Grifter Online and Console Games Hints,Tips,Reviews and In-game Footages.

Sniper: Ghost Warrior

2010-10-25T12:42:00.000-07:00

Boom Headshot a really interesting Game but not the first one to do this..

Team Fortress 2 by the People, for the People

2010-10-24T06:30:00.000-07:00

Last month Valve issued a sizeable update to its popular team-based online shooter Team Fortress 2 called the Mann-Conomy. The odd title shouldn't divert your attention from the impressive results and interesting potential long-term consequences. Basically, the update added a microtransaction store to the game. It offered a variety of headgear, weapons, and other random items like paint buckets to players for a price. You didn't have to buy anything, but could spend $17.49 on a crocodile hat if you wanted to.

Maybe you already knew that. What you probably didn't know is how much the community is not only contributing, but profiting. Not only is Valve putting its own items up for sale on the in-game store, but it's allowing players to submit designs for approval. If they're good enough, Valve assigns appropriate statistics and a price and pushes it live, letting anyone who likes the look to make the purchase. Valve's not keeping all the profits; it's cutting out 25 percent and giving it directly to the creators.

So, should you be fortunate enough to get an item on the store, not only do you get to play around with items you created, but you get to directly profit from your passion for Valve's products. How much can be made? Well Valve just flew players out to its studio in Bellevue, Wash. and handed over checks. Steven Skidmore and Spencer Kern, amongst others, were given royalty checks for sums ranging from $39,000 to $47,000, and that's just for two weeks.

Silly hats for fun and profit.

"I was pretty flabbergasted," said Skidmore. "You don't really assume it would catch on that well. When it did go through and you see the success of it, it shows that this is really the future of gaming, putting the games in the hands of the community."

"When we got here we both estimated what we were going to get," said Kern, "and we were just blown away by how much we actually received. It's astounding to know that that many people took an interest in all these custom items coming out of the community. It's great to see that people actually want to have the community items and that they're not just an afterthought."

Of course the idea of a community driving a game's development and evolution isn't really something new. From modding to monitoring user feedback to contribute to ongoing updates, the player base has always played a part in how a game develops. It's just that in this case, you can make quite a bit of money doing it. The initial few might be the luckiest, though. Presumably, should the process of creating user items become popular enough, it might be difficult to get your item visibility, similar to the issues developers face while vying for attention on the cluttered App Store, though Valve is confident community feedback will bubble up the what's best

So what's the process like? The official instructions are up on Valve's site, and Robin Walker, lead designer on Team Fortress 2, offered up some additional details about how the approval process works.

"Right now the process is we look through all the submissions that come in, the artists and the TF team look at those submissions and decide the ones that make the most sense, fit the style the best, and so on and we put them in the game," Walker said. "Our goal would be to try and push out some new ones every couple of weeks. Right now we're sort of not in a place where we can do that as fast as we'd like, so one of the things we're investing in heavily now in response to the Mann-Conomy update's success are much better tools to allow these guys to get their stuff into the game. Allow them to do things like ship their own updates and do iterations on their versions, get stats on where their items are being bought the most and who likes them, and be able to build a channel direct to their customers so they can find out why they like some of the choices and why they don't like them so they can get a better sense of what they should do next time around."
Even though Valve is currently assigning statistical benefits to the items, the idea is for the community to take over aspects of that as well. Walker said there are a lot of great ideas out there and Valve is working to try and facilitate cooperation. That being said, There are many potential pitfalls to the process, something Valve's managing director Gabe Newell elaborated on.

"If you sell levels, there's a negative externality of that which is you fracture your community around ownership of the level," Newell said. "How can you reward people for creating a level without fracturing the community? One example of an idea, not necessarily one we'll implement, would be that people could buy a badge or some other piece of affinity appearance-altering merchandise that say 'I really like this level,' and that's the way the level designer gets compensated. And someone who has that affinity object gets advantages or distinctions when playing on that level. Coming up with solutions like that is coming up with the designer of these kinds of frameworks. How do you build a system where the community can maximize its contributions to the shared experience."

Considering how confident Valve is that this type of player-driven microtransaction market is the way to go, how the company will prevent Team Fortress 2 from veering into total anarchy is a point of interest. According to Robin Walker, that's something that again will be monitored by the community.

Clearly the Heavy is excited. Also, on fire.

"Some of the things we've shipped in the past have in a couple cases been deliberate data-gathering on our part to find out are we crazy here," Walker said. "The community itself has a good understanding of what's good and what's bad and to some extent the system here is the ultimate in connecting the community feedback system to the content being released."

Gabe Newell added, "Even down to the level of individual items there's now there's way more opportunity to the community to signal 'this is cool' and 'this is lame.' I know the five people that were involved in this first release are incredibly interested now in how they can build on this success. They're going to be very responsive to what they see, in terms of people purchasing stuff and people talking about it, they're going to look at that in a very fine-grained way and get information back pretty quickly, 'Oh I correctly interpreted what people are saying' or 'Oh, actually they don't want more alligator stuff.'"

One question dangling off the end of this issue is: now that Valve considers the system a success, how widespread will it be throughout other Valve products?

"We tend not to, somewhat annoyingly to some of our customers, not do the thing we did before over and over again in exactly the same say," Newell said. "It's hard to predict how we'll use this new information. As I'm reminded of on an almost daily basis, we seemed to be really excited about that episodic thing with [Half-Life 2] Episode One and Episode Two, and then we've gone completely radio silent subsequently. Sometimes it's even dangerous for us to predict what we'll do next.

"We certainly recognize that this is very interesting, that we need to think about the implications of this for anything we do." According to Newell, that could include single-player or multiplayer experiences.

And since the Half-Life Episodes were brought up, we had to ask: any update on Episode 3? "Gabe opened the door and I'll shut it," Valve VP of Marketing Doug Lombardi said after a round of laughter.

World of Warcraft: Everyone Hates Their Class

2010-10-24T06:14:00.000-07:00

In past years, the World of Warcraft class panel at BlizzCon is where players would get a preview of the future of their characters. New talent trees and talents would be showcased at this panel for attendees to mull over. Not this year, though! With Cataclysm only a month and a half away, class changes and new talent trees are open and available to everyone, and future abilities have been playable on the beta for weeks.

So instead of holding the traditional class panel, the developers opened the floor to the public. For anyone who has seen the end of any previous year's class panel, the Q&A sections can be cringe-inducing. This year was no exception, and the hour-long session began with one player bringing up the hunter class and his perceived weaknesses. After the devs tried to give him what sounded to be a pretty legitimate answer, he basically called them wrong, and everyone booed at him. Later, someone tried to ask like fifteen longwinded questions and got booed too. Hunters and retribution Paladins voiced the most complaints by far, which reinforced all those stereotypes about the classes that have basically existed since launch.

Outside of these moments of terrible, some valuable class information was collected:

Hunters won't be getting any 'fun new melee enchantments' for their weapons. Sorry! Regarding the Hunter's minimum range -- the distance they have to stand before they can use their all-important ranged-weapons -- the developers don't see it as an unfair weakness when balanced against other classes, adding "You can shoot while moving while a mage can't channel while moving, so there's a tradeoff."

Paladin damage has shifted more towards the physical end of the spectrum lately as a response to the fact that holy damage, which was the Paladin's other main damage type, can't be resisted by normal means. The change in resources for Paladins from mana to holy power (more akin to Rogue energy) was intended to give paladins "more gameplay for their resource," with the devs also stating that mana simply didn't feel right for the class. The Consecration ability was also addressed, with the longer cooldown being explained; the class developers wanted Paladins to make a conscious decision to use the ability based on the situation, rather than use it whenever it was available.

The Rogue off-hand weapon mechanic might be considered for change in the future to give rogues a little more flexibility in their choice. As it stands, the fastest weapons are typically considered the best for the Rogue off-hand slot, and those are usually daggers. It was also acknowledged that the combat talent tree for Rogues could use some work, and that the developers intend for it to play similarly to the Mage's arcane tree.

When Druid ability Wild Mushroom was cited as lackluster by one of the attendees, a developer replied that he believed that most people simply didn't know how to use it properly yet. He said that using it at the spawn point of adds (extra enemies) during a boss fight made it one of the best methods of add-grabbing for Druid tanks.

Priests will be relying less on Power Word: Shield come Cataclysm, and developers expect Death Knight tanks to be more viable, but the other classes were hardly mentioned, if at all.

In more general terms, the developers ruled out a means to change class anytime soon, and have no plans to homogenize racial abilities.

NBA 2k11 PC Experience

2010-10-24T02:49:00.000-07:00

UTAH JAZZ VS CHICAGO BULLS

BOSTON CELTICS VS CHICAGO BULLS

LA LAKERS VS CHICAGO BULLS

It's a start for me to post my PC game experiences on this blog. Playing NBA 2k11 on PC with MJ was really a fantastic experience.

The Good, Bad & Ugly (Gaming)

2010-06-22T00:50:00.000-07:00

One week ago, I wrote that the theme of E3 2010 would be Innovation. I was wrong. The real theme was Schadenfreude, in every possible way.

It was slamming motion control on the Xbox and PS3 non-stop for a year, then finding one game that genuinely sold its potential. It was professional PS3 basher Gabe Newell stepping out on Sony's stage and thanking people for not punching him in the face. It was Shigeru Miyamoto unable to get a Wiimote to work live in front of a thousand chuckling people, and then blowing those same people away with the 3DS.

And more: It was admitting Treyarch may have stepped up to step into Infinity Ward's size-12 shoes. It was Dave Jaffe eating years of flat-out denials to unveil a high-def Twisted Metal. It was Nintendo passing out sacks of candy after years of broccoli. It was getting excited for Gears of War multiplayer again. It was Microsoft ignoring XBLA at its own press briefing, then unveiling an evolved Xbox. It was the PSP getting a ton of love and a new mascot, two years after many wrote it off. It was Epic producer Tanya Jessen dropping the s-bomb for Bulletstorm and Dead Space 2 scaring the dicks off people, and even giving Scribblenauts another chance. It was Grand Theft Auto V, Milo, the Vitality Sensor, Wii HD, The Last Guardian, Pikmin 3 and Resistance 3 all pulling no-shows and nobody even minding too much, because there was so much Awesome to wrap your brain around.

It has never been so satisfying for so many people to be proven so wrong.

Who Won E3 2010?

WTF?: Pay attention, future generations. This is how you launch a major, if not revolutionary piece of electronics hardware: give it a silly (if copyright-friendly) name, surround it with French Canadian performance artists, then make every journalist covering the premiere event surrender their dignity by forcing them wear white ponchos with gimmick light-up shoulder pads, just to build up some extra good will. They even made Tomonobu Itagaki wear one That should've been somebody's ass right there.

I've paid to see Cirque du Soliel on several occasions and strange things happen with regularity at a typical E3, but "The Natal Experience as imagined by Cirque du Soliel" will be spoken of with derisive laughter and counted on "Worst Ever E3 Gaffes" lists for years to come. Man, I wish I'd been in on that meeting. "I've got it... ponchos! We'll make the whole presentation look just a few hoods shy of a backwoods meet-and-greet and have a jungle tribe pretend we've introduced them to fire! Oh! Oh! And we'll sneak into journalists' hotel rooms while they're on the show floor and put creepy Kinect ads on their bathroom mirrors!" Then Microsoft Entertainment Division President Robbie Bach and CEO James Allard stand up and say, in unison, "We quit." The End.

Most Awesome Moment: Microsoft brought Cirque du Soleil. Sony brought Kevin Butler. Advantage: Sony. While KB didn't host the entire event - hard to picture Jack Tretton giving that up - he did make an unannounced walk-on to take over from Peter Dille just as Sony's conference started dragging, and then he got a little something off his chest . Mr. Butler laid it down in less than four minutes. Walk-off homers and headshots. Drifting a turn at 100 mph and boss battles with a 600 ft. tall Greek god who may or may not be your father. A ridiculously huge TV in a tiny one-room apartment. Staying up 'til 3:00 a.m. to earn a trophy that isn't real. But IS. This is gaming.

Amen, KB. Swing by my house and I'll officially knight you with my Buster Sword.

Biggest Coup: Microsoft's exclusive deal with ESPN - and making that content free to Gold members - is nothing short of huge, and another big step towards the MS vision of convergence. A few people at IGN are already thinking of cancelling their cable packages. Special kudos to SportsCenter's Josh Elliot and Trey Wingo for showing up to show everybody how on-stage banter is done, and for taunting the Lakers mere yards away from Staples Center, where 19,000 screaming Lakers fans in playoff berserker mode waited to tear them to humorous shreds.

Genre to Watch: Oh yes, shooters were well represented, even over-represented, but turn your attention to all the driving games. You get a lot of overlap in all that gunplay, but the driving games this year are showing a lot more diversity... Joy Ride's causal kart racer, Need For Speed's arcade asphalt-ripper, Driver: San Francisco's car-hopping tactical fantasy, Twisted Metal's darker, flaming chainsaw fantasy, and big daddies Forza 4 and Gran Turismo 5's photo-real simulators. It's going to be a very good year for anyone who likes to burn rubber.

Dropped Kinections: After all the hype, it wouldn't be fair to say Kinect and Move hit with a thud, but they sure didn't nail the landing. Nobody's disputing the technology works, though maybe it's got a case of the hiccups. Rumors persist that Kinect has trouble tracking subjects who are sitting down; Microsoft reps insist you can "use" Kinect while seated, but it's unclear if "use" means motion control, voice control, or both. Regardless, of all the Kinect features demoed at Microsoft's conference, the coolest were all non-game related. Unless you count the insultingly canned "Girls can use it too, tee hee!" video phone feature as demoed by Strawberry Shortcake and Rainbow Brite.

Or maybe you heard the groans when Move was priced at a minimum $80 entry point. Sony released a back-pedaling statement days later pointing out you could just use half a Dualshock and save yourself thirty bucks on the navigation control. Why, thank you, Sony, for telling us half your new hardware is unnecessary. Of course, Microsoft didn't even price Kinect, the more sophisticated piece of technology.

That's not a cause for concern, right?

Best Reasons to Get Kinect or Move: That said, I laid out my ground rules for a good core Kinect/Move game a week ago, and a couple of titles at E3 actually met them. Child of Eden from Rez creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi lets you play Kinect like you're conducting a symphony, instead of jumping and leaning and kicking like a maniac, and the result is magical. Over on the Move, Sorcerer is the Harry Potter game Harry Potter fans have wanted since they first enrolled in Hogwarts. I've been talking about motion-wanding for years, and Sony looks to be the one who will finally make it happen. Shame, Nintendo. Shame. And if you're skeptical about the Harmonix Kinect title Dance Central, rest assured. Several IGN editors who would normally never be caught dead dancing in front of a television had to be dragged away from the thing.

So, anyone else want to make a cool Kinect/Move game? Anyone?

I Expect You to Die, Mr. Bond: The return of GoldenEye is major. Popular shooters on Nintendo platforms are rare, but this one's the gold standard of shooters on any platform, and a contender for best motion control shooter in a suddenly crowded field. Oh, I'm sure somebody's willing to spend an extra $80 to play SOCOM 4 with Move, but I'm also sure they're in the minority.

The Matrix is All Around You: While body-swapping in the middle of a firefight for Square Enix's Mindjack opens up intriguing possibilities, I'm not feeling it nearly as much as the Shift feature in Ubisoft's Driver: San Francisco. Here's an entirely new way to play a driving game: pause it, leave your car, and instantly hop into any other car in range. That range expands as you level up, until it encompasses the entire city. So you can, say, shift out of a pursuit car, drop into an 18-wheeler a mile up the road, and steer into a head-on collision with the person you're chasing. That's how an Agent of the System rolls, baby.

Miss Manners: Kinectimals is cute enough to send weaker men into diabetic shock, but it's so much more insidious than that. Sure, I'll take a cute baby tiger named Skittles if I can order him to maim and devour my enemies, but lacking that, I'm going to have some fun with my furry little homunculus. Except you can't. See, you call out names until the Kinectimal you're adopting wiggles its ears in approval... meaning it can reject names you come up with. So after emptying your wallet to get an Xbox, a Kinect, and the game, you can't even name your new friend Hitler or Whorebags or [CENSORED]-Slurp. Way to suck the fun out of life, Microsoft.

(Don't Call Them) The Comeback Kid: The word "momentum" was used at least five or six times during the Sony conference. I can't honestly say they picked up any new momentum coming out of E3, but they didn't lose any, and after years of Microsoft sticking it to them by breaking former Sony exclusives, they did manage to get a little of their own back. Valve gave them a great big sloppy wet kiss for all the mean things they've said over the years with Steamworks support for Portal 2, which implies (unconfirmed) exclusive content. More implicit were exclusive content deals with EA, including special edition Medal of Honor and Dead Space 2 packages with Medal of Honor: Frontline and (Move-enabled) Dead Space: Extraction bundled in, respectively. An exclusive multiplayer beta for Assassin's Creed Brotherhood pretty much sealed the deal. It's not Epic suddenly taking Gears of War 3 multi-platform, but it's a start. Best of all, nobody pushed the Insomniac defection in their face.

Though it has to be said, Jack Tretton himself announced to the world that people play a PS2 more often than a PS3, four years into the newer console's life cycle. That's a bit sad. It's also why you'll never, ever see backwards compatibility on the PS3. Sony just can't give up that pipe.

And I Care Because...?: Anybody else get the feeling Sony's regretting not charging for premium PSN memberships, and then bragging about not charging for premium memberships for so long? The PlayStation Plus add-on to the PSN, running at $50 a year, is promising "hundreds of dollars' of products" and exclusive content (that you lose if your subscription lapses), which might be worth hundreds of dollars to somebody who isn't me. Early access to betas sounds nice, but at least those come with a full game like Crackdown or Halo 3: ODST when Microsoft does it. Even less appealing is EA's Gun Club, which promises the exact same thing. Who to join first? How about neither, because I'm expecting this weak-tea trend to quietly evaporate before E3 2011.

The Sound of Cruel, Cruel Laughter: There are two games I didn't see enough of, but what I did see left me giggling like a happy little maniac. Metal Gear Solid: Rising's Zan-Datsu cut-what-you-will gameplay already has me planning how to ginsu everything in sight. But for sheer badassery, I direct you to the trailer for Tomonobu Itagaki's first Tecmo-free project, Devil's Third. Remember what Itagaki did for edged weaponry in Ninja Gaiden? Now he's adding firearms and explosives. Katanas and mini-guns and bazookas, oh my. I can't wait to take out wall-running ninja with a rocket launcher. That should be one of my rights as an American.

Don't Judge Me!: As if chainsawing your way through the zombie apocalypse wasn't enough fun, I saw a demo where Dead Rising 2 protagonist Chuck Greene ditched his motorsport leathers for a cute sports bra and Daisy Dukes right before braining more undead with a baseball bat. SO much hotter than the cocktail dresses Frank "I'm a Journalist!" Black was stuck with.

Financial Crysis: Okay, what the hell is with those guys at Crytek? I appreciate their commitment to making the best looking games in existence, and they're single handedly the best argument for 3D console gaming thus far, but if you thought Crysis had a high price point to get the full effect, stay tuned. You had to shell out for a boss PC rig to run the first game properly. You're obligated to purchase a 3D LCD television (from Sony, who makes them) and glasses to appreciate Crysis 2's stereoscopic violence. Presumably, you'll have to buy an entirely new house for Crysis 3.

All the Rage: Sorry, Sony, but the best graphics aren't on the PlayStation 3 anymore. Not only is id's RAGE gob-smacking gorgeous, but there are no reused textures in the entire environment. It's all hand sculpted and hand painted. Everywhere you go, wherever you turn, you will see something new. That's Gamer Heaven in a nutshell. I wish Fallout looked this good... maybe if I squint a bit, I can pretend this is Fallout, yes?

Shooter of Shooters: Killzone 3 is Killzone 2 with jetpacks. Rage is pretty and Bulletstorm funny. Ghost Recon: Future Soldier's aggro-stealth amuses and Halo in Space makes me giddy, but it's the Medal of Honor reboot that looks the most intense, with Call of Duty 4's campaign and Battlefield: Bad Company 2's class-based multiplayer, with CoD killstreaks. If Treyarch doesn't deliver on Call of Duty: Black Ops, Medal of Honor will be the new Modern Warfare. Then Activision investors circle Bobby Kotick's mansion with torches and pitchforks.

I Should Be More Excited : So, Heroes On the Move. What could be more natural than a mash-up of Insomniac characters and Naughty Dog characters? Hell, the first Ratchet & Clank game was built on a Jak & Daxter engine. Yet there they all were, just sorta standing around, doing... what? Where's the morph-o-rays? Where's the insanity? Wake me up when they demo the Rainbow Afronator.

WANT: Portal 2. Yes. Yes. Yes. You Monster.

The Loser: Original games. Towards the end of Day One, I started counting the number of non-sequel, non-licensed, non-franchise games made for core gamers. Six. Rage, Bulletstorm, Child of Eden (which could easily be called Rez 2), Mindjack, Sorcerer and Devil's Third. If I missed any, it's because I couldn't see them through all the numbers. C'mon. I like well-done sequels that improve on the original, but let's see something new, eh?

The Winner: There's a lot of criteria you could apply to get the result you want. The system with the most games I personally want to play? That's Xbox. Best moments? Sony got me on my feet five times. But if the Electronic Entertainment Expo is about whipping gamers into a rabid frenzy over what's coming in the next twelve months, hands down, this E3 belonged to Nintendo and no other.

A few Nintendaddicts called me out for calling them the underdog in my Nintendo conference write-up , but they mistook the context. Going into this E3, all eyes were on Microsoft's Kinect and PlayStation's Move. Anything else was afterthought. Then those challengers arrived and fumbled under the weight of way, way too many dance games, mini-games, exercise games... in other words, they pulled straight from a hyper-myopic version of the Nintendo playbook, while Nintendo showed up with an entirely different playbook. Microsoft touted Kinectimals. Nintendo debuted The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Sony offered Heroes On the Move. Wii rearmed GoldenEye.

The list of old friends coming back after extended absences was nothing short of astounding, every smile bigger than the last. I've heard complaints it's merely a rehash of old properties, but those people must have trouble counting. By my reckoning, it's two years between Halo games, Gears of War games, Killzone games; Call of Duty, Need for Speed, and Assassin's Creed only went one year between installments. It's been twenty years since Kid Icarus flew in a game of his own, fourteen since we last went to Donkey Kong Country and four since Kirby ate a thing. They're due. Overdue, really.

