, Ontario, they host a live podcast every week in which they chat about game culture, new releases, and a variety of other subjects interesting to people who, you know, like games.
This week's show will take place Tuesday night, live from a BioShock 2 launch party hosted by Digital Extremes in their home town. The Canadian developer crafted the game's multi-player element, and I suspect the Games Day Podcast boys will eke out a few comments from them in addition to capturing reactions of people playing the game at the party.
If you're chomping at the bit for more BioShock 2 news, you can also check out an interview I posted with 2K Marin’s Jordan Thomas, the game's creative director.
Meanwhile, I hope you’re all having fun in Rapture. I know I am.
Follow me on Twitter: @chadsapieha
Monday, February 8, 2010 2:29 PM EST
White Knight more of a dark cloud
I don’t really know why, but I’m a sucker for RPGs. Western or Japanese, traditional or modern, turn-based or real-time, for some reason I have a tendency to get sucked into them—even those that the more objective part of me recognizes as having more flaws than merits.
Such is the case with White Knight Chronicles, a PlayStation 3-exclusive from renowned Japanese studio Level-5. I like pretty much everything that I’ve seen from this company, which made the Dark Cloud games, Rogue Galaxy, the two most recent Dragon Quest adventures, all of the superb Professor Layton puzzlers, and Jeanne d’Arc—one of best PSP strategy games yet released. The studio’s work just seems to ooze beautiful art, engaging play, and polished presentation.
And, to be sure, White Knight Chronicles has all three of these elements.
Thursday, February 4, 2010 6:09 PM EST
MAG: The more the merrier
I’ve now spent about a week with MAG, a new massively multiplayer online shooter from Zipper Interactive for PlayStation 3 that facilitates battles with up to 256 players. I’ve yet to see everything it has to offer—always difficult in an online-only game—but I think I’m ready to lay down a verdict.
It’s a good—but not great—game for hardcore players who enjoy investing months worth of spare time creating teams, developing strategies, and learning how to exploit the intricacies of each map and game type.
As for everyone else? Maybe not so much.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010 11:15 AM EST
No More Heroes 2... I mean it; please, no more
To save your game in the Wii-exclusive No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle one must direct his or her character—a foul-mouthed punk named Travis Touchdown—into a bathroom where he peels off his pants, sits on a toilet, and empties his bowels.
This is just one of countless scenes intended to shock and amuse players in Ubisoft’s new revenge-driven actioner, a game that features scores of shameless crotch, boob, and butt shots and a relentless flow of crass sexual dialogue.
And it’s a shame, because if you scrub away the juvenile drivel you’ll find a fun little game underneath. The gory combat is both simple and satisfying, and long-time video game fans will appreciate the respect paid to the medium’s past via loads of retro, 8-bit-era mini-games.
But as entertaining as these elements are, No More Heroes 2 is irreparably tarnished by tepid writing and puerile gags that aren’t much more clever than what you might find scrawled on the wall of a bathroom stall at a particularly dingy gas station.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010 1:34 PM EST
Alienware launches the world’s first gaming netbook
Alienware today is allowing consumers to begin ordering the m11x, a wee gaming rig with an 11-inch screen—close enough to the 10.1-inch netbook standard set by Asus last year that I’m going to just go ahead and call it what everyone is thinking it is: The world’s first gaming netbook.
It comes standard with a 720p screen and an NVIDIA GeForce GT 335M graphics card with 1GB of dedicated video memory. I played around with the online customizer, bumping up some key specs--including DDR3 RAM (I went from two gigs to four; you can go as high as eight) processor type (I swapped out a 1.3 GHz Pentium for a 1.3 GHz Core 2 Duo), and storage (I upgraded from a paltry 160GB hard disk to 500GB).
Granted, there will be plenty of games that this thing won’t be able to run with all of the graphics settings maxed, but it sounds like it might actually offer surprisingly decent horsepower in a tiny form factor.
The question that I can’t help but ask, however, is why?
The two biggest selling points for a mini-notebook are price and portability. Outfitted with the specs above, the m11x costs about $1,200—three times the price of an entry-level netbook. And it might be relatively small, but at over two kilograms it weighs at least as much as most modern 15-inch notebooks, cancelling much of the category’s intended benefit.
Consider as well that you can purchase a much more powerful standard-sized gaming notebook for just a few hundred dollars more, and the m11x’s proposition becomes even shakier.
Still, it’s the first netbook you can play games on, which I won’t deny is pretty cool. I’m keen to give one a spin. I’ll report back here if I can nab an evaluation model.
Follow me on Twitter: @chadsapieha
Monday, February 1, 2010 2:42 PM EST
First-person Tetris?
Okay, here’s a great Monday afternoon mindfrak: First-person Tetris.
This free web-based game consists of a full-page photo of an old tube television in a living room, complete with a Nintendo Entertainment System on the floor and VCR atop the set. On screen is a picture everyone will recognize: The classic 8-bit version of Tetris.
But this familiar scene takes a turn for the wonky once the action starts.
Tap the directional keys to twist your tetraminos and you’ll find that it’s not the puzzle pieces that rotate, but instead the entire room.
The game plays the same as you remember—stack pieces to create lines that disappear—but things become exponentially more challenging as you work through the nearly nausea-inducing sensation that the entire world is spinning.
It’s great fun. And surprisingly compelling. I’ve spent several hours playing over the last few days. It puts just the right sort of twist on an aging formula to make it seem completely fresh again.
There’s also a “night mode” in which everything except the tetramino pieces goes completely black. I found it more challenging at first (you can’t even the sides of the playing field), but within just a few minutes it became much easier than the “day mode,” if only because the dizzying distraction of the room spinning around my pieces had been removed.
It’s a good little time-sucker, make no mistake. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Follow me on Twitter: @chadsapieha
Friday, January 29, 2010 10:32 AM EST
The man who made BioShock 2
When it was released in the late summer of 2007, the original BioShock earned virtually universal accolades from both players and the press.
A dark and surprisingly philosophical adventure through a utopian city gone wrong, it delivered intense and terrifying action, stunningly rendered underwater environments that drew heavily from art deco styles, and, perhaps most importantly, a story that resonated on an emotional level with the millions of players who experienced it.
Now, 30 months later, a team of developers at California-based 2K Marin have just put the finishing touches on the sequel, which is set to release on February 9th.
Trying to imagine new narrative ideas and game concepts to follow up one of the most beloved games of recent years was no doubt a daunting task. However, Jordan Thomas, the game's creative director, seems confident that his team has done justice to the legacy left by the original.
In the following exclusive interview he sets up the premise for the new game, discusses some of the important differences between passive and interactive storytelling, and describes the game’s innovative, story-driven multiplayer component, which plays as a prequel that explores the back-stories of several of the game’s most memorable characters.
Thursday, January 28, 2010 10:45 AM EST
What does the iPad mean to gamers?
You’d be forgiven if, after reading some accounts of Apple’s newly announced iPad, you thought that there was nothing it couldn’t do.
According to propaganda disseminated at Apple’s unveiling event in San Francisco Wednesday, it’s a digital reader that will save old media, a high-res movie and music machine better than any iPod, the ultimate mobile web browser, a productivity powerhouse, and a great little gaming device, to boot.
This isn’t the proper forum to get into a discussion about most of those claims, but I would like to chat about its gaming potential.
Controller Freak Contributors
Chad Sapieha
Chad Sapieha has been covering the video game industry in print and broadcast since 1997. He began writing about games for The Globe and Mail in 2004.