That would've been enough. But Nintendo also delivered new hardware of its own. It handles better, with a new analog stick. It's a new experience - mobile, glasses-free 3D gaming - that doesn't lock out all your old 2D games. And then more old friends: Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, one of the greatest games ever made, a Pilotwings sequel, Starfox 64, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Animal Crossings, a collection from the 8-bit era, all re-mastered for the 3DS and developers from Hideo Kojima to Motohide "Okami" Eshiro talking how excited they are to make new games for the platform. It even addresses the growing threat of the iPhone by adding motion control and a gyroscope, and while deals clearly aren't in place to put 3D movies on the 3DS quite yet, incoming announcements were strongly hinted at.

They didn't ignore the casual players - nor should they - but it was as if Nintendo suddenly remembered their core fans, and heard them, and responded. This year has people talking about dusting off their Wiis for the first time in a long time, and I'm one of them. I want to play Epic Mickey and Kirby's Epic Yarn and GoldenEye multiplayer into the wee hours, just like we used to.

Here at E3 2010, Nintendo stood up proud and reminded a generation of gamers why they became gamers. They win. We win.

Patapon 3 Preview

2010-06-22T00:49:00.000-07:00

Let's get this out of the way up front: it looks like I've been wasting my life. I'm nearing the 75-hour mark in my Patapon 2 save, and it looks like that data won't carry over to Patapon 3. I started a new game and Patapon 3 didn't ask me if I had played before and if it could load my old save like the game did in Patapon 2.

Luckily, the game is packed with awesomeness, so I really don't care.

We're going to need a bigger spear.

If you've never seen a Patapon title before, you're missing a franchise that won PSP Game of the Year back to back. You use the PSP face buttons to pound out four-beat songs that make your one-eyed troops march, attack, jump and party. You take the archers, spear throwers and more up against massive monsters, collect loot, and evolve your team.

Patapon 3 keeps all of that. Kind of. When I started a new game, I needed to choose what type of hero I would be. That's right; what type of hero I would be. Previous Patapons have cast you as the army's God, but this game looks like it's casting you as one character. Yeah, you still have a squad with you, but you choose this one masked hero who will be taller than normal Patapons, but you're the one beating the drum. You're not some slick omnipresence.

This is definitely a change, but it makes sense because of the way Patapon is setup; this game is meant to be played with your friends. You can play by yourself if you like, but the game totally encourages you to get together with players. When you go to set out on a mission, it'll ask you if you want to have other people join you and if you want to do it locally via ad-hoc or connect to the Internet and play via Infrastructure. There's even a competitive mode that allows for four-on-four battles.

Yay, online play!

Look at all the loots!

The story here is a bit different than what we've seen before, too. Rather than trying to get to Earthend, this time the game opens with the tribe turned to stone and in front of a massive treasure chest. It seems the Patapons finished the bridge they began working on at the end of the game, opened this chest, and unleashed seven evil spirits. After picking my hero, I spent the first level reviving the team via my drums.

I've put a ton of time into Patapon over the years, and I'm prepared to do it all over again this fall with Patapon 3. This one has more than 80 missions that range from hunting to escort and more than 20 new bosses. It also has my full attention, so keep checking IGN for more news on it.

How to Score an iPhone 4

2010-06-22T00:47:00.000-07:00

After Apple set company records for first day pre-orders, selling over 600,000 in the first 24 hours, the iPhone 4 is expected to be one highly sought after device. Though it launches this week, Apple is delaying shipment of new pre-orders into the second week of July and beyond.

For those who weren't fortunate enough to have secured a pre-order before shipments started getting delayed, but want to get their mitts on Apple's latest smartphone, IGN has you covered.

Below we've listed some of the most basic ways to track down an iPhone 4 on or soon after launch day.

Brave the Lines
If you've got the time, the stamina, and the sheer mental willpower to wake up at the crack of dawn and get in line, you could walk out of a retail store with an iPhone 4 on launch day.

In addition to Apple Store locations, Best Buy, Walmart, and Radioshack will all be carrying the iPhone 4 on June 24. Be forewarned, however; these stores are expected to be carrying only limited supplies, and customers who have reserved or pre-purchased the handset will be given priority. Your success using this method will vary largely by area and stock, and there are no guarantees.

Go Online
If you just can't live with the uncertainty of waiting in line, more enterprising shoppers will be happy to sell you their hard-won iPhone 4s, with a sizable markup of course.

As with any high-profile electronic, eBay, Craigslist, and other online resale websites will be flooded with listings for the iPhone 4. Depending on demand, asking prices of the device could easily double. Moreover, amongst the listings there are bound to be plenty of false claims and scammers, so shop wisely.

Pre-Orders, Round 2
If all else fails, you can always get an iPhone the patient way -- pre-order or reservation. Sure it'll take longer, but you're guaranteed to get one, and it won't cost you extra. Apple is already taking pre-orders for their second shipment of phones, due in stores July 14. Retail partners like Best Buy and Walmart are likely to see their stocks refilled around the same time.

Be sure to check out our Ultimate iPhone 4 Guide for the full details on the hardware and data plans, and stay tuned to IGN Gear for all the latest in tech.

3DS For All by March 2011

2010-06-22T00:45:00.000-07:00

The arrival of Nintendo's 3DS could be sooner than we hoped as Reggie Fils-Aime revealed that the company are looking to release the handheld in all major territories by March next year.

Quite easily the star of last week's E3, the 3DS wowed with its no-glasses 3D display and strong support from Nintendo and third-party publishers – leaving many wondering when they could get their hands on the device and how much cash they'd have to part with to do so.

"The reason we haven't announced a launch date or pricing is that, first, we wanted to get reaction here," Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime told Industry Gamers, "Secondly, we'll be making individual market decisions in terms of what's happening in Japan, what's happening in the Americas, what's happening in Europe. The one thing, for sure, is that we will launch in all of our major markets by March 31, 2011."

We've reached out to Nintendo to confirm the date, and while we wait for word back check out our 3DS Launch Center for all last week's news, demo impressions and videos of the device.

Transformers 3 Is The End

2010-06-11T02:57:00.000-07:00

Whatever Paramount decides to do with their cash cow Transformers franchise, one thing is for sure: Michael Bay's third film will be an end to the story he set out to tell.

"This one really builds to a final crescendo," Bay told USA Today. "It's not three multiple endings... As a trilogy, it really ends. [The franchise] could be rebooted again, but I think it has a really killer ending."

The director also revealed who the villain is. Ready? It's Shockwave, the one-eyed overseer of Cybertron whose toy turned into a wicked purple laser canon thing.

The man himself -- Shockwave

As for the plot? "The new film features Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) taking his first tenuous steps into adulthood while remaining a reluctant human ally of Optimus Prime." (It's better than saving the world with a gym sock full of Matrix glitter while racist robots look on...)

Through this story, a mystery of sorts emerges, as TF3 centers around the "space race between Russia and the U.S.", while implying that the Transformers played a hidden role in mankind's first exploration of the galaxy. Does that mean that we might get to see Astrotrain in live-action form?

And fanboys, try not to faint - but yes, despite initial reluctance on Bay's part, Transformers 3D is happening.

Optimus Prime and his fellow Autobots will roll out in 3D July 1, 2011.

source: http://movies.ign.com/articles/109/1096422p1.html

XCOM Preview

2010-06-11T02:28:00.000-07:00

FBI special agent William Carter pulls up, stopping his car in the picturesque, tree-lined suburban street. His surroundings are the very vision of archetypal 1950s America – modern houses, well-kept lawns and white picket fences. But something isn't right. The scene seems frozen, eerily quiet. There's no activity in the streets. No kids playing or selling lemonade. No guys working on their cars in their driveway. Something terrible lurks beneath this silence.

Carter pulls out his map, and checks his destination. The distress call intercepted by XCOM (or Extraterrestrial Combat Unit) came from a house in the area, so that's where Carter and his two offsiders are headed. They begin making their way down the road, but a shout for help rings out from a nearby house, and Carter takes off, following a slimy black trail that coats the ground. It's too late. One of the inhabitants of the house is lying face-down, covered in black goo. It's all over for him, but Carter takes a photograph, which he'll take back to the XCOM Ops team to help their research.

Gathering samples, evidence and information will be crucial to succeeding in this reboot of the XCOM series, as the enemies you'll face aren't the Greys you might expect, but an array of utterly alien life forms whose actions and motives simply aren't signposted the way enemies in first person shooters often are. In this game, shooting first and asking questions later won't always be a wise option.

Check out the XCOM E3 2010 trailer!

Moving on, we glimpse our first enemy in action at the gruesome scene of a car crash, where a number of quivering black blobs are moving across a lawn and into a house. Thankfully, Carter and his crew are equipped to deal with them. They've come across the blobs before, and for this mission are packing equipment that can take them down. In this case, that's a standard issue shotgun, a specially developed lightning gun and the 'Blobatov' – a glass grenade with black goo swashing about inside it, which functions very much like a Molotov cocktail.

As they reach the house a man stumbles out, spewing black muck all over the ground before collapsing. Inside, chaos reigns, with blobs moving on every surface, pulsing with a vicious sense of purpose, pursuing anything that moves. One leaps up onto one of Carter's back-up agents, tendrils trying to whip around his neck as he desperately fights to hold it off. A blast from the shotgun sends it flying.

In fact, the shotgun seems to do decent damage to these schizophrenic beasts. A few blasts exposes their bulbous core, which can then be shot to finish them off. It's soon clear, however, that there are too many of them, and Carter starts lobbing Blobatovs. Blazing fires soon burn throughout the house, the sound of the flames interspersed with cries of terror, as well as the skittering chitters and unholy roars of the blobs themselves. A few more shotgun blasts help finish the first wave off, but one agent is now down... and they keep coming.

By this stage the once-pristine room with its clean, modern 50s design and rough stone feature walls is covered in goo and badly charred. Time to bring out the big guns. Carter switches to his lightning gun, which can simultaneously fry several blobs at a time thanks to its wide area of attack. It makes short work of the remaining goo-balls in the living area, allowing the team to get to a woman trapped upstairs.

After rescuing the civilian and coming back downstairs, an explosion rocks the house, shattering the windows, sending things clattering to the ground and leaving the player's ears ringing and his vision red. Looking outside, a monolith - the Titan - hovers in the air: its clean, precise lines unreadable, humming with energy. Carter quickly snaps a photo of it as it reconfigures itself into two concentric circles sitting in the air like a giant eye. It's impossible to know what the Titan will do and what it's capable of, and after the organic oozing nightmare that was the blobs, something this utterly foreign and high tech comes as a shock.

The Titan will melt your face off. And the rest of your body.

It seems to draw in energy from its surroundings, sucking fragments of reality itself in towards its core, while a roaring, rushing sound fills the air. Carter's remaining agent steps out from the safety of the house to fire off a few rounds. Big mistake – it fires a ball of matter into the ground, which expands, energy bursting from its seams as it rips him apart before exploding.

There's only one thing for it – getting the hell out there. In XCOM, when you want to withdraw, you've got to make it back to your car, and Carter makes a beeline for it, pausing to turn and fire as he goes, not that the shots seem to have any effect. The Titan tracks him down the street, buzzing and crackling with energy, a vortex of force surrounding it. It attacks, just as Carter reaches his car... Whether Carter makes it out alive will be entirely up to the player. XCOM will very much be a game where risk must be weighed against reward. Unlike most shooters, it's entirely possible to bail out of a mission at the first sign of trouble. In fact, this is a shooter where running away is a perfectly legitimate strategy – as long as you've gathered some evidence to take back to XCOM's secret base.

It will be learning about each threat that will allow you to overcome it, and the idea is that players will regularly come into contact with foes that are so unknowable at first that facing them would be suicide. Better to find out more about what makes them tick and face them later, when you're better equipped. This cycle of combat following discovery should give XCOM a different rhythm than most shooters, and tie nicely into the gradual unravelling of the mystery at the heart of the game - just who is this alien threat and what the hell is going on?

Importantly, many of the choices players make in XCOM will have consequences. Take the two offsiders that were lost during the demo sequence – from what 2K Marin has told us, these won't be faceless, replaceable grunts, but individuals with distinct traits. As in the original XCOM game, where players grew attached to their men, losing one in this game will be a true blow. To what extent you'll be able to command them in the field remains to be seen, however. We certainly didn't see anything along those lines in the demo, and right now 2K Marin isn't ready to talk about it further.

Fans of the original game, however, can rest easy in the knowledge that this isn't the only element being brought back. The 2K Marin team has a deep respect for Enemy Unknown, and see retaining core aspects of that title as imperative to its mission. As mentioned earlier, the base of operations returns, but instead of a top-down view where new facilities are slotted into place by the player, the operations centre will be navigated in first person, and it's impressively realised. From offices where staff monitor the airwaves for mysterious reports to a large warehouse space where an artefact - the artefact, really, as this is the find that led to the formation of XCOM – is being examined, it promises to be an interesting space to return to between missions.

Meet Angela Weaver, XCOM's Executive Intelligence Officer. A woman in a position of power in the 50s? What is this, bizarre-o-world?

Of course, we've only seen the base on a superficial level. We've visited Mal, XCOM's Chief Engineer and weapons specialist, to find out what new weapon he's cooked up to fight the alien menace, and we've seen the huge map of America, which is where missions that are currently available are posted. What we haven't seen is how all this will be linked with strategic options for the player. We know the base will expand as the game progresses, but we don't know how much control the player will have over that expansion, and whether the player will be able to spend resources hiring different staff members then assigning them to research/investigate various things, as in the original.

We do know, however, that different missions will offer different rewards. Some will be a hunt for Elerium – the substance that powers the alien technology, some will be for cash and some will be research-focused, while still others may simply be to rescue civilians and thus keep the people on your side. Deciding which missions to undertake will be one of the primary choices a player makes, and the missions available will be dynamic, so choosing one mission may see other missions close off by the time you return to base.

America in the 1950s: a time of innocence, purity and sentient goo.
Also of natty suspenders.

In line with the theme of choice, missions will be open-ended. In the sequence we saw the player had an entire neighbourhood to explore. The main objective was set, but beyond that Carter was free to respond to other events as they occurred. This won't be a game with linear, highly scripted missions. As stated before, the end point of a mission is up to the player, while scripted events will be placed dynamically. We imagine that there'll be a big pool the game can draw from, with encounters popping up based on a few factors, such as the level of technology the player has and the decisions they've made up until that point.

It's an enthralling prospect, and we're excited to see the game in full. 2K Marin may just be able to satisfy the old school fans and the expectations of players weaned on modern shooters alike. And just as BioShock - the series 2K Marin is best known for - presented a world unique to videogames, so too will XCOM. Transplanting the series to the 50s has given the team a rich and quite iconic world to draw from, but by embracing the mythology of the American Dream while simultaneously side-stepping the cliches of alien invasions, XCOM is forging its own path.

Source: http://pc.ign.com/articles/109/1096051p2.html

How to Unlock Monster Hunter Missions in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

2010-06-09T22:23:00.000-07:00

If you're one of those dedicated Kojima fans, chances are that you've picked up Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, the latest chapter in the seemingly never ending saga of Metal Gear. While you're knocking bad guys out and building your own army, you might start wondering "Where the hell are all the Monster Hunter levels I heard about."

Well, they're here, but getting to them takes a bit of work.

If you missed it the first time around, Konami announced a few months ago that it was partnering with Capcom to put some of the Monster Hunter monsters into Peace Walker so that Snake could test his skills. However, if you were just casually playing through Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, you could easily miss these gems.

The first piece of the puzzle is that you have to listen to every one of Chico's audio briefings. To do this, pick a mission, select "Briefing Files" before deploying, and then move to the Chico file library. Listen to each one of these tapes – or at least use the circle button and click through every line of dialogue so that he exclamation icon marking it new disappears.

Now that you've listened to Chico ramble on and on about monsters, head over to Extra Ops and go out on [029] Item Capture. This is a seemingly simple mission. Go in, take care of the three guards, and blow up the item crate. However, there's more to it than that if you want Capcom's content.

After you blow up the crate, collect the items but do not head to the extraction point. Instead, head south to the beach at Playa del Alba. When you enter, take a left and head down the dock. Miller will radio in that there's a "weird looking animal" over there.

Run down the dock, and you'll meet Trenya, a talking cat from the Monster Hunter universe. Snake and the kitty will make some perrrrrfect puns, and the mission will end.

Meow.

Scroll to the end (or what should be the end) of your Extra Ops, and you'll now find [121] Hunting Quest: Rathalos. This is your very first Monster Hunter quest. Hooray. If you can beat this flying beast, you'll unlock extra quests to go forth and conquer.

Can a Snake beat a dragon? Watch our video to find out.

Are you having trouble finding other stuff in Peace Walker? What do you think of the Monster Hunter content? Let us know in the comments below

Sprint EVO 4G vs. iPhone 4

2010-06-09T22:18:00.000-07:00

How do Apple and HTC's smartphone juggernauts compare?

While the RIM's Blackberry OS holds the crown for United States smartphone dominance, Apple's iPhone ranks second, and Android is quickly rising in the ranks. As Google's Android mobile platform continues to grow in popularity, so does the range of alluring smartphone hardware that runs it, which with every passing iteration takes further aim on the iPhone juggernaut.

Earlier this year Google's Nexus One was introduced as a viable competitor to the iPhone 3GS, and now HTC's Evo 4G will go toe-to-toe with Apple's newly introduced iPhone 4. Each with powerful new technologies and their own unique feature-sets, the iPhone 4 and HTC Evo 4G will battle for the hearts, minds, and cash of consumers well into the holiday season. To give you a better sense of how these two mobile giants match up, we've constructed a rundown of the software, hardware, pricing, and technical specifications of each.

Design
In their latest iteration, Apple has stuck to the tried and true layout of the iPhone, while making it smaller than its predecessor. Clocking in at 4.8 ounces and measuring .37" thick, 2.3" wide, and 4.5" tall, the new iPhone is thin and sleek. Apple's designers have also gone a more angular route, switching the old iPhone's rounded back for something completely flat and made from the same aluminosilicate glass material as the front panel. The new design aesthetic is topped off with a stainless steel border around the entire device.

The EVO 4G, meanwhile, opts for screen real-estate over compactness. Standing at 4.8" tall, 2.6" wide, and .5" thick, with a screen that takes up nearly the entire front of the device, the EVO is big - relatively speaking. And unlike the iPhone, it features a rounded back with softer edges, a protruding camera lens, as well as a built-in stand for propping the device up on surfaces.

Hardware Features
Often criticized for lagging behind in terms of sheer features, Apple has largely managed to bring the iPhone up-to-speed with their new model. A front-facing camera has finally been added, along with HD video recording capabilities. Apple claims that the resolution of their new screen exceeds the capabilities of the human eye, making individual pixels invisible, while the addition of a Wii MotionPlus-style gyroscope opens a new realm of possibilities for App developers.

Watch IGN's iPhone 4 Hands-On
Here are the device's most notable features:

3.5" Touch-screen LCD IPS display, 960 x 640 resolution
5 Megapixel rear camera, VGA front facing camera
720p HD video recording
A4 Processor
Battery life: 7 hours of 3G talk time
3G and 802.11n Wi-Fi networking
Cellular Signals: Quadband GSM, pentaband HSPA
Bluetooth, GPS, Digital compass, MicroSIM
Proximity sensor, Light sensor, Accelerometer, Gyroscope
Up to 32GB of storage

And just when it seems like manufacturers couldn't cram more stuff into a device as small as a smartphone, the EVO 4G proves there's always space for more with a seemingly endless list of features. This is the U.S.'s first 4G capable phone, and add WiMAX support as well as the ability to convert 3G or 4G signals into your own personal mobile Wi-Fi network and you've got a phone unlike anything else out there. Oh, and just in case you feel like it, you can use the HDMI output to watch things on the big screen.

IGN's HTC Evo 4G Unboxing Video

Here's the Evo 4G's list of features:

4.3" Touch-screen TFT LCD display, 800 x 480 resolution
8 Megapixel rear camera, 1.3 Megapixel front facing camera
720p HD video recording
1GHz Snapdragon processor
Battery life: 6 hours talk time
4G, WiMAX, and 802.11b/g Wi-Fi networking
Cellular Signals: CDMA, EV-DO Rev. A, WiMAX
Bluetooth, GPS, Micro SD support, Digital Compass
HDMI output
Proximity sensor, Accelerometer
8 GB included (up to 32 GB via Micro SD)
Built-in Sprint Overdrive Mobile Hotspot

Software Features
Of course, if the advent of smartphones has taught us anything, it's that a device lives or dies based on the versatility of its platform. Apple iOS (formerly known as iPhone OS 4.0) finally brings multitasking to the iPhone. iPhone 4 owners will also be able to take advantage of FaceTime, a video chat program that lets you talk with other iPhone owners - but the app can only be used while on a Wi-Fi network. iMovie, Apple's video-editing program, is also making it's way to the iPhone 4, letting you edit movies on-the-go and upload them to the web at full 720p resolution.

The EVO is backed by the robust Android 2.1 platform, running HTC's custom UI called 'Sense'. The EVO's video chat app (called 'Qik') lets you talk with other EVO owners over 3G, 4G, and Wi-Fi networks, or you can even set up a live stream of your video on the web. Setting up a local Wi-Fi network, via the EVO's Overdrive, is done through Sprint's Mobile Hotspot app.

Pricing
The EVO is available from Sprint right now for $199 if you sign up for a two-year contract, Premium Data plan, and after a $100 mail-in rebate. Sprint's plans range from $69.99 for unlimited data and 450 anytime minutes, up to $189.99 for an unlimited family plan that includes two lines. The required 'Premium Data' plan costs another $10 per month.

Apple will be releasing the iPhone 4 on June 24 to the tune of $199 for the 16GB model, and $299 for the 32GB model, both with two-year AT&T Contracts. Their plans range from $39.99 - $69.99 a month for voice and $15.00 - $25.00 a month for data. Or, if you've got the money, you can buy the iPhone 4 with no contract for $599 (16 GB) and $699 (32 GB)

source: http://gear.ign.com/articles/109/1096001p1.html

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker Review

2010-06-07T23:36:00.000-07:00

As of this moment -- as I sit typing on my keyboard -- I'm 35 hours into Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, and the game only has more to show me. I beat the story at the 17-hour mark or so, but with more than 100 Extra Ops serving as mini-games/challenges, my own Metal Gear to mold and customize, a platoon of 350 soldiers, dozens of hands-off Outer Ops missions to send troops out on and so much more, I don't know when I'll put this game down.

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is probably the biggest game in the Metal Gear series, and it's only on Sony's smallest system.

Grab your gun and watch the video review.

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker picks up the story of Naked Snake (AKA Big Boss) after the events of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops. It's 1974, and Snake's a bit disenchanted. After killing his "traitorous" mentor the Boss in Metal Gear Solid 3, Snake left the United States and founded Militaires Sans Frontieres, or soldiers without borders, a militia of sorts that takes on causes and missions for those who need their help. Soon, a professor and student show up begging for assistance. It seems that the CIA has invaded Costa Rica, and seeing as how the country doesn't have a military, the duo needs MSF to step in and set things right. Snake balks at the offer, but when the professor plays a tape that seemingly proves the Boss is alive, MSF takes the contract.

This conversation, which is pretty much one cutscene, sets up one of the Metal Gear franchise's best stories. One of the most common complaints about Metal Gear games is the convoluted stories. Who are the Patriots? Who's related to whom? What the hell is happening? Peace Walker doesn't go down that path. Snake takes this mission to find out if the Boss is alive. This is a man who is still visibly shaken over the events of Snake Eater. He loved this woman but had to kill her for his country. He's jaded, hurt and angry. He openly cries about what happened and needs to know what drove his mentor to work with the Soviets.

That's your motivation in this game. Sure, Snake wants to stop a Metal Gear from launching a nuke and killing millions, but he really wants to answer the questions that have plagued him since that epic battle in the field of lilies.

This plays out in traditional, third-person Metal Gear gameplay. You'll take Snake though jungles and riverbeds while popping bad guys with tranquilizer darts or bullets. You can crouch so that you can slowly and stealthily make your way through levels, hold up bad guys, choke opponents out, and so on. As always, this is a stealth game, so your goal is to complete the mission objective without being seen or heard. If the guards get wind of you, they'll go on alert, call in backup, and make your life miserable.

The pencil-drawn flashbacks are beautiful.

Of course, it's not entirely the same old – but awesome – thing here. Snake's still packing his close quarters combat moves, but I found them easier and more useful than ever in Peace Walker. When you can execute a CQC action, you just hold the right shoulder button and latch onto the opponent with a sleeper hold. From here, you can threaten him with a stun rod or use the new throw move to hurl him into walls (an instant knockout) or into other people. If there are others around, you can chain your CQC moves together with a timed button press for rad combination animations where Snake flips dudes and disarms them.

As I've already written about, this game is huge. You're building MSF in this game – creating the infamous stronghold known as Outer Heaven that Solid Snake will have to destroy in the original Metal Gear – so another tweak on gameplay this time around is having to capture enemies to fill out your squadron. In Portable Ops, you did this in a way – knock guys out, drag them to your truck, and they'd be available to play with – but here, it's streamlined. You knock the guy out, hook him up to a Folsom balloon, and a helicopter snatches him out of the sky while you continue on the mission. This is beyond addictive. Even when my squad was teeming with people, I'd go out of my way to capture everyone I could, which includes hidden POWs in every level.
What are you capturing all of these guys for? They're the lifeblood of the game. You'll snatch these men and women and then get to assign them to divisions of your army – combat, research and development, intel, and so on – based on the multitude of stats that each character has. Guys assigned to your combat unit can take Snake's place in missions or be dispatched in Outer Ops; and R&D folks develop new weapons, items and upgrades. Keep recruiting, keep getting better people into these divisions, and you'll keep getting cooler crap.

It's like crack. I can't tell you how many of my hours I've spent with this game just sorting troops by their ability to make food so that I can make sure I have the best mess hall so that my crew is happy. I pick up POWs and pray that they're the "S-rank" troops I've been looking for to really pull my R&D department together and get me the final upgrades I need.

Click here and watch all the crazy crap in this game.

Peace Walker puts an emphasis on shorter gameplay sessions, so each mission is its own task. You'll select the one you want to go out on, get a cutscene if it calls for it, go out on your mission, and get a stat screen grading you on the number of alerts before getting booted back to the menu. This is a nice change of pace for a number of reasons – first and foremost because it gives you control over your loadout for each scenario you're entering. Oddly, you can't save mid-mission, and that might be a drag as some battles go on for a while.

As you unlock and find different suits for Snake, you're going to want to wear them in specific situations. See, the suits are better/worse for certain areas when it comes to camouflage (jungle vs. urban), they allow you to carry different numbers of items and weapons, and some have unique abilities (in the sneaking suit, you can move as fast as you want and be completely silent). Because the missions are self-contained, you can use your weapon-limited sneak suit to get through an entire level, have the level end as you get your first glimpse of a boss, and then start the "new" mission where you fight the boss and have your battle suit armed along with its extra weapon and item slots. It's awesome, and key to dominating missions.

The missions being broken up is great for the PSP because Peace Walker is phenomenal at dangling carrots in front of your face. When these missions end, you return to Mother Base where you're inundated with information – what your research and development team has created in the way of weapons and items, how the troops you dispatched on missions fared, who has come to join your army, and so on.

The game is insanely deep.

Adding to all of this is the focus on co-op. Every mission in Peace Walker – whether it be a story mission or one of the 100-plus Extra Ops – is available for you and a buddy to conquer. Co-op is only available via ad-hoc, but it's still a nice option. If it's a boss battle (a tank, a helicopter or a Metal Gear), four players can set out to best the beast. Whatever you do as a team, you benefit from as a player. If you Folsom out seven players total, you each get those seven players for your squad. If one of you climbs inside an AI core and unlocks a bunch of memory boards to use in your personal Metal Gear, you all get those boards.

Co-op is great. I'm a single-player fan and didn't know if I'd dig playing with others, but marching around levels capturing bad guys and decimating bosses is a blast with friends.

However, co-op leads to one of my main complaints with Peace Walker – and I only have two. This co-op focus means that some of the game is a pain in the ass (if not entirely undoable) by yourself. I've seen a ton of other game critics – folks I know can play – struggle and scream over some of the boss battles in this game. For me, I thought they were crazy until I came to the second battle with the final boss – Peace Walker itself. On my third attempt, I played for 45 minutes before running out of ammo and having the mission called off.

The curse words I screamed would make Dennis Leary blush.

The gameplay you know is here and awesome.

In the end, I couldn't beat Peace Walker without the help of another player who was way past that point. That shouldn't be an aspect of a game like this. It's perfectly fine to make the Extra Ops super-difficult – and trust me, the repeat battles with tanks and the Cocoon are – but a solo player should be able to get through the story by him or herself. Granted, you might be able to replay missions and upgrade your weapons so that certain bosses wouldn't give you much trouble, but I'm no rookie and I don't think that I should've been dealing with the trouble I was dealing with.

The second issue with Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker? It's almost too deep for its own good. Don't get me wrong, the depth is one of this game's greatest assets – I won't stop playing until my army has conquered all of the Outer Ops – but there isn't much in the way of guidance. There are really, really general tutorials in the game, but they don't give you an adequate idea of how to make trades with other players, how to make your own Metal Gear songs, or how to make the most of the mechs you've acquired. To learn these tenets of the game, you have to either go through some trial and error or have a "Big Boss" on hand to walk you through the game.

Of course, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker doesn't stop there. On this UMD (or digital download for you cool kids) is a pimped out competitive multiplayer mode where you can go head to head with five other friends in games of deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture and base defense. The modes are fun, but they didn't do much for me – it's just Metal Gear Online, which is no small feat for a portable game. If you can get six Peace Walker fanatics together at one time, have at it, but the game is more about co-op in my eyes.

Closing Comments

Here’s the thing – I could write another nine pages on Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. I could do it with ease. From the missions that have you listening to bird calls to the missions that have you taking photos of ghosts to missions that have you holding people up with bananas, this game is insanely deep. It’s crazy and I want to go on and on about every little thing, but there’s no reason for me to sit here and spoil it for you.

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is awesome and you need to play it. It’s not perfect, as the co-op is nearly mandatory in some spots and I could’ve done with a better “how to guide,” but this game is a masterpiece. Not only is it in the running for the title of greatest game ever on the PSP, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is one of the greatest games in the entire Metal Gear franchise.

Source: http://psp.ign.com/articles/109/1095291p2.html

Assassin's Creed Bloodlines Preview

2009-11-03T09:25:00.000-08:00

If you just couldn't get enough of Altair, the robed protagonist of the first Assassin's Creed, get ready to continue the slaughter on PSP. Bloodlines picks up the storyline where the first game left off with the assassination of Robert de Sable. Altair continues in pursuit of de Sable's girlfriend Maria, captures her and continues his investigation of the Templar Knights in Cyprus.

Having played the game from the beginning, the look and feel is extremely reminiscent of Assassin's Creed on the console. However, as far as we can tell there are no segments set in modern times or featuring Desmond, the bartender and main protagonist from the first game.

Our previous previews have described the look of Bloodlines in great detail, but now we can tell you for ourselves exactly how it plays. The developers have tried, within the limitation of the PSP, to recreate the first game on the handheld. Altair moves and fights like he did on the consoles with a control system that is nearly identical. The only major difference is camera control. Double tapping the left bumper centers the camera, or holding LB maps the face buttons to camera control.

The game opens with a lengthy tutorial that gets players used to the "passive" versus "aggressive" modes along with hiding and combat. Combat retains its almost rhythm based feel, with players timing their sword swings in sets to break through the guard of an opponent. They can also counter, which is far more effective for quickly dispersing enemies.

Altair retains his ability to scale almost any surface, which comes in handy since the quickest way to leave guards behind is by sprinting across rooftops. The environments in Bloodlines are open areas of urban landscape that offer plenty of alleyways and hiding places like pigeon coops and bales of hay. So far, it's surprising how large some of these areas are considering the game fits in our pockets, but the city is segmented into different sections divided by gates and walls.

The mission types are also familiar to the console game, and include climbing to lookout points in the city, saving citizens from oppressive guards, sneaking through certain areas undetected, and of course assassinating targets. One mission I encountered had me quickly assassinate archers before they could burn down a building. It combined free running with combat and required a quick eye for how to best approach the environment. From what we encountered, Bloodlines leans heavily towards quests that involve action and combat, a good choice for a portable game.

In each level there are also hidden templar coins for Altair to seek out. When collected these items can be spent on upgrades like an increased number of throwing knives, more health, more damage through attacks, higher chance at critical hits, and an automatic block ability. There's also the added bonus that special weapons transfer to the PS3 versions of Assassin's Creed II when certain areas are completed in Bloodlines.

So far Bloodlines looks and feels remarkably like the Assassin's Creed experience you might already know from the consoles. We'll let you know when we get our hands on the game for an even longer period of time.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Movie Trailer - Trailer

2009-11-03T09:21:00.000-08:00

More Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Info

2009-11-02T10:54:00.000-08:00

It took LucasArts longer than it expected to put the finishing touches on Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, but when it was finally released last year it went on to put up huge numbers for the company - record setting numbers in fact, and considering the success of previous Star Wars titles, that's no small feat. Given that it might be a while before we see a direct sequel, assuming one is even in development (and you have to assume that it is), we're now seeing the release of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed - Ultimate Sith Edition.

Essentially, this is the collector's edition that we didn't see last year, coupled with all of the available downloadable content and a brand-new exclusive level. For the retail price you'll get the original game, the Jedi Academy, Tatooine and Hoth levels, all of the downloadable skins, a collector's card and a nice tin case to hold it all in.

Click the image to watch our full video review.

In terms of the tangible stuff, the collector's tin is really just the metal case that a lot of other special editions ship in, which, while cool and nice, isn't anything new. The collector's card is just a thick piece of paper with some artwork on it and is hardly worth collecting. In fact, there's a paper pamphlet that shows what all of the cards look like, and that's probably enough for most everyone out there.

Now, if you're a PC gamer then you'll likely know that The Force Unleashed skipped over the PC last time around, with LucasArts going so far as to say that it would probably never come to the platform. Well, the Ultimate Sith Edition does away with this jibber-jabber and brings the secret apprentice and gang to Windows machines. By and large, it's a solid port, but it really isn't any different from the previous console releases in any way. That's not a bad thing, but if you were hoping for enhanced physics or something of the sort, that's not to be found here.

The base Force Unleashed experience is the main star of the show, and nothing has changed. The code looks to be completely untouched, for better or for worse. If you haven't played the game or want to know our thoughts on the original experience, be sure you check out our original Star Wars: The Force Unleashed review. In short, it's still a fun, if somewhat flawed, experience that gives you a great set of Force powers to play with.

Obi-Wan is a pushover.

In terms of the additional content, what you're getting here is an extension of the base game, something that simply adds more content to the experience but doesn't actually change (or even fix) anything. What's sort of nice is that each of the three additional levels are standalone options, so you don't need to play through the game in order to get to them. The downside to this is that none of your powers or anything carry over, nor does anything that you earn carry back into the main game. However, that largely doesn't matter as you start almost fully powered-up for each of these levels anyway.

I won't spend too much time talking about the Jedi Academy level as it's been available as DLC for some time, but it's a pretty decent bonus level that has you wandering through the academy in order to get to a personal test of sorts. It doesn't seem to fit into any specific part of the secret apprentice's story and instead acts as a random side mission that he goes on for himself, which is nice as you don't need to know what's happened in the base game to appreciate it. There's a small bit of simple puzzle solving towards the end that helps break up the pace a little bit, and while it won't tax your noggin, it's a nice change from all of the killing.
The Tatooine level picks up after the main game and goes under the assumption that you wind up killing Vader and taking the apprentice position under the Emperor. The Empire has learned that R2-D2 has the plans to the Death Star and Starkiller is sent to go "talk" to Jabba to get them. So, you head into Jabba's palace, kill a bunch of guys, wind up taking on the rancor beneath Jabba's throne and then escape to find the droids at Mos Eisley.

After some big battles with rancors in the original Force Unleashed story, the battle here is pretty disappointing as there's an invincibility orb in the room that lets you just quickly slash it to death. The rest of the level is basically just running through and killing everyone dead until you make it to Mos Eisley and take on both Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Given that you're packed to the brim with Force powers, both of these fights are pretty much a joke on the default difficulty level as you can just Force Lightning them to death.

Wielding the Force is still pretty fun.

The Hoth level, which again is the only exclusive bit to the Ultimate Sith Edition, isn't quite as exciting as either the Jedi Academy or Tatooine levels as the Hoth base is essentially just a series of square rooms and corridors connecting them. This is simplifying it a bit, but you get the idea. It looks great, mind you, and is pretty much dead-on with what you see in Empire, but it doesn't really make for the most interesting level to fight through.

After slicing and dicing for a while, you'll face off with Luke Skywalker. The battle with him is much tougher than the fight against either Boba Fett or Obi-Wan, but that's because he can be pretty cheap. He has attacks that can't really be blocked, or at least not that I was able to figure out, and there can be guys out of the area that you're in that constantly shoot at you. It's not a terrible fight, but it's not nearly as fun as I had hoped it could be.

As I mentioned, the Ultimate Sith Edition didn't change anything in terms of the original content at all, and the bonus levels follow suit. The same issues that I had with the base content remains here, including enemies that hit you when you're down, wonky physics in some spots and the like. It's still fun as Force throwing someone off a ledge never really gets old, but it is what it is. It's worth noting that a lot of the Digital Molecular Matter tech that was used well in some spots of the original release (though not nearly as much as we all would have liked) is used a little more sparsely in the add-on levels. It's mostly relegated to things like statues or other background items, though Hoth does have plenty of glass to break into bits, which is always a cool effect.

The battle against Luke can be somewhat aggravating.

Really, whether or not you should pick up Star Wars: The Force Unleashed - Ultimate Sith Edition comes down to whether or not you already own the original. If you do, just pick up the DLC if you want more as you're not missing a ton without Hoth. If you don't own it but are still interested or have been holding out for the PC release, then it's worth a shot at this point. You're getting a fair bit more than you would have originally and the DLC is included in the purchase price, which is nice.

source: http://pc.ign.com/articles/104/1040934p2.html

Quiz: Dragon Age vs. Mass Effect 2

2009-11-02T10:51:00.001-08:00

For years hardcore gamers have been divided firmly into two warring factions: science fiction versus fantasy. In the next four months BioWare is releasing a major role-playing game in both categories. In November we get the epic dark fantasy game Dragon Age which promises to let us live out our dreams of wielding magic and bedding a dark elf. Then in January, Mass Effect 2 continues the saga of intergalactic hero commander Shepard.

So which adventure is best suited to your personality? Not everyone will have the time or money to play both. Lucky for you, IGN has developed the ultimate personality quiz to tell you whether to play Dragon Age or Mass Effect. Get started by answering the questions below. At the end of the quiz you'll be rewarded with a personalized wallpaper for your PC.

SDCC 09: Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny Progress

2009-07-23T21:54:00.000-07:00

Kratos, the antihero from the God of War series, has killed a lot of dudes. Soldiers, villagers, deities, and more have fallen to this gray-skinned sucker and his trusty Blades of Chaos. Now, Namco Bandai is inviting you to take the battle to a bunch of virtual fighters that will probably never see it coming.

Kratos is in Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny, and he's pretty frickin' sweet.

Watch Kratos PWN noobs right here.
Now, I'm no fighting game expert; that's Ryan Clements' role here on the IGN PlayStation Team. Luckily, he's written about Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny a couple of times, so if you need a more nuts and bolts approach to how things play out here in this portable fighting game, I'd hit up his work first. I'm just here to talk about how good it felt to smash my blades into unsuspecting combatants.

Alternate between your attack buttons for some simple combos, and Kratos will begin throwing his blades -- complete with that flaming/orange trail from the God of War games -- and wailing on the competition. You can impale an enemy with the blades and drag them to you, and you can also knock opponents off of their feet, break out Icarus' Wings, and juggle the other fighter in mid-air.

I'm a Soulcalibur noob, and I was decimating the computer with ease thanks to Kratos' powerful attacks and award winning smile… OK… maybe there was no smile on Kratos' face, but there was on mine.

Aside from the God of War, my Broken Destiny demo focused on all the modes and stuff you can do in this PSP incarnation of Soulcalibur. You'll have 16 create-a-fighter slots and a system similar to that of Soulcalibur IV so that you can whip up warriors; Gauntlet mode will make up the title's fan fiction-like story; and when you decide to play a Quick Match, you'll go to a lobby list of computer opponents with made up win/loss records so that you can figure out who are the easiest and who are the hardest.

Now, that's a knife.

Beyond all of that and the fact that you can install part of the game to your memory stick to make load times that much faster, my demo was the straight action you'd expect from the 20-plus character title. Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny looks impressive graphically and seems to have a ton of bells and whistles to keep fans happy. It's too early to say if it'll be a worthy purchase, but with the Sept. 1, 2009 release date just around the corner, you won't have to wait long for the final verdict.

Roundtable: The Year of Fighting Games

2009-07-23T21:14:00.000-07:00

In February, Capcom kicked 2009 off with a release fighting game fanatics had been anticipating for years: Street Fighter IV. Fans of the series were so excited they rushed out and bought 849,000 copies that month alone, pushing the highly rated title to the top of the videogame sales charts for the February, according to the NPD Group.

And can you really blame gamers for snapping up Street Fighter IV right away? In most years, one major release is all fighting fans dare to expect. Last year it was Soulcalibur IV, with Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe as a consolation prize. But 2009 is different.

After Street Fighter IV hit the shelves, release dates started to trickle in for other marquis fighting games. BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger, the spiritual successor to Arc System Works' Guilty Gear franchise, was heading for a June release. Namco Bandai's Tekken 6 now has a firm date of October 27. The King of Fighters XII hits stores next week. And Wii gamers should be playing Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All Stars by the time the year is out.

Want more? Well you're going to get it, because there's a separate wave of classic fighters hitting digital download services this year, too. SNK's Fatal Fury: Garou – Mark of the Wolves was released for Xbox Live Arcade last month and Marvel vs. Capcom 2 comes to XBLA and the PlayStation Network next week. There will likely be more before the year is out.

Insiders can download a ton of Street Fighter IV desktops by clicking above.

By all accounts, 2009 is shaping up to be the best year for fighting games in recent memory. But why? And is that really a good thing for gamers? To answer those questions, we brought together a group of IGN's biggest fighting fans for an Editor Roundtable on the topic. Joining us are IGN PlayStation Associate Editor Ryan Clements, Game Help Editor-in-Chief Mark Ryan Sallee, Insider Editor-in-Chief David Clayman, and Xbox 360 Editor Charles Onyett. If you're a fan of fighting games, and if you care about the past, present and future of the genre, you'll want to read what they have to say.

But we also want to know what you think. So make sure to hit the comments section of this article at the bottom of the page, and vote in our poll at the top. And if you like fighting games IGN Insider will be posting content from Evo 2009 starting on July 24th. You have to be a subscriber to watch and download but we're currently giving new members a 25% discount so click here to join up.

Ryan Clements, Associate Editor, IGN PlayStation: I'll start things off by agreeing that this year is indeed one of the best for fighting game fans. I can't remember the last time that so many high-quality titles were released in such close proximity, but its great to see that the genre is still alive and well.

I will admit that the one downside to this slew of fighters is that there's almost too much to learn. Mastering a fighting game takes ages and having so many launch together sucks up way too much practice time. If you're only a fan of one particular franchise, this won't be a problem, but for people with a wide range of interests -- like myself -- this whole year seems quite daunting.

And for the record: BlazBlue wins. ARC System Works' latest is a truly noble successor to the legendary Guilty Gear name and I can't sing enough praise for this beautiful 2D fighter. I love Street Fighter IV and I'm excited for some of the other contenders, but so far BlazBlue has my vote for the best of the best.

Mark Ryan Sallee, Editor-in-Chief, IGN Game Help: The last big year for fighting games was 2000, which saw the (original) releases of Guilty Gear X, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and Capcom vs. SNK.

And if you're counting downloadable games, I think last year saw far more than Mortal Kombat and Soulcalibur. There were a lot of SNK fighters (which no one cared about), plus the excellent Super Street Fighter II Turbo: HD Remix.

I'm not convinced that this year marks a resurgence, just a crossing of the stars. But I'd love to be wrong.

It's certainly possible that fighting games will be revived by the proliferation (and significant improvement) of online gaming. The genre thrived and died with arcades in the '90s because for those games to make real sense, you need to play with someone else. Competition is the driving motivator to play a good fighting game, and as arcades became less populated and harder to find--both in the US and even in Japan--demand dropped. Not too long ago, Capcom significantly cut back arcade development in reaction to the waning arcade scene worldwide.

Watch our BlazBlue video review.

I think for the first time, HD Remix showed that commercial online fighters can work quite well and that opens the door for the fighting game community to re-flourish. Who knows if it will. This year's Evo tournament showed a lot of renewed interest in fighting games. Could be simply a reaction to a new, canon Street Fighter game, but it might also be a sign that the players (and their net connections) are ready to make fighting games a big deal again, even in online competition is still a sad substitute for real human interaction.

Clements brings up a good point, that by releasing all these games at once, publishers might overwhelm us with the prospect of learning to play everything. It's always been an issue, and usually the community gravitates to just one or two games, letting others languish. It's possible that fighting games are more like MMOs than other popular genres, in that you can't consume one after the other. They usually take a sort of dedication that precludes one from moving on to the next game, and because of this tendency it's hard for more than a small handful of fighting games to find success (whereas a zillion different FPS games can do well in any given year).

Maybe 2009 is a revival. My guess is it'll be more a reminder why everyone stopped making so many fighters. Cheers if I'm wrong.

The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Documentary

2009-07-16T02:24:00.000-07:00

At the Upfronts in May, it was revealed by FOX that the current 20th Anniversary of The Simpsons would lead up to some kind of special on January 14th. Now the details of that special have been revealed, and they're not likely what anyone would have predicted.

A name you wouldn't quickly associate with The Simpsons, Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me / 30 Days), is producing and directing the special, which has the humorous title The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special in 3-D On Ice.

FOX says the special will "document how the world sees The Simpsons and how the Simpson family has seen the world for two decades."

Says Spurlock, "When they first called me about this, I thought it was a prank and I hung up. And then my agent called back and said, 'No, no, this is for real,' at which point I fainted. Then when I woke up, I called everyone I knew because it was the coolest thing I could ever get to do in my career."

The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special in 3-D On Ice will air Thursday, January 14, 2010 on FOX.

The God of War is Summoned

2009-07-16T02:21:00.000-07:00

Blockbuster videogame franchises are no strangers to the realm of comic books, but one of the biggest has eluded print and paper... until now.

Today IGN is able to exclusively reveal that Sony and DC/Wildstorm Comics have partnered for a six-issue mini-series based on the God of War franchise. Debuting in October, and running approximately up to the launch of God of War III for the Playstation 3, the storyline will focus on Kratos' dark past. Comics legend Marv Wolfman is handling the writing with Kevin Sharpe on interior art and Andy Park on covers.

We contacted both Sony for more details. The publisher offered the following comment:

"We are thrilled to work with the world's largest comic book publisher to bring one of our most beloved PlayStation franchises, God of War,to comic book fans," said Scott A. Steinberg, Vice President, Product Marketing, SCEA. "As one of the most prominent names in the entertainment and comic book industry, we look forward to working with DC Comics in bringing God of Warto a whole new audience."

In our quest for information on the series itself, we contacted Wolfman via e-mail for first details.

IGN Comics: Marv, how did you come to work on this project? How much exposure to the God of War franchise did you have prior to working on this mini-series?

Marv Wolfman: There have been very few times in my career when I've asked to do a comic. This is one of them.

When I heard a rumor that DC/Wildstorm might be doing God of War, I put in my name right away and kept pushing for it. God of War has been my favorite video game to play, both #1 and #2. Also, I've always loved greek mythology - I brought the Greek Titans into my old Teen Titans comic. Coincidentally, I was in Athens just a few months back for a convention and toured all the old Greek temples.

What I love about the game is it's not just a button masher, but that you go from really imaginative fight scenarios to strong strategy play. I also love the basic concept that the very first image we see in the original game is Kratos trying to commit suicide but the Gods won't let him. We're immediately drawn into his story, so the game is about a character and a mystery rather than just - go fight him.

IGN Comics: In preparing for this, how much of the games have you seen and/or played? Was this a case where you could get the concept down through researching the existing franchise lore, designs and characters? Did seeing the game in action give you a definite sense of where you wanted to head with this project?

Wolfman: I had already played both numbers 1 & 2 before I asked to get the comic so I didn't have to do any research. It's because I loved the game that I wanted to do the comic. I obviously knew what the game was about and, as I say, I loved it. But I was sent copies of the scripts for all the GoW games so I could make sure what I did was as accurate as possible.

When you're playing you're concerned about not dying - at least I am - and I often miss story details. Having the scripts really helps. It also enabled me to read the PSP game as not owning a PSP that's the only GoW game I hadn't played. For gamers out there I have a PS2, PS3, X-Box 360 and a Wii and regularly play games on all of them.

IGN Comics: God of War is a series that is heavily based on action, to put it lightly. When working within a franchise under those parameters, is it difficult to find the core character beats that comic books often need?

Wolfman: As I say the thing that made me a fan of the game is that it's more than just action, although my thumb still hasn't recovered from the end of game 2. GoW is a story about Kratos and other humans being manipulated by the Gods. It's about him and what happens to his wife and daughter and the nightmares that result from that. It's about redemption as well as revenge.

It's high drama and the stuff the Greek myths are made of. That's what I center on in my story, although of course the action is constant. But the core of the story is pure character.

IGN Comics: It's our understanding that the mini-series operates within two timelines, the first of which takes place between the first two games. What can fans expect to see in these segments? Is Kratos largely struggling to be free from his nightmares and be accepted by the Greek gods?

Wolfman: The present day story is firmly set between God of War 1 and 2. The flashback story starts when Kratos is 7 and is brought into the Spartan army, as Spartan children were, and continues to when he is over 30, married, and has to go on a mission to save the life of Calliope, his daughter. Events in the past completely inform the present day story.

As far as Kratos' nightmares go, without giving away too much, the entire present day story is his reaction to what happened in the first game. We don't show the nightmares but they are the reason he's after what he's after. We also get strongly involved with the Barbarian King, seen in games 1 & 2. Kratos' battle with the Barbarian is what causes him to pledge his allegiance to Ares in the first place.

IGN Comics: With God of War III right around the corner, will we be seeing hints and clues to the plot and events in that game?

Wolfman: If I told you, I'd have to have Kratos kill you. Or he'd kill me.

IGN Comics: God of War is well-known for its monsters and vicious battles with gods. Can you give us some hints as to some of the obstacles Kratos will face?

Wolfman: We start with some creatures you've seen before and also introduce some brand new monsters, all based on Greek myths, of course, and move up to man-eating islands, which, once you see it, also ties into Greek mythology, but in a very surprising way. So there's many new characters and creatures as well as some familiar ones.

IGN Comics: Is there anything else you'd like to add about the God of War mini-series at this point?

Wolfman: I've been working very closely with the GoW people at Sony who are directly responsible for the game and we're using the comic to tie in directly to the story they created. This isn't like the standard tie-in comic where we're off in a corner; they are making sure everything works to keep the greater mythology consistent while introducing readers to many brand new ideas. Working with them, we're fleshing out Kratos' story, playing very closely with Kratos' past and filling in a lot of new information along the way.

PSP Games Date Release

2009-07-14T23:05:00.000-07:00

date	game title	publisher
July 16, 2009	Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman!	NIS
July 16, 2009	Myst	Hoplite Research
July 21, 2009	G-Force	Disney Interactive Studios
August 4, 2009	G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra -- The Game	Electronic Arts
August 4, 2009	Hannah Montana: Rock Out the Show	Disney Interactive Studios
August 14, 2009	Madden NFL 10	Electronic Arts
August 25, 2009	Dissidia Final Fantasy	Square Enix
August 25, 2009	Warriors Orochi 2	KOEI
September 1, 2009	Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny	Namco Bandai
September 8, 2009	Dirt 2	Codemasters
September 8, 2009	Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days
September 8, 2009	Obscure: The Aftermath	Playlogic
September 15, 2009	Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs	Ubisoft
September 15, 2009	IL-2: Sturmovik: Birds of Prey	505 Games
September 15, 2009	Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2	Activision
September 15, 2009	Mytran Wars	Deep Silver
September 15, 2009	Star Wars: The Clone Wars -- Republic Heroes	LucasArts
September 22, 2009	Adventures to Go	Natsume
September 22, 2009	Need for Speed Shift	Electronic Arts
September 22, 2009	Shin Megami Tensei: Persona	Atlus
September 29, 2009	Duke Nukem Trilogy: Critical Mass	Apogee
October 1, 2009	Gran Turismo PSP	Sony Computer Entertainment
October 20, 2009	Astro Boy: The Videogame	D3 Publisher
October 2009	Ben 10: Alien Force -- Vilgax Attacks	D3 Publisher
October 2009	Cars: Race-O-Rama	THQ
October 2009	FIFA Soccer 10	Electronic Arts
October 2009	Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars	Take-Two Interactive
October 2009	Half-Minute Hero	Xseed Games
October 2009	Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest, The	Warner Bros. Interactive
October 2009	Marvel Super Hero Squad	THQ
October 2009	MotorStorm: Arctic Edge	Sony Computer Entertainment
October 2009	Naruto Shippuden: Legends: Akatsuki Rising	Namco Bandai
October 2009	NBA 2K10	2K Sports
October 2009	NBA Live 10	Electronic Arts
October 2009	Petz: Dogz Family	Ubisoft
October 2009	Petz: Saddle Club	Ubisoft
October 2009	Secret Saturdays: Beasts of The 5th Sun, The	D3 Publisher
October 2009	Silent Hill: Shattered Memories	Konami
October 2009	Undead Knights	Tecmo
November 2009	Pro Evolution Soccer 2010	Konami
November 2009	SpongeBob's Truth or Square	THQ
November 2009	Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron	LucasArts
November 2009	WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2010	THQ
December 2009	Avatar: The Game	Ubisoft
December 2009	Lunar: Silver Star Harmony	Xseed Games
Q4 2009	Amazing Race, The	Ludia
Q4 2009	Army of Two: The 40th Day	Electronic Arts
Q4 2009	Arthur and the Revenge of Maltazard	Ubisoft
Q4 2009	Echochrono	Sony Computer Entertainment
Q4 2009	Fate/Unlimited Codes	Capcom
Q4 2009	Harvest Moon: Sugartown	Natsume
Q4 2009	LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues	Warner Bros. Interactive
Q4 2009	Martial Arts Capoeira	Graffiti Entertainment
Q4 2009	MX vs. ATV Reflex	THQ
Q4 2009	PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe	Sony Computer Entertainment
Q4 2009	SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 3	Sony Computer Entertainment
Q4 2009	Tekken 6	Namco Bandai
Q4 2009	Unbound Saga	Vogster Entertainment
TBA 2009	100 Bullets	D3 Publisher
TBA 2009	Ape Escape Academy 2	Sony Computer Entertainment
TBA 2009	Ape Escape: Saru Saru Master Moves
TBA 2009	Asphalt: Urban GT 2	Ubisoft
TBA 2009	Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines	Ubisoft
TBA 2009	Barnyard Blast: Swine of the Night	Zoo Games
TBA 2009	Beaterator	Rockstar Games
TBA 2009	Blood Bowl	TBA
TBA 2009	Board Games Gallery	Phoenix Games Ltd. [UK / NL]
TBA 2009	Bomberman: Panic Bomber	Hudson Soft
TBA 2009	Boulder Dash -- Rocks!	10TACLE Studios
TBA 2009	Buzz! Quiz World	Sony Computer Entertainment
TBA 2009	Cannon Fodder	Codemasters
TBA 2009	Card Shark 3	Phoenix Games Ltd. [UK / NL]
TBA 2009	Cave Story: Doukutsu Monogatari
TBA 2009	Codename: Panzers	10TACLE Studios
TBA 2009	Contra: Legacy of War	Sony Computer Entertainment
TBA 2009	Dance Mat Challenge	TBA
TBA 2009	Dead in the Water	Sony Computer Entertainment
TBA 2009	Decathletes	Ghostlight
TBA 2009	Diabolik: The Original Sin	Black Bean
TBA 2009	Dino Crisis	Capcom
TBA 2009	Dino Dini's Soccer
TBA 2009	Dragon's Lair	TBA
TBA 2009	DT Racer Refueled	Valcon Games
TBA 2009	Duke Nukem Trilogy: Chain Reaction	Apogee
TBA 2009	Duke Nukem Trilogy: Proving Grounds	Apogee
TBA 2009	EA Replay 2	Electronic Arts
TBA 2009	Explodemon!
TBA 2009	F1 2009	Codemasters
TBA 2009	Freak Out	JoWood Productions
TBA 2009	Gish	Aksys Games
TBA 2009	Guitar Hits	Ubisoft
TBA 2009	Harlem Globetrotters World Tour	Destination Software, Inc. (DSI)
TBA 2009	Heroes of the Pacific	Red Mile Entertainment
TBA 2009	HILL Project	TBA
TBA 2009	Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier	Sony Computer Entertainment
TBA 2009	Jeff Corwin Experience	Conspiracy Entertainment
TBA 2009	Jumping Flash! 2	Sony Computer Entertainment
TBA 2009	Legend of the River King	Marvelous Entertainment
TBA 2009	LittleBigPlanet PSP	Sony Computer Entertainment
TBA 2009	Mighty Thor, The	SEGA
TBA 2009	Namco Museum Volume 2	Namco
TBA 2009	One Piece	Bandai
TBA 2009	Petz: Dogz Pack	Ubisoft
TBA 2009	Petz: Hamsterz Bunch	Ubisoft
TBA 2009	Pilot Academy	Marvelous Entertainment
TBA 2009	Puzzle Chronicles	Konami
TBA 2009	Resident Evil 2	Capcom
TBA 2009	Resident Evil 3: Nemesis	Capcom
TBA 2009	Riding Spirits: Revolution	Spike
TBA 2009	Spec Ops: Airborne Commando	Take-Two Interactive
TBA 2009	Spec Ops: Covert Assault	Sony Computer Entertainment
TBA 2009	Spec Ops: Ranger Elite	Sony Computer Entertainment
TBA 2009	Street Fighter Alpha 3	Capcom
TBA 2009	Tecmo My Generation	Tecmo
TBA 2009	Ten Pin Alley	ASC Games
TBA 2009	Tenchu: Time of the Assassins	SEGA
TBA 2009	Wild ARMs 2	Sony Computer Entertainment
TBA 2009	WipEout XL	Sony Computer Entertainment
TBA 2009	Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Tag Force 3	Konami
TBA 2009	Yumi's Odd Odyssey	Marvelous Entertainment
TBA 2009	Zendoku	Eidos Interactive
TBA 2009	Zooo	Success
Q1 2010	Kenka Bancho 3	Atlus
Q4 2010	Arthur and the Two Worlds War	Ubisoft
TBA 2010	Adventures of TinTin, The	Ubisoft
TBA 2010	Dante's Inferno	Electronic Arts
TBA 2010	First Avenger: Captain America, The	SEGA
TBA 2010	Iron Man 2	SEGA
TBA 2010	Killzone: Liberation 2 [rumored]	Sony Computer Entertainment
TBA 2010	Master Mind: The Videogame	THQ
TBA 2010	Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker	Konami
TBA 2010	Monster Hunter Freedom 3	Capcom
TBA 2010	Shrek Goes Fourth	Activision
TBA 2010	U-Wars	TBA
May 2011	Spider-Man 4
May 2012	Avengers: The Movie, The

The Top 1 Nintendo DS Games according to the IGN team

2009-07-14T21:35:00.000-07:00

1. New Super Mario Bros.
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Release Date: May 19, 2006

Everything old is new again. For all the advancements made in technology, for all the possibilities for innovation on Nintendo's latest handheld, and for all the praise we've just spent 24 past pages offering to those games who've pursued those avenues the final salute has to go to one of the simplest designs of all. The best game on the Nintendo DS doesn't make use of the WiFi Connection. It doesn't do anything drastic with the two separate screens. It doesn't make much use of the touch capability at all, and all of that is because it just doesn't have to -- New Super Mario Bros. is compelling and fun on the strength of its gameplay and the power of nostalgia alone.

By the time it was released in the Spring of 2006, it had been almost 15 years since the last most recent Mario side-scroller had come to a Nintendo system. There had been plenty of spin-offs in that decade and a half, and lots of 3D adventures keeping the plumber in play -- but good old 2D action with Mario had been a dormant idea since Super Mario World.

With this rebirth, Shigeru Miyamoto and team returned the hero to his roots. Running to the right of the screen, stomping Goombas, saving the princess -- it was all there, exactly as you'd expect, and feeling just right. But the designers in charge made sure the "New" descriptor made sense too, by adding in such fresh elements as the Mega and Mini Mushroom power-ups, the Blue Shell our hero could don to gain a new spinning attack move, new-to-2D acrobatic maneuvers like wall-jumping and more.

Playing New Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo DS made us all feel young again, and the design was done so well that many fans have gone on record to declare it their favorite Mario platformer ever. That's high praise indeed, and it's the level of praise you'd expect from the game being awarded the #1 spot at the conclusion of our countdown.

Now that all 25 of our picks have been revealed, what's your final word? Did we get it right, or wrong? What games did we ignore that we shouldn't have? Are you even now making plans to let the air out of Fran's tires because Phoenix Wright wasn't mentioned once until this very sentence?

PSPgo Preorders Begin

2009-07-14T21:34:00.000-07:00

July 7, 2009 - If you're like the IGN PlayStation Team, you've got a big red circle around Oct. 1, 2009 -- the launch date of the PSPgo -- on your calendar. Well, if you don't feel like hitting up an electronics store at 12:01 a.m., Amazon.com has begun selling preorders for both the black and white versions of the PSPgo. Oddly, as of the writing of this article, the white PSPgo is priced at $249.99 while the black PSPgo is for sale with a $248.99 price tag. Other than that, everything looks kosher for the UMD-less system's launch.

Bungie Won't Stop Teasing

2009-03-22T19:59:00.001-07:00

The date 04/09/09 carries some special significance in the world of Bungie and Halo. What that significance is, we don't know for sure. At the end of its weekly update, Bungie added the sly little note, "P.S. 04/09/09."

If I were a betting man, I'd put that as the previously unannounced release date for the Mythic Map Pack. This newest set of maps is thus far only available to those who purchase the Limited Edition of Halo Wars, though Bungie has promised to make it available for sale through the Xbox Live Marketplace eventually. But who knows? Maybe we'll get some new info on Halo 3: ODST that day. Leave your guesses as to what the date means in the comments below.

PS3, PSP Top Japan

2009-03-22T19:57:00.000-07:00

Sony continued its dominance over in Japan this past week, topping Media Create's hardware and software charts.

For the week covering March 9 through March 15, PS3 topped the software chart once again, now the third week in a row. Koei did the honors this time, with the newly released Warriors Orochi Z selling 112,283 units, but continued sales of Yakuza 3 and Resident Evil 5 gave the system three top 10 placers.

The full top 10 is as follows:

1. Warriors Orochi Z (Koei, PS3): 112,283
2. Resident Evil 5 (Capcom, PS3): 61,483
3. 3D Picross (Nintendo, DS): 38,056
4. Mario & Luigi RPG 3!!! (Nintendo, DS): 37,907
5. Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce (Koei, PSP): 33,255
6. New Play Control Pikmin 2 (Nintendo, Wii): 28,706
7. Yakuza 3 (Sega, PS3): 23,815
8. Seventh Dragon (Sega, DS): 22,341
9. Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G PSP the Best (Capcom, PSP): 16,209
10. Resistance (Sony, PSP): 15,651

In addition to Warriors Orochi Z, 3D Picross, Pikmin and Resistance were all new this week. Sonic and the Black Knight debuted on the Wii this week down at 30, beaten by a budget version of Idol Master on the Xbox 360.

PSP topped the hardware charts for the second week in a row, presumably fueled by continued sales of the recent batch of colors. PS3 managed to hold its own as well, topping the console pack and also beating the DSi.

The full hardware chart is as follows, with last week's sales in parentheses.

PSP: 43,463 (59,568)
PS3: 28,014 (39,835)
DSi: 27,564 (32,102)
Wii: 17,941 (16,560)
DS Lite: 11,571 (11,240)
X360: 8,378 (14,994)

Pangya: Fantasy Golf is on the Way

2009-03-17T19:36:00.000-07:00

The PSP has seen its fair share of golf games. Previously, the Hot Shots series has had a big presence on Sony's portable and gave gamers-on-the-go a great avenue for playing some casual-friendly golf in a light-hearted environment. But another name in golf is making its way to the PSP: Pangya. TOMY Corporation is bringing Pangya: Fantasy Golf, the popular Korean golf experience from Ntreev Soft, exclusively to the PSP this summer. The game features beautiful fantasy-themed courses, 18 characters and tons of customization. As if thousands of character options aren't cool enough, Pangya will also feature a story mode for each character! Now that's style.

Considering how new the Pangya franchise is to the U.S. market, we sent in some questions to Mike Jones at TOMY Corporation so we could find out more about this unique, fantastical golf experience. Ah, the beauty of anime sports!

IGN: Hello! Thanks for taking the time to do this Q & A with us. Tell us who you are and what your role is on the Pangya project.

Mike Jones: My name is Mike Jones and I'm the Associate Producer at TOMY handling the U.S. version of Pangya: Fantasy Golf.

IGN: For gamers unfamiliar with the Pangya franchise (as it's mainly popular in Korea), tell us a little bit about this PSP iteration.

Mike Jones: To give a little background, Pangya was developed in Korea by a company named Ntreev Soft. It became popular in Asia as an online MMO-esque golf competition game where you create your character and customize its clothes and equipment and try to increase your stats over time by playing in tournaments, etc. So it has a lot of the same addictive qualities as an RPG, but it's golf!

Now that Pangya has gained some global recognition, Ntreev Soft wanted to bring its concept to the PSP and we thought the game was so cool, we wanted to help. So Ntreev has been working on a completely new iteration of Pangya that has been engineered specifically for the PSP -- it's not a port or a re-release of old content. This game is totally unique to the portable.

IGN: Awesome. So how do the golf mechanics work?

Mike Jones: The basic golf mechanics are similar to what most of the golf-gaming crowd are used to: power/accuracy gauge, ball contact point adjustment, different ground types and obstacles. And all that stuff feels extremely polished. But what's interesting about Pangya is that it's also a fantasy game. So there are a lot of new twists on typical golf gameplay. You have power ups, items, special shots like the "Tomohawk" and all the equipment management you can do to get different advantages in different situations. Pangya has a solid foundation of basic golf mechanics as well as a lot of fresh new features to sink your teeth into.

IGN: Will this game appeal to a casual crowd or more hardcore players?

Mike Jones: I think there's a lot of lip service out there about games appealing to "everyone" that isn't always accurate. But I think Pangya straddles the gap pretty well. Like I said there is a solid, polished foundation of golf mechanics that are easy and intuitive for anyone to learn. So if you like golf or pretty graphics or just a fun game to play, Pangya is exactly that.

But for the more hardcore crowd, there's a ton of depth hidden beneath those core mechanics. There are eight storylines, 18 characters, 1300+ costumes, items and equipment sets as well as all the other gameplay mechanics (like special shots) that you can master. So depending on how you like to play, you can keep it light-weight and fun or go super in-depth to complete all the tournaments and story modes and collect all the equipment in the game, not to mention the multiplayer competition as well. Mike Jones: Well, there are eight main characters. The other 10 characters appear throughout the story but are more side-characters, like caddies or some of the "bad guys." But all of them are unlockable as playable characters and have different attributes and skill distributions to start with. All of the characters look really unique and range from humans to fairies to dragons and more!

IGN: It sounds like customization plays a huge role in Pangya. How involved is it and how many options do players have in tweaking their characters?

Mike Jones: There are basically two categories that all the customization falls into: cosmetic and functional. Stuff like hair dye, shoes, hats and special costume sets just affect your character's outward appearance. Sometimes they add extra benefits like earning more money in tournaments, or temporarily increasing your stats, but for the most part it's cosmetic. Then there's all the functional equipment: club sets, balls, rings, items, etc. that can be used to adjust your stats. The strategy for sort of "choosing your equipment before battle" can get really detailed depending on what your objective might be. Players can go as lightweight or as in-depth with this as they want.

IGN: Can you describe the game's Story mode? Stories and golf don't usually go together...

Mike Jones: There are eight main characters all with a unique storyline. There are two available from the very start and as you play through each of the characters' stories you'll unlock the other characters and their respective story modes. Basically, the game takes place in an alternate dimension where "Pangya" is an age-old tradition that is similar to Earth's "golf." There's a lot to do with life energy and their world being at risk and bad guys wanting to use all that energy for bad stuff, but I'll let you guys play the game to get all the details. (laughs)

IGN: Sounds intense! Tell us about Pangya's multiplayer components.

Mike Jones: Pangya: Fantasy Golf supports eight-player multiplayer via ad hoc wireless connections. You can play in singles or team tournaments. And on top of that, playing multiplayer will reward you with money to get more equipment and customizable stuff. So there's more incentive to compete with your friends.

IGN: Some gamers draw similarities between the Pangya franchise and the Hot Shots series. What makes Pangya stand apart from its peers?

Mike Jones: Well, Pangya really is all about the fantasy look/feel and all the customization. Both Hot Shots and Pangya are "best-in-class" golf games, but Pangya offers a unique look, deep customization and new gameplay elements that we think are pretty fresh for this particular genre.

IGN: When is Pangya due out?

Mike Jones: Summer 2009. We haven't set the exact release date yet, but we'll keep you posted.

IGN: Cool. So what's one more thing PSP owners need to know about Pangya -- besides the fact that they need to buy it?

Mike Jones: Pangya is a polished golf game with pretty visuals, cool characters and tons of RPG elements and customization that add depth to the gameplay. So if any of that sounds appealing to you, we hope you'll check it out and like it as much as we do.

IGN: Thanks Mike!

source: IGN.COM

Suikoden Tierkreis Review

2009-03-17T19:35:00.000-07:00

The Nintendo DS has been on one hell of a hot streak thus far in 2009. While Wii continues to have a decent – but fairly light – sprinkling of titles over the first three months, DS already has a few serious Game of the Year contenders. Today alone we're seeing three titles hitting shelves that all score in the upper echelon, awarded with Editor's Choice awards and sitting not only at the top of this year's list, but overall in their own respective genres. How did Konami compete with Rockstar's GTA or EA's Henry Hatsworth? Well, launching a spin-off to one of the biggest RPG franchises in the world is a good start…

For starters though, it's absolutely worth mentioning to fans of the franchise that Suikoden Tierkreis is an otherworld spin-off of its original inspiration. This isn't the same series that got its start on the original PSX, you won't find duels, massive army vs. army battles, any returning characters, or a very mature story. What you will get, however, is still an awesome role-playing experience on DS, and one that fits the system very well.

Everything from environments to battles are a blending of 2D and 3D. This is one beautiful game.

Suikoden Tierkreis makes some serious changes from the original series, but despite any differences hardcore fans (myself included) will notice, Suikoden is a great DS RPG. The idea of 108 playable characters returns, though this time around there's a huge emphasis on anime culture, so you get overly-obvious good/bad characters, lots of in-game animated cinema, lots of over-the-top voice acting, and a story that's pretty spelled out for younger gamers, as well as those that frequent every Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest game on the system. It's the Suikoden philosophy and design, now streamlined for the DS audience.

On the presentation side of things, Suikoden is simply beautiful, and it's one of the deepest RPGs on the system. The visuals are stunning, having 3D models displayed over 2D, hand-drawn locales. All navigation through towns is done with a menu system rather than full-on exploration, making it quicker to get from place to place, and also keeping the game small enough in size to fit on a DS cart. Each character in the game has numerous pieces of portrait art (even more when you account for the eventual aging that happens with the core team), all major scenes in this 30 hour adventure are voice acted, and the amount of perspective changes and "shot framing" is very impressive. You'll control characters up close, navigate huge areas with microscopic models on the screen, run around with a bird's eye view of an area, or have shots framed to show just how gigantic some of the game's locales are. In similar titles (games like the original Resident Evil offerings do this) it's all about framing each shot based on the hand-drawn backdrops, and Suikoden masters the art. It's a beautiful, cinematic experience, and one of the best looking and most professionally produced titles on the system.

When it comes to the main story itself, however, I have to admit that I was let down a bit. The anime influence is great for things like animated character intros and specific plot devices, but the main story, while extremely lengthy and very ambitious, is extremely "light vs. dark" in nature. Rather than presenting the story in a way where players feel specific emotions though subtle events, the game literally tells the player what's what. As an example, the adventurers start meeting up with The Order from the very start of the game, and rather than show subtle clues as to the organization's cult-like structure, the game really beats you over the head with it. I'm not sure how many times the main character (me in the game) told the group how "bad" or "not right" something was, and it wasn't needed. Any subtle connection found with characters like Crono in Square's own Chrono Trigger is thrown out the window here, as its more like watching an anime with characters you also happen to control. The bad guys are doing bad things, and that makes them bad. We get it. And while the story itself isn't as deep or hard-hitting as others in the Suikoden cannon, it's still a great offering, and one of the top RPGs on the system. The music is amazing, the voice acting is extremely well done (minus the strange speed-talking from the main character), and the game itself is very deep. Things like the rune system and duels have been taken out, but you'll still have 108 main story characters to round up, complete with team attacks and huge supporting attacks. The game makes use of a new Mark of the Stars magic system that relies on MP (magic points) instead of specific runes for characters, and while returning Suikoden fans will want the classic system, this certainly streamlines it for the somewhat younger core DS crowd.

The trade system is also back and in full effect, allowing players to work a sort of stock market across the world, buying or finding items, and then selling them off to regions that are in high demand. Equipment has also been simplified (no upgrading or item merging to be found), though it's also well balanced, changes up strategy in a big way, and all weaponry and items in the game actually show up on in-game character models, taking the visuals even further. The quest system is back as well, with some of them being extremely short, though others are long enough to check out some original locales or revisit specific areas while gaining your 108 characters. For those that want to participate in the game's online mode, you'll be rewarded with a great system that not only deepens the experience, but also allows you to get a taste for characters you might not have unlocked in your own game. You won't be teaming up with friends and taking on the Big Bad Order or anything, but trading characters and picking up missions adds a great element to the game not found in other role-playing games.

The use of perspective and scale is nothing short of stunning.

As always, Suikdoen brings a great element to the world of RPG battling. Random encounters are quick and easy if set to auto-battle, allowing you to check out some great animation and quick "everyone for themselves" fighting a la the original Suikoden mechanic. As one minor gripe though, regular battle doesn't save what you selected in the previous round, so if you want to cast specific magic with each character over and over again, you'll need to go in and select it each time, slowing things down a bit. Even within the game's battle system though, the huge attention to presentation makes Suikoden Tierkreis feel less like a token "portable RPG," and more like a full-on experience that just happens to be handheld.

Source: IGN.COM

Mana Khemia: Student Alliance Review

2009-03-15T20:47:00.000-07:00

I love NIS America, I really do. That they try so damned hard to fill a niche that a very select few other publishers even dare tackle is admirable -- commendable, even -- but while a cursory glance would make it seem like Atlus finally has a friend in the import business, the chasm in quality of releases between the two publishers is becoming ever greater with each successive release NISA pumps out. Oh, their own internally-developed titles like the recent Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? or the Disgaea series get fantastic localizations (the PSP port of the first Disgaea was, at the very least, dead even with the PS2 original and some might say, thanks to the new content, even better), but it seems like the other stuff -- in particular Gust's RPGs -- are getting second-hand treatment at best.

NISA's PSP efforts have been even more spotty. A string of Idea Factory-developed ports were, at turns, absolute abominations, slightly improved and almost passable, but with the port of Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis (re-christened with the subtitle Student Alliance), things have taken a massive step backward. Let me be crystal clear here: this is a festering abomination of a port, rendering what was a decent little RPG with a seriously heavy crafting/item creation bent little more than a series of near-constant, hitching, stuttering load screens. Whatever fun the crafting process, the absolute crux of Mana Khemia's storyline, character progression and core gameplay, may have had is utterly lost as half the time you're staring at the same static, weirdly blurry images.

It's such an anime game.

I'm not going to get into the particulars of the core gameplay; with the exception of some new characters and new items to craft, the game is essentially the same content-wise as it was on the PS2, so if the idea of item creation from recipes sounds interesting, by all means, check out Jeff's review of the original. It's certainly not one of Gust's best efforts, but puts their crafting/alchemy bits found in most of their other games at the fore, and can make for some interesting -- if protracted -- bits of item hunting and experimental mixing and matching.

Unfortunately, it's also requires quite a bit of back and forth, jumping from off-campus hunting/gathering grounds to come up with basic ingredients, and then taking them to an alchemy pot or forge on campus to start whipping things up. Because the game doesn't really give you an easy at-a-glance peek at the materials needed for everything (at least not on a screen that also tells you what you have in your possession beyond the actual alchemy screens themselves), there's quite a bit of trial and error and moving between locations -- something that's made absolutely mind-numbing in the PSP version thanks to all the loading.

How much loading, exactly? If it's not on the screen at the exact moment you're playing the game, chances are the game will pause to pull from the disc. Opening a menu? Wait a few seconds. Switching tabs/characters in that menu? Wait a few more. Starting a battle? Expect to wait upwards of five-plus seconds to see that kick off at times. Just getting the visual prompt that says you can pull in one of your reserve characters to take or deliver an extra hit in battle? Yep, chugga-chugga. Getting the battle results screen? Looooooooad. Transitioning between screens? Tick-tock. Just pressing the jump button at times will cause the game to hitch. In fact, just about any time there is a transition of some sort from a cutscene to when you can actually move your character will almost lock up the game -- and twice during the 15 or so hours I spent with the game before I couldn't take anymore, it did lock up completely. To make matters worse, the game itself runs like absolute crap on the PSP, frequently dipping dangerously close to single-digit framerate territory where the PS2 version zipped along at a silky clip. It's not bad, it's deplorable, and it quite literally leeches any potential fun out of the experience.

This looks delightfully odd.

There was apparently some attempt made to mitigate these pauses with something called Jump Start, which essentially duplicates (albeit more slowly) a feature on the newer 2000 and 3000 models of the PSP wherein cached info is loaded from memory (in this case around 250 megs or so of installed data on your Memory Stick) to help supplement the stuff on the disc. It's not quite the same as the newer PSPs' internal cache that sucks stuff off the UMD ahead of time, but the idea is essentially the same: cut down on random seeks and loading to help smooth things out.

As you can probably tell by that little tirade I went on two paragraphs ago, though, Jump Start is woefully ineffectual -- if it even does anything beyond occupying a sizeable chunk of your storage. I could almost swear whoever burned the game onto a UMD tried to randomize the data, leading the PSP's UMD drive to constantly howl under the strain of seeking out new chunks of data to, say, pull up the status screen for a character. Lesson number one in porting a game to another platform: don't take arguably the worst, slowest part of the hardware and then ask it to pull overtime; it's only going to end badly.

source: http://psp.ign.com/articles/962/962430p1.html

Air Conflicts: Aces of World War II Hands-on

2009-03-12T21:05:00.001-07:00

It would seem that videogames and World War II go together better than Brad and Angelina. Every year, a handful or first-person shooters and a bunch of flight games are set in the era, and people keep buying them up. Sadly, this overabundance of historical warfare doesn't usually bleed over to the PSP, but Graffiti Entertainment and Cowboy Rodeo are looking to change that with Air Conflict: Aces of World War II, a PSP title that's going to put you in the cockpit of 17 planes in more than 240 missions.

In Air Conflicts, you'll be able to either jump into one of several campaigns or take to the skies as part of an ad-hoc multiplayer match for up to eight players. When your boot up Air Conflicts and choose to go solo, you'll enter a name for your pilot and then pick which country you're going to fly for -- the British Royal Air Force, the German Air Force known as Luffwaffe, USSR, or U.S. Air Force.

Get'em in your crosshairs.
What's interesting about this is the fact that there are three or four campaigns for each country, and advancing in them seems to be optional. See, after choosing to be red, white and blue, I went through the typical training that taught me how to use my machine guns with the X Button, how to shoot rockets with Triangle, and how to drop bombs with the Square Button, but after that, I was tossed into the unforgiving world of aerial warfare. I'd go after some Germans over Leipzig, get the crap shot out of me, and crash. Rather than replaying the missions, a screen from HQ would summarize the loss and talk about me bailing out but still advance the story. So, rather than replaying these missions until I got it right, the war went on and the fools in Washington kept assigning me new planes to wreck.

As far as the actual nuts and bolts of gameplay is concerned -- remember that this is just a preview of the game and there's still a lot of time to go -- Air Conflicts seems to be a mixed bag. I enjoy dogfighting as much as the next guy, but the reticule's pretty small in this one and it makes getting a good bead on an enemy tough. That frustration is only exacerbated by the limited number of bullets and missiles you're given. Although my favorite part of Air Conflicts is the bombing runs -- where you tap down on the D-Pad to switch to a below the belly view as you drop your payload -- you only get a couple of bombs for every mission so you end up having to use missiles or machine guns on ground-based encampments. It's fun to chase enemies, but you don't take damage for your planes colliding.

Beyond that, Air Conflicts isn't doing much for me visually. The planes look alright -- even better when they're going down in flames and leaving a billowing smoke trail -- but the ground textures are bland and blocky. The trees are sparse, and it's hard to pick out ground objectives as you come up on them. The HUD looks OK -- complete with a damage gauge, RADAR, compass, and speed tracker -- However, the biggest visual "WTF?" is the font this game uses. Before every mission you get a screen briefing you on the story and objectives, from the pause screen you can take a look at the goals, and there's the summary after the mission -- all of this is written in a font that is somewhere around the size 6 or 7 mark by my best estimates in Microsoft Word. I'm not exaggerating; this stuff is tiny, hurts my eyes, and is completely nonsensical seeing as how much text there is to read in the title.

Take this, civilians!

Another odd choice is the musical score accompanying Air Conflicts. At the main menu, there's a cheery beat with a steady snare drum-like sound that in no way gets you pumped up for war. It's almost the type of tune I'd expect to play during a JRPG cutscene of people eating ramen around a fire and discussing their schoolwork. Inside the actual game, the uplifting tunes continue and there's even a cheery "Flight of the Bumblebee" knockoff.

Air Conflicts: Aces of World War II is coming to a store near you on March 15, 2009. My time with the preview build raised a few red flags, but the fact that you can have nine pilot slots means that it'll be easy to try all of the campaigns, it supports Game Sharing, there are stats to monitor, and that dogfighting can be fun means that would-be pilots should keep an eye out for our full review in a few weeks.

Tenchu: Shadow Assassins Hands-on

2009-03-12T20:59:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year, Ubisoft released Tenchu: Shadow Assassins on the Wii, a ninja-filled stealth game developed by the original creators of the franchise. The game once again placed players in the quiet shoes of two ninja: Rikimaru and Ayame, who both serve Lord Gohda by carrying out his less-than-clean work. The entire game is played from a third-person perspective and players move around dark environments, systematically dispatching guards and carrying out Lord Gohda's will. In a few weeks, Ubisoft will be bringing Tenchu: Shadow Assassins to the PSP. As far as I can tell, Shadow Assassins will be a very straight-forward port of the Wii version with no new modes to speak of. PSP owners will simply be taking this stealth experience on the road -- ditching the motion controls along the way.

In Shadow Assassins, you control either Rikimaru or Ayame through a series of story missions that tell of their exploits under Lord Gohda's employment. Besides the story missions -- which can last an hour or more depending on how often you stumble -- players can also undertake short Assignment missions that not only let you practice certain techniques but give you a method for breaking up the pace of the longer levels. Aside from these two modes, there's really nothing else to speak of.

This guy means serious business.

Unlike the Wii version, Shadow Assassins on the PSP is obviously controlled with standard button presses and no motion control. Movement is tank-like, as pressing left or right on the analog nub will rotate your character and pressing forward and backward will move him or her in those directions. According to the default control scheme, you can strafe by holding down the L trigger and moving the analog nub left and right. Or, if you need to get from one place to another quickly, you can hold the L trigger and press up to spring forward in a dash.

The R trigger is assigned to your evasive techniques, called the Hayate, which lets the ninja dart from one hiding spot to another. The X button is used for pressing up against a wall while jumping is mapped to the Circle button. If you find yourself near an enemy, pressing the Square button while still hidden will activate an instant kill -- or Hissatsu -- and silently dispatch your opponent. Finally, holding the Triangle button will illuminate enemies and their lines of sight in bright colors, as well as highlight shadowy areas in which you can hide.

Speaking of these shadowy areas, Shadow Assassins' stealth system is built around pre-set sneak points/routes. If you can hide next to something, an inky mist will hover around it. In order to give yourself more shadows to sneak through, you can use water to put out torches or throw a shuriken at a candle to snuff the light. So while you can technically alter the environment and increase the amount of darkness you can traverse, those points are the only areas you can sneak through (besides hiding in bushes, barrels and ponds). There's no real-time shadow system that gives players the ability to "improvise" their stealthy actions.

Although there are certainly more violent games on the PSP, Tenchu: Shadow Assassins has a fair amount of blood in it and the Hissatsu kills do look pretty cool. Unfortunately, sneaking up behind someone only gives you so many different types of stealth kills. They get repetitive quickly, but luckily you can also perform different stealth kills if you're attacking from within a pond or hanging from the rafters overhead.

There's nothing like a kickass ninja girl.

The first few story missions revolve around navigating the feudal Japanese environments and assassinating the leaders waiting at the end. This process usually entails sliding along walls, rolling from bush to bush, creeping underneath houses and hopping between rafters. As exciting as this gameplay sounds, the actual experience worries me. The ninja control very awkwardly and platforming segments can be extremely troublesome. I can't be sure if this problem will persist throughout the entire game, but the beginning segments were frustrating.

Also frustrating is the fact that getting caught once basically means game over. Your ninja can dodge one attack but the second time you're caught, you have to start from your last checkpoint. Perhaps these frustrations will be alleviated as I learn to roll with the systems that are in place.

I loved the early Tenchu games and I'm interested to see how this one pans out, but I have my reservations -- especially considering the controls which could prove more cumbersome than ninja-like.

source: http://psp.ign.com/articles/962/962154p1.html

Yakuza Takes Over Japan (Super Sega sequel leads PS3 to the top of the charts.)

2009-03-10T22:55:00.000-07:00

March 6, 2009 - The PS3 did something this week it hasn't done since Metal Gear Solid 4 came out: topped Japan's hardware charts. Thanks to Yakuza 3, the system managed to beat not only the Wii, but the seemingly unbeatable DSi as well.

Media Create's charts for February 23 through March 1 put Yakuza 3 in first place in its debut week, with 372,301 units sold. As a comparison, the first PS3 Yakuza game, a side story known as Yakuza Kenzan, managed lifetime sales of around 348,000 units. Sega is presumably happy with these results.

Don't worry Solid Snake fanatics. Metal Gear Solid 4 still holds the record over in Japan for PS3 debuts, with 465,000 units sold in its first week last summer. But with Yakuza 3's strong performance, and a set of ubiquitous promotions involving everything from cup noodles to suntan salons, we expect Yakuza to have some legs. Snake had better watch out for Kiryu and Haruka sneaking up on him from behind.

Sega had some wild promotions for Yakuza 3. This ad truck toured the streets of Tokyo on launch day and promoted the game and its CD single.

The PlayStation brand isn't a one hit wonder this week. Placing second in Media Create's charts for the week is Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce. The PSP title sold 219,139 units in its first week -- more than three times what the original PSP Dynasty Warriors sold at its release. Strikforce, of course, brings four player co-op to the series, meaning it might have gotten the attention of the massive Monster Hunter crowd.

Here's the full top 10:

1. Yakuza 3 (Sega, PS3): 372,301
2. Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce (Koei, PSP): 219,139
3. Mario & Luigi RPG 3!!! (Nintendo, DS): 52,294
4. One Piece Unlimited Cruise Episode 2 (Bandai Namco, Wii): 45,309
5. Game Center CX 2 (Bandai Namco, DS): 43,771
6. Sunday X Magazine (Konami, DS): 23,447
7. The King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match (SNK Playmore, PS2): 19,473
8. Star Ocean 4 (Square Enix, Xbox 360): 17,012
9. Taiko no Tatsujin Wii (Bandai Namco, Wii): 16,631
10. Wii Fit (Nintendo, Wii): 16,242

Mario & Luigi RPG!!! 3 has topped the 300,000 mark since its release three weeks back. Taiko Drum Master has been selling steadily since Christmas and is now at the 400,000 mark.

Although PS3 placed in the top this week, the margin was pretty uncomfortable between it and the DSi. PS3 sold 36,513 units, more than double last week. DSi fell a bit from last week, to 35,827 units.

The full hardware chart is as follows. Last week's sales are in parenthesis:

PS3: 36,513 (16,149)
DSi: 35,827 (41,839)
PSP: 35,588 (29,552)
Wii: 17,876 (16,973)
Xbox 360: 11,795 (25,334)
DS Lite: 11,774 (9,975)

Things should get really interesting with next week's sales chart, which will reflect this week's release of Resident Evil 5 (yes, Japan got the game a week before everyone else!). Perhaps the PS3 and Xbox 360 will both be able to top the portables.

source: http://psp.ign.com/articles/959/959991p1.html

Resistance: Retribution Review

2009-03-10T22:49:00.000-07:00

March 10, 2009 - There's no sense in beating around the bush -- Resistance: Retribution is excellent. It's got a main character you'll connect with, an engaging single-player campaign, a crapload of unlockables, PS3 connectivity and the strongest online multiplayer I have ever seen in a PSP game. In short, you're an idiot if you don't buy this game.

Set between Resistance: Fall of Man and Resistance 2, Retribution tells the tale of James Grayson. A British Marine, Grayson was doing his part in the fight against the Chimera when he and a pair of soldiers stumbled into the middle of the Chimera conversion process (i.e. a beast turning a human into a monster). The boys took out the overseeing baddie but discovered that the person on his way to becoming the enemy was actually Grayson's brother. Grayson kills his own brother and it basically cripples Grayson's life as he knows it. He goes AWOL from the armed services and sets out on a one-man campaign to blow up every conversion center he can find. After eliminating more than 25 of the enemy bases, the Marines catch up to Grayson. See, while he's become a folk hero to the human race, the Brits aren't too keen on desertion; they arrest, try and sentence Grayson to death. Before he can face the firing squad, the European resistance known as the Maquis pops up to ask for some help delivering a serum that should clear out the Chimera. The Brits agree, release Grayson and the war is back on.

And that's just the opening movie, people.

Video reviews: All the cool Chimera are doing it.
Once you start playing, the story only gets better and it's thanks to the character of James Grayson. From the moment he had to shoot his brother, I was drawn to Grayson. A smartass and a badass, Grayson's that adult character we haven't seen much of on the PSP. He curses, he screws and he's only helping the Maquis and British Marines out because he made a promise to himself to kill every Chimera he possibly could. When Grayson goes out on these missions, the Maquis -- generally headed by the sexy Raine Bouchard -- will talk about its objectives and Grayson kind of just nods along and lets it slide in one ear and out the other. A perfect example is when Grayson and Bouchard head into a conversion center that's unlike the ones our hero has seen before. Bouchard begs him not to blow it up because she wants to study the inside after they've cleared out the Chimera. Grayson tells her what she wants to hear and then blows the center up anyway. These pivotal moments are driven home by Grayson's journal entries before every mission where he explains his motives and actions. This is a three-dimensional character who has lost his only connection to the world and is hell-bent on killing as many Chimera as he can before they kill him. This personality gets fleshed out through the game -- your first playthrough should take you about 10 hours -- and makes you care that much more about the experience.

Taking Grayson through the trials and tribulations of a globe-spanning war is a proven system of control that you'll probably be pretty familiar with if you played the Syphon Filter games. Yes, Sony Bend has brought back the control scheme it pioneered with Gabe Logan, but the studio has also added a number of improvements to make the third-person action even better. In the simplest of terms, the analog nub moves Grayson forward, backward, and side-to-side, while the PSP's face buttons control his point of view. Tapping R fires your weapon, holding L switches to your weapon's secondary fire, and down on the D-Pad will let you hop over/climb things in certain contextual situations. Tapping right on the D-Pad will cycle through your weapons, but holding right will pause the game and bring up your weapon wheel. Here, you can leisurely page through every weapon you have -- you don't ever lose a gun and you'll keep your arsenal from playthrough to playthrough -- and choose which one you're going to battle with.

Bring it on, Titan!

Yes, this is all a lot like the last Syphon Filter game -- even the save icon, journals preceding the missions and more are in the Logan's Shadow format -- but there have been tweaks added that make the experience easier to get a handle on. At the top of the list is the game's Aim Assist box. When you're playing, there will be a yellow box on screen that's pretty large. As long as you get the enemy in this box, the crosshairs of your gun will automatically leap to your foe so that you can run and gun without having to awkwardly nudge the crosshairs on top of your target. It's a simple system that makes the game considerably easier and faster, but you can turn it off if you like.

Although cover has always been a big part of Bend's PSP outings, the developer has put an extra layer of polish on Retribution. When you walk up to a doorjamb or box, Grayson will stick to it automatically much like Logan would in the Syphon Filter games, but now there's no blind fire or convoluted process of holding a direction, leaning out and firing. Here, Grayson sticks to the object, you move the crosshairs into position, and tap or hold R to fire. When you stop shooting, Grayson moves back to cover. There's no need to tell him to crouch because he'll understand when he needs to do what and you can hurdle over an object from cover without having to stand up like Logan did.

Don't get me wrong, I loved the Syphon Filter games, but they always felt very robotic in movement -- moving Logan from cover, through an enemy, into lower cover and over an obstacle felt slowly paced and input-heavy. That isn't the case in Retribution. Grayson will fly around levels blasting bad guys and you'll love every second of it.
However, what I will say about Logan's Shadow compared to Retribution is that I remember feeling challenged in the last Syphon Filter. That isn't the case in Resistance. Don't misquote me; there are challenging parts to Retribution and I'm comparing the titles on normal difficulty, but I never really felt like the enemies were offering up that much of a fight in Retribution. Hell, there were times when a Boiler (a Chimeran female whose head explodes if she gets too close to you) would pop up and scare the hell out of me and the final mission has two tunnels that are literally filled with every enemy you've faced and very few health packs, but I always felt like I could get through it with ease. Obviously, you could crank the difficulty up to try and get a better challenge out of the title, but even then it didn't seem like insurmountable odds.

Even weirder can be the feeling that you're entering these really big, important Chimeran facilities, but you're not seeing the same type of resistance you found in the PS3 titles. Yeah, I know the PSP can't handle that many things on screen, but why aren't the Chimera defending these positions better?

James Grayson is an awesome dude.
Still, don't let those minor criticisms scare you off. Resistance: Retribution is a hell of a ride and packs a lot of punch -- especially in the firepower department. There are a dozen weapons in Retribution and each is integral to your survival. My favorite part of the game was one of the most frustrating. Remember that tunnel I was talking about a while ago with every enemy? There wasn't a checkpoint in the middle of that tunnel, so I had to make it from one end of the road to another. This meant that every time a wave of enemies popped up, I'd hold right on the D-Pad and cycle through my arsenal for the right weapon to take out the bad guys. The chaingun and its movable shield was perfect for the massive Titans that stomped down the hall and fired explosive energy blasts, the shotgun was made for taking out Leapers that hatched from gooey eggs and being able to shoot through walls with the Auger made my life so much easier when I was on my last bit of health. Toss in the Razor -- and energy blaster similar to the Bullseye where the secondary fire sends a charged blade that ricochets around cleaning out the bad guys -- and you've got a weapon collection that's fun to use.

I legitimately enjoyed myself the entire way through Retribution; I even found myself doing something I rarely do and that was daydreaming of my second playthrough while I was still in the middle of my first. See, there's a ton of replay value to this title. For every section of a level, there are three Skill Point objectives. These vary between feats such as getting nine headshots with the sniper rifle to killing three Titans with only the rocket launcher to killing a handful of leapers without them attacking your comrade. You play the level, try to hit these "achievements," and if you unlock them all, you get one of six locked files such as movies, music and more. Sadly, you can't check the Skill Point requirements when you're in a level. The only way to scope the requirements is to choose the level after having already played it once; you then have to remember the requirements while you play. Meanwhile, there are 67 pieces of intel hidden throughout the game. If you find all of the pieces in one of the three categories, you'll unlock a weapon assigned to that category. These pieces include the XR-004 Allure, Plasma Grenade, and Longbow 1S-1K. If you unlock everything, you'll get the explosive-shooting magnum.

However, there is a way to get the magnum without unlocking any intel. It's called infecting your PSP and it's pretty awesome. See, Resistance: Retribution and Resistance 2 have this private dance called PSP Connectivity. Basically, you put Resistance 2 in your PS3, go to the options menu and select Connect PSP. From there, you need to have you PSP plugged into the PS3 via the USB cable and Resistance: Retribution's main menu active. You'll have two options on your TV screen -- Infect Resistance: Retribution and Activate Resistance: Retribution Plus.

I hate Boilers.

The first one basically changes everything you know about James Grayson. Rather than being a normal human out to fight the Chimera, he'll be infected with the same virus Nathan Hale struggles with on the consoles. Grayson will be able to breathe underwater and regenerate his health meter, but he'll also get a spiffy Spectre suit like Hale's from R2 as well as that sweet magnum I mentioned earlier. Now, this change will only last as long as Retribution is being played after being Infected; that is, if you quit back to the XMB and then restart the game, you're going to have regular ol' James Grayson at your disposal. When I first heard about this Infection angle, the coolest thing to me was that some of the in-game dialogue would change when Grayson's eyes went yellow. In practice, however, the changes are super-minor. The full-on videos still show Grayson in his trademark leather jacket, but then anything using in-game assets will show him in the Spectre suit with just the occasional line of dialogue changed to reflect the infection.

I guess I was expecting more because after doing a straight playthrough of the title, I got to see how cut and dry things are for Grayson when someone's infected. I figured that infecting someone who hated the infected so much would lead to at least one cutscene of him struggling with the idea, but that never happened. Instead some soldier asks why James looks jaunty and our hero nonchalantly tells him that he's infected. It's still cool that they changed the dialogue at all, but I could've gone for more. Thankfully, Grayson looks slick in black and regenerative health will be a lifesaver to anyone struggling with a certain part of the title.

Activating Resistance: Retribution Plus is probably a nifty add-on most have heard about. When you select this option from the R2 menu with Retribution plugged into the PS3, you'll transfer your PS3 controller to the PSP. That's right, you'll be able to control the Retribution action on your PSP via your SixAxis or DualShock 3 (rumble included). The controls carry over pretty much button for button, except that you can now use the second analog stick to control Grayson's POV rather than the PSP's face buttons. The major change, however, is that this method of control eliminates the Aim Assist box you find in the original game. Now that you have complete control, you're on your own to aim. This actually makes the game quite a bit harder. Without the Aim Assist, you now have to line up each shot rather than just getting the giant window around a target. It slows down the action to something more akin to a PS3 third-person shooter.

The switch even eliminates one of my concerns with the original control method -- if you're using the PSP, you can only cycle one way through your weapons; with Retribution Plus, your shoulder buttons allow you to cycle both ways. Personally, I found the default DualShock controls a bit sluggish, but Sony Bend thought that through and movement speeds can be easily adjusted from the options menu. All in all, this is another great addition to the replay value of Retribution -- you figure that this marks a third way that you can play the same single-player campaign.
If you move beyond the stuff you can do solo, you'll find that Resistance: Retribution keeps on giving. Packing both an ad-hoc mode and infrastructure option, Retribution has one of the deepest online communities I have ever seen on the PSP. Infrastructure is set up for eight-player matches (four people as the Cloven and four as the Maquis) in one of five modes. There are clans, voice chat, 12 ranks to achieve, a friends list, unranked matches and more. I mean, there are 22 medals in this online -- each with gold, silver, and bronze rankings -- that are attached to your profile so that voyeurs can see that you've raked in 200 kills with the Storm Rifle or that you've been awarded the "Helping Hand" medal for 300 kill assists (quick aside: kill assists rock. After playing a few rounds of R:R, I was getting mad while playing Killzone 2 and not getting credit for helping teammates kill other people).

In short, this is a PS3-like multiplayer experience in the palm of your hand. The gameplay itself works just like it does in the single-player campaign but now you can taunt fallen foes. The taunt you choose is random, but as you rank up from a lowly private, you'll have access to more and more of the library that includes dancing over bodies while a techno beat blares and kicking dirt on downed opponents; there's even a "Teabagger" medal to get by taunting. If you come across a downed teammate, you can also use down on the D-Pad to revive the player.

Multiplayer mayhem.
In terms of the five modes, you should be familiar with the majority of them. Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag are self-explanatory, while Free For All is just a regular deathmatch. Still, Assimilation and Containment might require a bit more explanation. Assimilation starts one player as a member of the Cloven and the other players all start as Maquis members. As the Cloven kills people, they are assimilated into the Cloven brood so that the Maquis unit gets smaller and smaller. The twist on this mode is that whichever group has the least amount of people is the more powerful squad. So, when the game begins the single Cloven is going to be able to take more damage and eliminate foes with ease and in the end, the single Maquis will reap these benefits. Meanwhile, in Containment, squads battle to capture and hold coolant nodes for as long as possible.

These modes are simple and familiar to anyone who has played some multiplayer matches in recent memory, but they feel fresh thanks to Retribution's five maps that hearken back to environments from the campaign. When I first played this, I got excited thinking about finally having a super-solid multiplayer community on my PSP, but that feeling waned a bit when I thought about the lackluster amount of WiFi on Bay Area public transportation. If I'm sitting at home, wouldn't I rather play Killzone 2 multiplayer rather than Retribution? Well, the answer is probably yes, but I think Retribution fills another important multiplayer gap in my life -- something cool to play while my wife watches crappy television. I love ranking up and shooting people in the head, and if Katie's watching something I'm not interested, why not do it on my favorite handheld? Retribution has some awesome options -- there are 60 clan patches to choose from, you can leave messages of the day for your clan mates, all the stats can be tracked on MyResistance.net and you can import PSN Friends who have played Retribution -- and the gameplay is great. I can honestly see me playing this.

I can't believe I just said that about online multiplayer on the PSP.

I realize I'm writing a book here, but there's just so much to say about this game. Before I go, I'd be a fool not to mention the music and the graphics. The voices here are great, but the orchestra Sony brought in for the musical score steals the show. When you're in a heated battle -- taking cover behind crates while the gunfire of Hybrids rains down on you and some ugly Boilers shamble toward you -- the music is right there with you perfectly accompanying the moment. You owe it to yourself to play Retribution with headphones. On the other side of the coin, I was never impressed with the graphics. The movies look great, but the in-game stuff only looks good for a PSP game. The characters are more realistic than Syphon Filter, but other than that there isn't much of a jump -- just some new environments and animations.

Oh, I'm going to win!

source: http://psp.ign.com/articles/960/960711p1.html

Dragonball: Evolution Hands-on

2009-03-09T19:13:00.000-07:00

March 5, 2009 - If you're totally unfamiliar with Dragonball, you've somehow managed to avoid one of the most widely distributed manga/anime/game licenses around. Revolving around a set of seven magical orbs that have incredible power, as well as ample amounts of over-the-top fighting, the Dragonball franchise has been spread widely across a number of mediums and the action is coming to the big screen next month. A full-length film titled Dragonball: Evolution will follow Justin Chatwin's portrayal of Goku and all the antics therein.

To correspond with the release of the movie, the PSP will be getting a fighting game by the same name. Dragonball: Evolution borrows heavily from the fighting mechanics of the previous Dragonball games but occupies the movie's universe. The result, at least for now, is a bit of a mixed bag.

Pow!

Dragonball: Evolution has a number of different modes to choose from, including a full Story mode, Arcade mode, an Ad-hoc Network Battle feature, Training options and a Mission mode to unlock content. The battle system itself is the expected one-on-one dynamic where you and an opponent face off in a 3D arena. Although you can strafe around and sidestep in Evolution, it looks like most of the actual combat takes place on a 2D plane. Characters have a healthy assortment of Rush, Smash and Special Attacks to take advantage of, as well as a standard Guard and an Aura Burst for altering/powering-up attacks.

Special Attacks are governed by a character's Ki gauge, which can be charged by holding down the L trigger. Players can stock up to seven Ki charges to save throughout the fight and their Ultimate Attacks can only be executed with close to a full seven charges. Goku obviously calls upon his iconic projectile, the Kamehameha, for his Ultimate Attack, but the cinematic attacks vary widely depending on the character. Bulma, for example, unleashes a flurry of gunshots and close-range strikes to great effect.

As fast and frantic as Dragonball: Evolution is, the game isn't particularly deep. From what I've played so far, most moves in the game can be performed by mashing away at one of the buttons, or perhaps pairing a directional input with a simple button press. There's really nothing else to it, though the fast-paced nature of the battles comes through on the PSP, as the game runs very smoothly with little to no slowdown.

Dragonball: Evolution's training mode is surprisingly slick, with enough options to help simulate combat and an easy method for jumping back and forth between practicing and viewing a character's Command List. Oddly enough, though, none of the moves (of which some characters have more than 40) are named, making it slightly difficult to scroll around and find the ones you like. This isn't a huge issue by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm surprised that more details weren't provided.

After learning the ropes in Training mode, I tested out the game's Story offering, which started with a training match between Goku and his grandfather, Gohan. After training, we find out that it's Goku's birthday and he receives one of the seven Dragon Balls from his grandfather. Foreshadowing, perhaps? As Goku heads into school, he's promptly picked on by some bullies who probably wouldn't stand a chance against Goku, but the noble young man has promised his grandfather he wouldn't fight outside his normal training.

After being embarrassed in front of the cute girl Chi Chi, Goku winds up helping her later in the day and getting invited to her house party (Are you keeping up with this?). More antics ensue, and back at Gohan's house, the old man is attacked by a mysterious, knife-throwing woman. I suppose the people of the Dragonball universe are quick to fight.

Although my time with Dragonball: Evolution was short, the combat mechanics still seem to be the same as they've always been in the franchise. I do, unfortunately, have to bring up some serious qualms with the game's visuals: they're awful. Environments are ugly and the character models look like poorly-rendered affairs with the actors' faces pasted on. Oh well.

Keep your eyes peeled for more Dragonball coverage in the coming weeks.

source: http://psp.ign.com/articles/959/959895p1.html

DJ Max Fever

2009-03-09T19:07:00.000-07:00

February 4, 2009 - I have no rhythm. Patapon helped me learn beats, but like Terrence Howard in Mr. Holland's Opus, I'm pretty lost when it comes to keeping pace with music; it's one of the reasons I prefer singing in Rock Band and couldn't get very far in Elite Beat Agents. Still, every once in awhile a music game comes along that makes me put on my headphones, have some fun, and not care that I suck at tapping buttons in time with tunes.

DJ Max Fever is one of those games, and if you dig quirky titles and Asian-inspired pop tunes, it probably deserves a place in your UMD collection.

If you've played Guitar Hero, Rock Band, or -- God help you -- Rock Revolution, the mechanics of DJ Max Fever should be second nature. Although the franchise has made several appearances across the sea, Fever represents DJ Max's first trip to the United States and is actually a compilation of DJ Max Portable and DJ Max 2. You'll choose a song, a video will start to play, and a little cell phone-like screen displaying falling notes will pop up. As the notes cross a line on the cell phone screen, you hit the corresponding button, make music, and get some points. Keep on making beautiful music, and a combo counter will continue to grow on the screen. As that combo count climbs, a Fever Gauge will fill. When the meter's full of Fever, you can tap X and get double the combo and score for awhile. If you're terrible and missing notes left and right, a column of energy on the right side of the screen will fall, and if it hits zero, you're done, son.

Come watch the beats drop.

Seems pretty standard, right? Well, it is, but what makes DJ Max so frickin' cool in my eyes is the song library you have at your fingertips. There are 50 songs to go through and rock and they range from techno beats (Jupiter Driving) to pop songs in English (LuvFlow) to noir rap (Out Law). There's truly something for everyone in this game, and if you can't dig the music, there's got to be a video that you'll like -- who doesn't love the Bruce Lee look-alike with snot coming out of his nose doing pushups in Astro Fight? I mean, Taekwonburi has a dancing duck who only quacks and a DJing dog; that's just awesome.

Another welcome touch -- for both rhythm-less losers like myself and DJ Max vets who want to push their skills -- is your ability to increase or decrease the challenge in the game. See, when you jump in to just play a few songs, you'll need to decide if you want to play with four buttons, five buttons, six buttons, or the unlockable eight buttons. Obviously adding buttons means your adding lines and notes and generally making things tougher on yourself, but you're also opening the door for more points. Meanwhile, you can set the overall difficulty of the mode you pick to be easy, medium, or hard, and you can slow down or speed up the note speed via effectors. In short, if you struggle with music like me, you can make the game easier, and if you're a rockstar, you can give yourself the business.

All these points you're trying to rake in aren't just for high scores; doing well gets you gold, and gold can be exchanged for the hidden characters, pieces of equipment, and new notes. What's cool about these unlockables is that they actually affect the gameplay. When you unlock, purchase, and use the notes shaped like hearts, you'll gain three percent more experience points when you finish a song. When you unlock, purchase, and use the Green Miles skin for your phone, you'll get five times the amount of gold you'd normally get. On top of all that, there's an RPG-like leveling system that tracks your progress to level up through good performances. All of these bonuses are boiled down in the Collection screen where you can see your level, the discs you've been awarded, the percentage of media you've unlocked, your multiplayer record, and more.

So, all of this is spread out over a couple of modes. You can just jump in and bump to the unlocked song of your choosing in the Portable option with the goal of nailing four tracks, but you can also scroll to Xtreme Challenge via Portable. Here, you're given a specific goal such as maintaining a certain accuracy or using Fever a certain number of times. If neither of those options floats your boat, you can go play Freestyle and play any of the 50 songs. Outside of Portable, there's a multiplayer section for you and a friend to battle via head-to-head ad-hoc as well as places to go watch the movies and/or listen to the tunes without having to play the game.

For as much as DJ Max Fever has going for it, it's definitely got a few issues that are going to keep it from being everyone's cup of tea. To begin with, there's pretty much no flair to this title. You start the game and get a nice looking video, but then you're dumped to a main menu that isn't the most informative -- unless you were reading the instruction manual on the drive home, I doubt Portable, Collection, MV Edition, or OST icons are going to let you know what the hell the modes are all about.

Of course, that's a one-time stumbling block because once you go into the modes, you know what they do, and oddly, the same can be said for the buttons. Yes, this incarnation of DJ Max removes the button icons from the cell phone screen. You know how in Rock Band the red and green buttons are supposed to be pressed when note icons drop in those buttons' respective rows? That's the same idea here, but the button icons aren't displayed. Now, if you've played DJ Max before, you probably know that Left, Up, Triangle, and Circle are the basic commands for a four-button session, but if this is your first time wading into the DJ Max deep end, you'd have to check the control section of your options to see what was up. Technically, you could hit any button you like when a note crosses the line, but you're only going to get 20 percent of the score if you hit the wrong button at the right time.

This control thing is very odd to me. If I hadn't played preview builds that still had the buttons, I don't know if I ever would have known what to hit because there is no tutorial in DJ Max Fever. That's a pretty big issue in a game that's making its first proper appearance in the United States. The move doesn't kill the fun for me, but it does leave me scratching my head and wondering how much love was put into this game and whether or not it was just a quick compilation.

source: http://psp.ign.com/articles/951/951122p1.html

Phantasy Star Portable Review

2009-03-09T05:40:00.001-07:00

March 5, 2009 - The Phantasy Star series has been around for many years and has traversed a broad number of consoles. While the original Phantasy Star games were more traditional RPGs, recent iterations of the franchise have turned towards the online multiplayer landscape --most notably with the release of Phantasy Star Online for the Dreamcast -- almost ten years ago. Now, Phantasy Star Portable is available on the PSP and once again bestows players with ample amounts of laser swords, elf ears, sentient robots and all sorts of anime-styled goodness. Unfortunately, Phantasy Star Portable doesn't return to the legendary roots of Phantasy Star Online but rather borrows more heavily from the less-than-perfect Phantasy Star Universe. But before you Phantasy Star enthusiasts go running off to the corner, I'll tell you that Phantasy Star Portable is still fun despite its problems. If only the game had returned to its surreal, nearly melancholic roots, we'd have had a brilliant UMD to throw into our systems.

Character creation: an otaku's dreamscape.

Phantasy Star Portable is divided into two sections: Story Mode and Multi Mode. While you were forced to play as set characters in the story mode of Phantasy Star Universe, Portable allows you to share a created character across both the single-player and multiplayer offerings, which is a very welcome feature indeed. Regardless of which mode you start off with, you'll begin the game by creating a character and selecting his or her race, class and physical features. The character creation system of Portable is very nice. I've always enjoyed the character designs of the recent Phantasy Star games, and Portable is no exception. The story of Portable takes place sometime after the events of Universe, where a mysterious terrorist is wreaking havoc on the GUARDIANS space station (yes, there's quite a bit of Caps Lock going on in this game). Throughout the story, you're in charge of guiding your new CAST partner, Vivienne, through various GUARDIANS missions with the intention of stopping the threatening life force called SEED. I've seen worse stories in games before, but Phantasy Star Portable's plot really isn't its best selling point. In fact, the game's entire presentation feels extremely cheap. Not only are all the game's towns and shops reduced to background art and menu navigation, but the entire story (save a few extremely rare cutscenes) is told through talking cardboard cutout dialogue. I tend to forgive this JRPG stereotype as it's usually an excuse to admire the game's character art, but Portable can't even do that. Instead, everything is told through still shots of the 3D character models posing. The result couldn't feel any cheaper. It's a shame, really, that a passable story had to suffer under such lackluster displays.

But gamers interested in Phantasy Star Portable won't be playing it for the story. They'll be playing it for the joy of level-grinding, collecting items, finding rare goodies and... level-grinding. Portable, like its recent predecessors, is a dungeon-crawler in which the primary gameplay component involves wandering from room to room in big, open environments, killing monsters and snagging some sweet loot. Combat in Phantasy Star Portable plays out in real-time and you have full 3D control over your character. Although your only real interaction with the world around you is limited to attacking with your selected weapon or pushing buttons to open doors, Portable still works well on this dungeon-crawling level. What I liked about Phantasy Star Portable's combat system was the inclusion of the Action Palette, which allows you to assign a handful of weapons and items to a pop-up menu you control with the Circle button. This feature is extremely handy, as attempting to navigate the game's full set of menus with monsters leaping all over you is excruciatingly difficult (as it should be).

Also commendable is the diversity of the available weapons, which includes a cool-looking assortment of short-range and long-range devices. Whether you start off as a Hunter, Ranger or a Force, there's sure to be a weapon for you and these items really change how you approach battle. Playing as a Ranger for most of the story, I became intensely familiar with the game's selection of guns, which include handguns, shotguns, laser cannons, grenade launchers, machineguns and more. Fighting a monster with a gun is very different than fighting one with a sword, so having weapons control the flow of battle is a strong point of the experience. In fact, the overall diversity of the weapons and customization of Phantasy Star Portable makes all the level-grinding worthwhile. I found myself really encouraged to keep hunting for the fabled "S" class gear, which made blowing up boxes in order to find loot strangely satisfying, despite how stale the mechanic has grown.

Danger in every room.

I also appreciated how, for those players weary of button-mashing away, there were many timing-related nuances to the combat system to keep things interesting. For example, while performing a combo with a short-range weapon, timing the next button press in the combo powers up the subsequent strike. Alternatively, learning the timing of your rate of fire (when using a projectile weapon) can help immensely, allowing you to empty more rounds at a faster pace than just mashing the Square button repeatedly. Although I had fun playing the game on my own, I think most gamers will opt for the multiplayer option, which gives you free reign over an expanding pool of missions to play to your heart's content. Working as a team is always more rewarding than finishing a mission by yourself, so I encourage players to find at least one friend interested in playing the game with you before you invest. During my Ad Hoc testing (sadly, there's no Infastructure at the moment), two-player sessions ran nicely with little hint of slowdown. Add on a third person, however, and things can get bumpy, especially for the one hosting the session. Worse still is four-player, which runs at almost unplayable speeds for the host. As we were testing, I was complaining about the horrendous lag to my coworkers, only to find that they were having smooth-as-silk games without a problem. Very odd, indeed. It's extremely unfortunate that the four-player support is so problematic, but at least two players can enjoy the game without a problem. If you'd still prefer to play on your own though, allow me to offer you a few words of warning: the AI in the Story Mode is atrocious. Honestly. Never have I seen such incompetent, incapable party members like the AI-controlled riffraff of Phantasy Star Portable. These poor souls get stuck on walls, die every few seconds without bothering to heal and completely ignore nearby enemies while I handled them myself. I can forgive the somewhat inattentive qualities of the AI, but I was amazed at how many times an AI party member would take countless hits and not even attempt to dodge or counter attack. I started to wonder if the developers even planned any AI patterns at all. Or at least, intelligent ones.

Here's a tip: add "laser" to anything and it becomes way cooler.

Lastly, I had some serious qualms with the lock-on system. It definitely needs improvements, as you can't really circle-strafe around enemies when using a firearm and the camera is always jerking around and fighting you during heated battles. You can certainly adapt to it, but it'll take time.

Patapon 2

2009-03-09T05:36:00.000-07:00

March 6, 2009 - If there's one thing you know, it's that IGN loved Patapon. Besides giving it the award for PSP Game of the Year 2008 and a runner-up nod in terms of overall music/rhythm game, we still find ourselves bopping along to the pon-pon rhythms in our heads. Still, there's one thing that always bugged us about the release of the original game -- we never got any cool Patapon crap to spend our money on.

Sure, there was the Bearbrick Patapon-themed bear, but that little guy was less than a business card in length. We want some real chotchkeys. Our desks are begging to be overrun with Patapon stuff!

With Patapon 2 getting closer by the second, the IGN PlayStation Team has pulled together the following list of stuff Sony needs to get made and get out the door to dedicated consumers like us. If the company wants to move UMDs come May, it needs to kick its marketing department in the ass already. And, trust us, nothing markets a sequel better than the game's characters on a pair of panties -- ask Kratos.

New Final Fantasy PSP Game + FF XIII 2009 Confirmed!

2008-10-27T01:37:00.000-07:00

Square Enix's DKS3713 Private Party is only in its first day, but already there's tons of news! The three most exciting Final Fantasy announcements (at least for me) are the following:

1) Final Fantasy XIII CONFIRMED for 2009
2) Final Fantasy Agito XIII has been announced for the PSP
3) Final Fantasy Dissidia will include Kefka

Why is Hamasaki Ayumi in Final Fantasy XIII?

Is she a FF summon? All signs point to "probably."

In addition to all of this, a playable demo of FF XIII will be available with the Japanese release of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children on Blu-Ray next March. Sweet! And although they did show a new trailer for Versus, it doesn't seem to reveal a whole lot more information.

But Final Fantasy games aren't the only ones I'm looking forward to. Sigma Harmonics looks interesting, with its blend of RPG, card-battle and puzzle. I'm digging the new direction S/E is going with their DS games. I love the mix of youthful gameplay with more adult themes.

BTW, if you're wondering why I haven't mentioned Kingdom Hearts, it's because I don't like the series (yeah, you read that right). However, there's lots of information on the new KH games as well, so be sure to check the front page for all the latest.

BTW, everybody be sure to thank Jeff Haynes for the articles. You'll notice he's doing most of the work.

GameInvest Announces Sarah's Emergency Room for Nintendo DS, Wii, XBLA, PSN and PC

2008-07-08T22:02:00.001-07:00

July 8, 2008 - Portugal's leading video games investor and developer, GameInvest, is bringing hospital drama to multiple platforms this summer with Sarah's Emergency Room. Currently in development for Nintendo DS, Wii, PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Arcade and PC platforms, Sarah's Emergency Room is a time management and hospital simulation game where players take on the role of a young nurse, caring for patients in fast-paced hospital environments. GameInvest is currently looking for qualified distribution and publishing partners for Sarah's Emergency Room on the various platforms.

"Sarah's Emergency Room revives the time management genre with fun, challenging levels and a frenetic pace with simulation management skills," said GameInvest founder and CEO Paulo Gomes. "Our commitment to quality and accessibility shines with beautiful graphics and a pick-up-and-play interface."

Sarah's Emergency Room casts players as Sarah, a young nurse who has recently graduated from college in California and is struggling to find a job. In a twist of fate, Sarah is hired for a nursing position at a small hospital in Arkansas, where she discovers that managing an emergency room is a bit harder than she expected. At the hospital, she tends to all patients who walk through the door, diagnosing, taking X-rays, filling prescriptions and assisting in the operating room. Play through the game's narrative to the exciting conclusion - will Sarah's career as a nurse be a success?

Using a Wii remote, DS stylus, controller or mouse, players will direct the nurse, Sarah, and the patients, rushing between doctors and exam rooms. When working at larger hospitals, players will see multiple on-screen levels, enabling them to manage different floors, moving players with the elevator. The 3D graphics, seven hospitals, and increasing levels of difficult tasks will challenge time management gamers of all ages.

About GAMEINVEST

Based in Portugal, GAMEINVEST is an investor, developer and publisher dedicated to creating interactive entertainment for everyone. Founded on the principle that games have popular reach across all age groups, GAMEINVEST is focused on producing original titles that engage wide-spread international markets and all types of players. Currently supported by €3MM in private investment funding, GAMEINVEST is a forward-looking company poised to expand the audience and acceptance of the interactive entertainment medium as both an art form, and a leisure activity. With more than a dozen games in production for a variety of market segments, the company is pioneering new ways for games to become popular, mainstream entertainment for all. For more information please visit: www.gameinvest.net.

source: http://ds.ign.com/articles/887/887106p1.html

The Expendables

2008-07-08T21:56:00.000-07:00

July 8, 2008 - Midway just announced that it would be publishing Mechanic Master, a game designed by Most Wanted Entertainment that went by "Contraptions" before it was picked up by the publisher. Perusing the developer's website, we found that the company is working on another Nintendo DS title: "The Expendables." Here's the breakdown of this work-in-progress game, right from the developer's site:

Master the Mechanics on DS

2008-07-08T21:51:00.000-07:00

July 8, 2008 - Ever since the Nintendo DS hit the scene, many gamers have been begging for a rendition of that classic PC title The Incredible Machine. While Sierra rests on its laurels, Midway's ready to pounce with its own take on the game design: the company has announced it will be publishing the Most Wanted Entertainment-develeoped Mechanic Master for the portable system, due out this October.

Mechanic Master – once known as Contraption – is a puzzle game where players solve more than a hundred physics-based puzzles by utilizing simple and complex machines. Use gravity to make a ball roll down a plank to activate a motor that'll spin gears and raise platforms to keep the mechanism going. The game will be entirely touch-screen driven, so dragging and dropping as well as drawing solutions will be a snap using the stylus.

On top of the 100 different in-cartridge levels, there will also be the ability to customize and create puzzles, and send them to other DS owners to try out via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection.

source: http://ds.ign.com/articles/887/887245p1.html

Guitar Hero: On Tour Hands-on DS

2008-05-30T02:12:00.000-07:00

May 28, 2008 - In less than a month, Activision will release Guitar Hero: On Tour, a Nintendo DS-exclusive spin-off of the Red Octane rhythm franchise. For more than a year, development studio Vicarious Visions has been on the task of bringing the series to the dual-screen handheld, a tricky project considering Guitar Hero has always been about wailing on a full-size guitar to the tune of guitar-heavy rock tunes. Activision let us get a deep hands-on with the near final project, and I have to say, for a version of the game that doesn't have an actual guitar to play, the Nintendo DS version nails the gameplay.

Guitar Hero: On Tour isn't some quick-hacked, "tap the screen to the beat" touch-screen port. No, it's as true a Guitar Hero game as you're going to get on the handheld, complete with its own peripheral attachment.

Each copy of Guitar Hero: On Tour comes packaged with a Guitar Grip. This attachment plugs into the Game Boy Advance cartridge port of the Nintendo DS system, and features fret buttons that are similar to, but smaller than, the same buttons that are on the neck of the latest Guitar Hero guitar that comes packaged with last year's Guitar Hero III.

Incidentally, if you still haven't upgraded your Nintendo DS to the Nintendo DS Lite, the Guitar Grip works with both systems: by default the peripheral works with the DS Lite, but you can replace the cartridge adapter with the included Nintendo DS Original adapter. All it takes is a tiny screwdriver to pop off the adapter and plug in the other, and you're up and running.Unlike the actual Guitar Hero guitar's five fret buttons, the Guitar Grip features one less. There's a good reason for this: once you've got your hand strapped into the unit, there's no way for you to slide your hand up and down like you would on the neck of the guitar. Each fret button on the Guitar Grip corresponds to a finger on your hand. Four fingers, four buttons.

The Guitar Grip is incredibly well constructed and smartly engineered. It has a slot that holds the included stylus pick, and once it's clicked in place it's not going to fall out. It's also constructed with the thought of personal customization: simply pop the cover off the unit and you can replace the plastic sheet with your own handdrawn or printed creation.

And let's not forget: it's also very responsive when it's interfacing with Guitar Hero: On Tour.The Nintendo DS version of Guitar Hero, despite its smaller size, features pretty much the identical Guitar Hero structure. Due to the restricted size of Nintendo DS cartridges, the handheld version's library of songs is only 25 tracks, but compared to other music and rhythm games on the portable, Guitar Hero: On Tour has the beefiest library of songs on the system to date.

Even without the guitar, the gameplay in Guitar Hero: On Tour is a spot-on conversion of what players have been doing in the past three console games. As notes travel down the "note highway", you strum in time to the music while simultaneously holding down the corresponding buttons.

The touch screen is used for the "strumming" part: you slide the stylus pick over the touch screen, much like you would "flick" the flapper on the Guitar Hero guitar. On Guitar Hero: On Tour, the touch screen is very responsive and allows for strumming in any direction: you don't have to stick with left or right…you can strum up, down, or diagonally, and it doesn't even have to be over the strings of the guitar displayed on the touch-screen. The response is so tight that you'll be able to do quick "back-forth" motions in many of the harder songs easier and more fluidly than you would on the physical Guitar Hero guitar. If you need to "whammy" some longer, sustained notes, you simply keep the stylus pick on the screen and "scribble" to make those long notes warble.

Just like in the console versions of Guitar Hero, in Guitar Hero: On Tour, you'll build up your "star power" by successfully playing a string of star notes. To activate Star Power, you either yell or blow towards the system…the microphone will pick that up and activate the mode, increasing the multiplier as you play.

The game's structure mirrors the console version: play through a set of five songs (four and an encore) to move on to the next batch. As you rock out, you'll earn money that can be spent on opening venues, costumes and guitars for personal game customization.

For technical reasons, the version we played only had a portion of the music selection in the cartridge. The third and fourth tiers were available, which included the following songs: "Heaven" by Los Loney Boys, "Helicopter" by Bloc Party, "China Grove" by The Doobie Brothers, "Rock and Roll all Nite (Kiss)" covered by Line 6, "What I Want" by Daughtry, "Jet Airliner (Steve Miller Band)" covered by Wavegroup, "Black Magic Woman (Santana)" covered by Line 6, "Stray Cat Strut" by Stray Cats, "La Grange (ZZ Top)" covered by Line 6, and "Youth Gone Wild (Skid Row)" covered by Wavegroup.The Nintendo DS version also has an extensive two-player experience where you can compete or play co-op with another system through local wireless. In Co-op, you can play the song together with one person playing lead and the other back-up, or you can compete in a song to try to score the most points in basic Guitar Hero gameplay.

There's also Guitar Duel, a mode that builds upon Guitar Hero III's power-ups. In this mode, you're playing against each other in the same song, but instead of building up star power you're earning power-ups to help yourself or hurt the other opponent. You can cause a fan to throw a T-Shirt up on your opponent's screen forcing him to "sign" his autograph before he can move on. You can also cause a guitar string to break, making him use his stylus to restring his guitar before he can continue to play the song. We've seen attacks that cause a flashbulb to go off in our faces, causing a white-out and making it difficult to see the notes. We've had our amps blown, which makes it impossible to hear the song while strumming along to the tune. Other power-ups include flipping the screens to make the notes show up on the touch screen (ultimately making it impossible for them to activate earned power-ups themselves since they're touch-screen activated), speeding up his notes or temporarily upgrading his difficulty level.

Even with the Nintendo DS being pretty much the weakest of all the currently-supported game systems on the market – handheld or console – Vicarious Visions has done a great job making sure the portable version of Guitar Hero ends up looking and sounding like its bigger brother. The music may be compressed to fit on the cartridge, but the audio quality still sounds great through the speakers or optional headphones, and many of the tracks are the full length ones, lasting five minutes or more in some cases. And you may not be watching what's going on behind the note highway, but the DS game features the same 3D venues and animated band members playing along with the music.

Guitar Hero will always be best played with the heft and meat of a full-sized replica of a guitar. Guitar Hero: On Tour clearly isn't trying to replace that experience, instead it's making an attempt at bringing the experience to a platform that couldn't get it otherwise. After extensively playing an early version of the Nintendo DS version for the past few days, I have to say that Activision and Vicarious Visions have pulled off a great reproduction of the true Guitar Hero experience on the handheld.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots UK Review

2008-05-30T02:07:00.000-07:00

UK, May 30, 2008 - In return for letting us play Metal Gear Solid 4 before its release, Konami issued us with a list of things that we're not allowed to discuss. This list of prohibited topics is pretty long, and even extends as far as several facts that the company itself has already made public. Regardless of Konami's list of prohibited topics though, this review was always going to be a spoiler-free zone, because part of the pleasure of playing Guns of the Patriots lies in discovering everything it has to offer. MGS 4 is simply a game that you have to experience for yourself. Because the one thing that can certainly be said, prohibited topics or not, is that Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is, without question, the ultimate Metal Gear game. It represents the pinnacle of Hideo Kojima's achievement, and it's undoubtedly one of the games of the year.

Metal Gear... It can't be.

Surprisingly, it gets off to a pretty slow start. Oh sure, there is something uniquely satisfying about the game's opening cinematic: the gruff, distinctive tones of David Hayter's Solid Snake, and the slow, measured edit. But there are various things that give the Metal Gear games a distinct, unique 'feel', and initially, it is the absence of those things that is most striking. The absence of fixed camera angles, for example, or of extended Codec conversations, or of the distinctive PlayStation 2 textures, making the game feel less like a Metal Gear game and more like a typical action title. As the game starts, with its fairly generic next-gen textures and desert battlefield setting, you can't help feeling that you could be playing the latest Call of Duty, or Assassin's Creed.

Play on, however, and you'll soon find yourself re-immersed in Hideo Kojima's distinctive vision of gaming in what is the definitive Metal Gear Solid – tying up every loose end, reprising every notable character and location, and recasting the entire series as nothing less than a re-telling of the Messiah story. If that sounds a little grandiose, well so be it. If you've been following all of the twists and turns across the series so far, you'll gain enormous satisfaction from the multitude of cut-scenes in MGS 4 because they wrap up everything you ever knew about the Philosophers, the Patriots, The Boss, Big Boss, Solid Snake and his brothers. And if you haven't been following? Well then it does a pretty good job of recapping the whole thing: if you've never played a Metal Gear game, you'll still enjoy all the overblown drama and intrigue. But the perfect preparation for the release of Metal Gear Solid 4 would be to sit down for a week and play through each game in turn, from beginning to end. It deserves nothing less.

An older Snake finds himself tested by the battlefield.

If cut-scenes aren't your thing you can, of course, just skip right through them all. You'll be missing out on a great deal, but you will be able to cut right to the chase – or in this case, cut right to the sneak. Metal Gear was the original stealth game, but here, the mechanics of sneaking around and snapping necks are the most polished they've ever been: a refined control scheme, new gadgets, and just the sheer muscle of the PlayStation 3 take the stealth in MGS 4 to another level. Blend into the background with the new OctoCamo – an extension of Snake-Eater's camouflage system that obviates the need to mess around with menus and consequently works much more effectively. Keep track of threats with the stealth ring system (pausing or crouching to get a bead on nearby enemies). Use your Solid Eye to switch to night vision, or thermal goggles, or binoculars to spot important items. Survey the battlefield with Otacon's new Metal Gear Mk. II. And use the new Dreben Points system to scour the battlefield for salvage – salvage that can be exchanged for ammo, items and new weapons.

Even if, after playing all of the other games in the series, you're bored of simply sneaking around, MGS 4 still has something to offer, because all of these refined stealth tactics are given a further new dimension thanks to the battlefield context. As you find yourself fighting through the abandoned streets, or the South American countryside, you'll be able to interrupt gun battles or trigger flashpoints to play off one side against the other, picking and choosing sides as it suits, or ignoring the combat and using it as a smokescreen. More than any other Metal Gear game, so much of the game is full of emergent possibilities that open up like a butterfly's wings: taking different routes or using different tactics and strategies sets off a cascade of events that unfold in very different directions.

It's got the best bosses so far - not bad considering the serie's heritage.

Unusually for the Metal Gear series, one of those directions is balls-out action. Unlike the previous games, Guns of the Patriot actually provides you with a fair amount of leeway if your chosen strategy is to shoot everything in sight. For a start, you can switch to a first-person view and almost play it like a conventional FPS if you so choose. More importantly, the Dreben Points system puts a much more powerful and diverse arsenal at your disposal, and every weapon can be upgraded in a variety of ways, from bolting on a grenade launcher to improving the laser targeting system or loading it with specialised ammo. Nevertheless, if you are going to treat MGS 4 like a conventional shooter, you'll need to keep an eye on Snake's stress gage. If it's not enough that extended gunfights with enemy snipers, tanks and helicopter gunships are sufficiently dramatic to get your own heart pumping, they're just as likely to send Snake's ticker into overdrive, making him heal more slowly and function less effectively. All that running round and shooting stuff really isn't good for his old heart, you know,

Still, it is fair to say that sneaking around is just the tip of Metal Gear Solid 4's Titanic-sized iceberg of action entertainment. Brace yourself for a lot of variety as the narrative twists and turns to catapult you across the globe in a flurry of game styles and approaches to design. You'll find yourself climbing on car roofs to eliminate shambling hordes, or donning a raincoat to evade security forces while tailing a mark. One section requires you to use all of your wilderness skills to track down a target, scrutinising the way ahead for signs of your quarry. And, of course, you'll find yourself encountering fiendishly devised bosses. Because where would Metal Gear Solid be without bosses? As if to remind you, several of the bosses in MGS 4 are brilliantly evocative of some of the more memorable boss encounters from the series so far. They also prove to be pretty memorable encounters in themselves, too; running for cover through a research lab, while trying to locate a stealthily camouflaged femme fatale, for example.

Ocelot returns - but how will his story end?

And then there are the Kojima moments: those moments of silliness, or humour, or attention to detail, that just wouldn't make it into any other game. Remember the codec on the back of the CD in the original MGS? Or slipping over on seagull droppings in MGS 2? Or ogling women's breasts during the cut-scenes in MGS 3? MGS 4 is just as full to the brim with similar moments of seemingly inconsequential but still sublime brilliance, and it's just as densely packed with secrets as any one of the previous games. Look closely enough during some of the cut-scenes, for example, and you'll notice the mild bruising around one character's neck from where she's been spiking herself with nanomachines, or you might notice Snake ageing subtly over the course of the game. Away from the cut-scenes, listen out for birdsong and use it to work out if there are any enemies around. Or listen out for the various musical themes or melodies that evoke memories of previous games – memories of places and people and events. Even the thumbnails for your save games are first class.

Split-screen techniques add a new cinematic dimension – and the literally strength-sapping climax in particular takes interactive storytelling to new heights. Flashbacks tie into themes of post-traumatic stress, as well as reiterating themes from previous games, connecting Guns of the Patriots to the whole of Kojima's vision for the Metal Gear series. And that, really, is what it boils down to: Hideo Kojima's singular vision of gaming. One of those things that Konami doesn't want us to talk about is the 'total length of cut-scenes'. Hopefully it won't be bending the rules to far to reveal that they represent about half of the content of the game. That, for some people, will be too much to bear. But in many ways it's a vindication of Kojima's unique interpretation of the videogame medium.

Guns of the Patriots' battlefield is more malleable than its forebears.

Because in videogames, Kojima has found the perfect medium for his overblown vision. A narrative that encompasses nanomachines, premature ageing, Liquid Snake's nefarious plans, and a whole host of familiar faces and memorable places is every bit as silly and overblown and hammy as any of the previous games. It's also every bit as compelling, and stylish, and funny, and it encompasses large and relevant themes, from post-traumatic stress to global warming. It's got corny love interests, and Hollywood pastiche. It's a metaphor for the Military-Industrial Complex, and a parable for peaceful action.

It's campy and sexy, with the lingering cleavage shots that you'll remember from Snake-Eater (and the original MGS, if you insisted on following Meryl round till she ended up in her underwear). But it also recasts the whole story as nothing less than a retelling of the Messiah story, with resurrection, sins of the father and all that (and surely there's something admirable about the bravado – the sheer chutzpah – of recasting something as trifling as an action game as the story of Man). And it's a further restatement of the anti-violent themes that have percolated throughout the series.

Farewell old friend.

It probably wouldn't work as a film because it would seem both overblown and trivial. But you could say the same about certain operas, or novels. Fortunately for us, Hideo Kojima happens to be someone who has found the confidence to express an artistic vision that is wholly suited to his chosen medium – and a medium that is uniquely young enough to bend to his will. It's not fair to call him a frustrated film-maker. If he had been a film maker he might have been frustrated. Instead he has found a medium large enough to contain his unique artistic vision.

Which is a long-winded way of saying that this game rocks.

It is the ultimate in fan service, but it is also hard to see how this could be anything other than one man's uncompromised vision of what a videogame should be. The action sequences are faultless. The cut-scenes – well, yes, you could argue that there are too many of them, that they're too long, and that the dialogue is occasionally leaden. Indeed many of the most dramatic cut-scenes might make you crave action, or wonder why they couldn't have been turned into interactive sequences. But that's because they're the work of an auteur, and if you're going to enjoy the high points of Hideo Kojima's vision, there has to be an acceptance of his excesses, too.

Because this is a return to and a best of and an everything you ever loved about a Metal Gear game, all wrapped up and distilled into one, undiluted vision of gaming.

50 Cent: Blood on the Sand Preview

2008-04-28T19:45:00.000-07:00

April 28, 2008 - Never double-cross Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson. This is the lesson the criminal underworld is set to learn in 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand. A sequel to 2005's Bulletproof, Blood on the Sand puts 50 in a very different hood. Mr. Cent and his G-Unit crew have traveled to an unnamed "war-torn" desert country to put on a show. Fitty is paid with a high-priced jewel, but that gem is stolen by some thugs. Bad move.

Described as a cross between Three Kings and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Blood on the Sand is a tongue-in-cheek fast-paced shooter. Though 50 Cent is always on the scene with gun cocked, he is joined by one member of G-Unit controlled either by a friend online or by the AI. Before the start of each mission, you choose your sidekick to be Tony Yayo, Lloyd Banks or DJ Whoo Kid. Each has his own bag of quips and a unique weapon.

The action is fairly constant as players shoot their way through more than 20 missions. You can play a straight up run and gun or use the cover system for more paced style of play. It's arcade action this time around -- there's not a hint of developer Swordfish Studios trying to be "realistic." You can do all the tricks now staples of stop-and-pop shooters. You can destroy the environment (so many explosive barrels of oil!) and use blindfire.

The cover system isn't meant to slow you down. It's to be used to thin out enemy ranks before rushing forward and finishing them off. And you will want to charge in at some point, because there are 20 counter kill moves only available when up close and personal. These brutal kill moves are interactive, requiring you to hit the proper face button when the icon flashes on screen. You'll gut enemies, slash throats and otherwise brutalize and humiliate those who would dare steal from 50 Cent.Another incentive for quickening your own pace is the arcade scoring system. You earn points for kill combos, such as launching an enemy and shooting them while they're airborne. Boost your combo meter enough and you're ammo transforms to explosive or incendiary bullets.

As you purge the world of jewel thieves, terrorists and drug cartels, bonus objectives will occasionally appear on screen. These timed objectives will often task you with killing extra enemies quickly. Doing so boosts your score and earns you extra cash, which can be used to purchase more weapons, counter-kill moves and taunts. Those purchases can be made between missions or from phones you find in each level.

50 Cent is bulletproof, as we all know, yet for the sake of gameplay, Swordfish Studios is allowing him to take damage. Don't worry -- Blood on the Sand uses a progressive health system. Just stay out of the line of fire for a few seconds and Fitty's body will reject the bullets.

If things get to hectic, you can enter Gangsta Fire Mode, which is a sly way to say "Bullet Time." Gangsta Fire Mode works in typical fashion with the world slowing, allowing you to more precisely aim your fire, while also dodging incoming fire. No word on how this works in co-op, but we'll assume both players would enter bullet time together.

Along with plenty of missions on foot, there are two driving missions. Your sidekick drives and Fitty mans a machinegun to take out enemies as you race through the desert. On top of this, there's a flying mission with Fitty and friend manning Gatling guns to put the kibosh on a drug cartel.

All of this insane action is done with classic 50 Cent and G-Unit tracks playing in the background. Plus, you can expect some new and, yes, exclusive tracks as well. The only thing you can't expect is to actually be a gangsta just by playing Blood on the Sand. But at least you can live vicariously through 50 cent this fall.

source: http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/869/869814p1.html

Assault Heroes 2: Hands-on

2008-04-28T00:39:00.000-07:00

April 28, 2008 - Shoot-'em-ups are all about action, and Sierra's Assault Heroes was packed full of it. A throwback to the top-down scrolling action shooters of old, the slick 2006 release set a new standard for the genre on Xbox Live Arcade.

The development studio behind the first title, Wanako Games, is working on a sequel to Assault Heroes, and we had an opportunity to play a bit of it at Sierra's recent Gamer's Day event in San Francisco. We're happy to report that Assault Heroes 2 appears to have even more action, wrapped in the same glossy package that made its predecessor so easy on the eyes.

We've covered the basics of Assault Heroes 2 already, so we won't re-hash it all here. Essentially, all the things you loved about the first game are back (co-op, vehicles, boss battles, power-ups, etc.) but some new twists are on the way.In our hands-on with Assault Heroes 2, we noticed that vehicles re-spawn a lot faster than they did in the last game. If your jeep explodes in a hail of enemy fire, you'll spend a lot less time on foot waiting for a new ride. With that said, Wanako has placed a lot more emphasis on the on-foot aspect of fighting in Assault Heroes 2. So, although vehicles will be easier to come by, you might just find yourself hoofing it more than you did before.

This time around, you'll be able to dodge and roll by hitting the A button, a useful grenade-evasion maneuver. Wanako has also changed the underground portions for Assault Heroes 2, zooming in on the action a bit and allowing you to re-spawn there instead of forcing you to begin anew outside.

The graphics in Assault Heroes were quite good for an XBLA game, and what we've seen of the sequel so far looks impressive, too. Environments are more destructible than before – trees can be set alight or even frozen solid, depending on which weapon you're wielding. Wanako has also paid close attention to perspective, adding nice touches here and there to create the illusion of depth.

Takin' it to the bridge.

Although we weren't given specific numbers, Sierra told IGN Assault Heroes 2 will have more than 20 levels in addition to a new "Battlezone" mode that features shorter, self-contained bits of gameplay for quick action. Results for all modes will be posted to online leaderboards. Sierra isn't releasing a full achievement list for Assault Heroes 2 yet, but they told us they've significantly upped the ante this time around. If you're hoping for easy points from the sequel, prepare to be disappointed. You're going to have to work hard for your bragging rights.

Assault Heroes 2 is scheduled for a summer release.

Source:http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/869/869312p1.html

Difficult Choices

2008-04-24T21:25:00.000-07:00

We've already announced new modes, the rating, pricing, and some of the music in the game.

So what could be left?

For those of you not familiar with the original game, there were actually no difficulty settings. Granted, the arm's unique control scheme made the game harder than most, but certainly an "Easy" option would have helped.

Or would it?

For those how do know the original, you probably remember that the enemies and bosses themselves were not that hard. It was literally all about the swinging (area 11, anyone?).

When updating the game for Rearmed we didn't want to go with the standard, "lazy" approach to difficulty tweaking -- i.e., we didn't want to make the game artificially more difficult by just giving the enemies a longer life bar and the ability to do more damage.

Additionally, rather than making the game harder, we needed to find a way to make it easier without totally redesigning the classic level design that fans would demand.

Fortunately, the BCR team has got some really creative people on board and they developed the concept of "Assist Blocks" for Easy mode. For example, look at the screenshot to the right. Fans of the original might recognize this location as being underneath the first "big swing" of the game from building to building. In the original, if you missed when trying to hook on to the spotlight, it usually meant you fell to your death.

However, as you can see in this screenshot, the player will land on the assist blocks and not die from a missed swing.

Assist blocks have been placed in the most logical places in the game where most players may fall or die.

This will be the perfect way for players to get used to the controls, take some chances, and perhaps see the shockingly wild climax of the game without smashing their controllers into pieces on the ground.

Of course, enemies and bosses take less damage and the hacking mini-game is easier on this difficulty level.

Normal is your standard difficult level. Those of you who have played the original owe it to yourself to skip past Easy and jump straight into this mode. I guarantee that with the new hidden collectibles, bosses, and harder hacking mini-game, you will still find beating the game a rewarding experience.

Finally, we have Hard. And they aren't kidding! I pride myself on being one of the few Producers that can play his own game quite well, but even with my swinging skills, I am no match for Hard. For starters, not only are the bosses harder, but even the standard enemies now have the ability to drop grenades on you, as well as shoot up at you from platforms below. This gives them a set of abilities that not even you possess since they can shoot up but you can't. The hacking mini-game includes a time limit, and the chance that enemies will drop health pickups decreases.

Trust me... it's rough.

Of course, our Top Secret intelligence states that when it comes to difficulty, all of our cards are not "on the table". I guess we'll have to see what that means, after the game is released.

Death Note: "Renewal" Review

2008-04-24T21:24:00.000-07:00

Not too much to review here as "Renewal" serves to mostly recap Death Note's major plot points so that it can move into its third and final act. We start on L's case files, every clue that has lead him to believe that Light Yagami is "Kira". It also serves as a reminder that we as an audience have just lost arguably the best character on the show. When the case file ends, we catch a glimpse of Light salting our wounds and deleting the data. Worse, the investigation force appoints Light as the new L.

In just a short time, Light moves in with Misa, becomes the new L, and tells Ryuk he will now create the brave new world he promised to. We are then treated to a very cool montage that spans five years. Light kills off every member of the Yotsuba group, L's American allies, and countless criminals. He's entered the police force and risen to power. Entire nations have declared themselves in support of Kira. Light has won the battle… for now.

The final minutes of the episode flash back to present day. L's computer counts down to zero and transmits a final communication, "L is dead." Roger, the caretaker of the Wammy House orphanage, receives the sad news. Roger then tells two young boys named Mello and Near the fate of the great detective. The episode ends with Mello's shocked and horrified expression. But one thing is clear… this battle isn't over yet.

- Adultswim.com

The bad guy wins...for now.

Either way, it is impossible not to feel the vacuum left from L's absence. When a lonely nerdling spoiled the concept of L dying early on for me, I was stunned. How could Tsugumi Ohba kill off her most interesting character? What a horrible mistake. Was this a case of Lucas-itus or Wachowski syndrome? Was she destroying her once brilliant creation? At the time, I was pretty certain she was. The series promise from early on was a game of "cat and mouse" between Light and L. To end that game early and kill L was a tremendously ballsy and risky move. Will it be Death Note without him? The answer is yes… and no.

The case for no is an easy one. L was the Japanese Batman, an iconic master detective who was always a thousand steps ahead of the game. Would Light be as interesting if there wasn't a powerful blocking character in his way? And how tantalizing was it that L finally discovered the supernatural source of Kira's power? So much more could have been done, so many twists. And lets face it, L died like a punk. His melancholy rooftop/foot rub scenes spoke more of giving up than anything else. Bottom line, L had more to do. Lots more.

Now, the case for yes... Death Note CAN go on without him. First, L will never truly be gone. As his successors move in for revenge, the spirit of his character will never be lost. Second, have you ever hated Light Yagami more? The stakes have been raised to an all time high. Kira now rules the world unchallenged. So, if you hate Light, you gotta stay in the game to see him go down. And if I'm a betting man, he'll go down hard, crying like a baby. That's why I'll be tuning in. Stay tuned, next week we'll learn more about Near, Mello, and the hunt for "Kira".

The World Ends With You Review

2008-04-23T20:25:00.000-07:00

April 16, 2008 - Most gamers out there would probably agree that the world of role-playing games has been stuck in a specific rut for quite a while. We're not talking down on games like Fire Emblem and Advance Wars on DS (RPG-like tactical games), or the still-remarkable Final Fantasy series, but rather the hundreds upon hundreds of RPGs out there that don't dare to be different. We can understand a few "period piece" role-playing games, but does every story-heavy adventure out there need to revolve around swords, bows, magic, castles, and hoards of monsters emerging from some sort of ultimate evil? It's fine in moderation – and when done extremely well, games go beyond any preconceptions – but the RPG world could use a little kick in the pants to get it moving, and that's exactly what The World Ends With You is. Square Enix – more specifically Team Jupiter, the creators of Kingdom Hearts – has challenged every facet of the RPG genre, and the result is one of the best pocket games we've played in years, and one of the top DS experiences out there.

More than any other DS title out there we could write volumes on the features and intricacies in The World Ends With You, so while we'll be covering every aspect in this final review, we urge players that want to know more to check out our latest in-depth hands-on with the game, as it too has a wealth of information to read through.

Like we mentioned, The World Ends With You (formally called It's a Wonderful World in Japan, but changed due to licensing issues with the name) is out to challenge everything you'd commonly expect from a RPG experience – especially one on DS – and it flourishes because of it. The story is set in common day Japan, more specifically in the Shibuya district of Tokyo, following the story of an introverted (to a fault) teen by the name of Neku who wakes up mysteriously in the middle of the city streets. Within minutes he receives a text message on his phone that states that he has only a few minutes to complete the first stages of "The Game" or face erasure. Unaware of his past, and unable to communicate with anyone on the busy streets of Shibuya, Neku is thrust into a ghost-like world where he and his partner must complete daily challenges, destroy evil entities known as "Noise" which are the embodiment of stress and social distortion in the world, and attempt to regain his life back one day at a time. Along the way the game's referees and designers, The Reapers, give Neku and his partners new missions, and force them to run the rat race that is The Game.Since the story is so completely "out there," especially for a pocket RPG, it'll take a while for players to warm up to the storytelling, characters, and design of The World Ends With You. The game has a very specific art style that you'll either love or hate, but for those on the fence about it we encourage you to give the game a shot, as there's far more depth here than anywhere else on DS, and that's no overstatement. Everything from the battle system, unique world interface, storytelling, music, and interactive "out of game" elements make The World Ends With You a must-play experience, and the visual style is just the beginning.

The most exclusive aspect of The World Ends With You is the battle system, which combines the use of d-pad and touch screen to control both Neku and his active partner at the same time. Since the Reaper's Game is all about having teams of two compete, Neku instantly meets his first partner Shiki, and the race is on. As the player, you'll need use Neku's advanced psychic power to harness "pins" that are found throughout the world (over 300 in all) to do specific stylus actions, while also putting in d-pad combos for Shiki on the top screen. The same enemies exist in each world, so it's a matter of juggling back and forth with both characters, passing a combo puck from player to player with each attack and building up insane combos.

The battle system is extremely daunting at first, and the game even encourages you to take it one step at a time until you feel comfortable playing both sides at once. There's an auto-battle system for your partner on the top screen, so if needed, players can drop the d-pad control for a slower (but still helpful) automated system. The action can get extremely hectic, but once you master the dual screen combat it'll prove exactly why The World Ends With You can only exist on a system like DS, and it's a remarkable battle mechanic in the end. Not only will you have touch controls and d-pad battle, but also on-the-fly mini-game aspects such as roulette wheels and card-matching puzzles, each of which lead to use super-attacks that deal tremendous damage. There's no beating around the bush with the game's difficulty though; it's hard, and meant only for the hardcore.

The style begins where the world ends.

While a crazy battle mechanic is all well and good, it doesn't make for an instant classic on its own, and Jupiter realized that. Visually the game is extraordinary, making use of moving manga panels and dual-screen cinematic presentation very reminiscent of something like Jet Set Radio, with story elements taking place on the top screen via character portraits. The only major letdown with the presentation is that character art and text tell the story, rather than using any VO or scripted sequences. Still, the display of text boxes and the shifting of character portraits on the top screen recreate the manga feel, and it works. More than that though, it's the seamless blending of visual style, impressive (and realistic) audio that captures the sounds of Tokyo, and one of the best soundtracks we've heard on DS. But that's just visuals. On the gameplay front, The World Ends With You is truly imaginative, and while you'll run about Shibuya in common, Zelda-like fashion, the overworld control is where traditional game design ends, and innovation begins. Interacting with characters is as simple as tapping anyone on the screen, but more than that Neku's mind-reading ability opens the doors of the world in a big way. With a quick tap of an on-screen pin icon, players dive into Neku's mind, with a blue aura flooding the bottom screen, revealing thought bubbles for people in the city, and floating noise battles. Touching thoughts launches both story and non-story thought sequences for characters, many of which are in there just for a little casual reading. You get a feel for who these NPC characters are, where they're going, what they're doing, and how they feel about being stuck in Shibuya. Rather than going from person to person to talk, you're reading the minds of a very populated, very alive Tokyo, and it's a really neat experience.

The World Ends With You also breaks the bonds of regular DS titles in a big way, specifically making use of the DS internal clock and local wireless to add to the gameplay substantially. When the system is off, for example, you earn experience for each day you didn't play (starting huge, and then dropping off for seven days until minimal), and while you won't want to spend time away from the game just to level up – the yield isn't that high – it's a great way to encourage players to come back to the game after a brief pause. We've touched on the food and fashion system before, but to sum up those aspects of the game players can gain attributes by eating food items, but actually need to digest the food before effects take place, so you'll eat a hot dog, feed your partner a hamburger, and then need to battle to work down the counter. Each piece of food takes a certain number of bites to eat though, and you can only use 24 bites in an actual day; yet another way the game blends the RPG world with real-time, Animal Crossing inspired sim aspects.

There's a lot to learn, but it's worth the investment.

Fashion also plays a gigantic role in The World Ends With You, with each district in the game having preferred brands. Not only will you need to equip both your characters with the best items to boost stats, but you'll also need to pay attention to trends in the world. Use the right pin attacks and clothing in the right district and you'll nearly double your effectiveness in battle. Fail to pay attention, however, and you can be crippled instantly. We weren't sure what we thought of these very "out of the box" gameplay aspects at first – they could just have easily been a gimmick as anything else – but they've really grown on us, and it makes for a much stronger RPG experience having them in the game.

And it's really the attention to the little things that makes this such a unique and rewarding experience. Shop venders, for example, grow on you the more you shop at their store, dropping prices, giving you access to special, exclusive items, and giving you tips. There's also an "imprinting" system tied with the mind-reading system we touch on earlier, which allows you to learn phrases and ideas to imprint into the minds of the people in Shibuya. This is used constantly in story advancement, and adds an interesting mechanic into the mix.

The level of depth continues as you dive into the level progression and user interface of the game, including some truly inspired, user-determined character growth. You'll level up just like any other RPG, but will only truly thrive in The World Ends With You by dropping your level via a slider, and exchanging those levels for an increase of drop rate. Just like DS Castlevania model, each enemy you encounter has different drop rates for items or pins, and to get the truly rare drops you'll need to lower your levels substantially (we played a huge chunk of the game as a level one team, sacrificing all HP and damage for the chance at big cash, and incredible items) to essentially go big, or go home. More than any other RPG out there we've played, The World Ends With You combines an incredible mix of risk vs. reward.
That same user-determined risk continues throughout the game, as you can change the level of difficulty on the fly (again adding better items for more risk), can set the AI for your partner based on how much dual screen gameplay you want to tackle, and will need to determine which pins to level up and use during combat. With over 300 total pins (each with their own slide, tap, or drawing technique, and experience-based level system), there's a tremendous level of depth in just the battle mechanic alone. If that wasn't enough, the ability to chain together battles also adds yet another level of depth to the game, as you can trigger not just one, but multiple battles all in a row, using the same health bar but gaining an insane amount of pins and items if you can complete each of the fights in a row. With the right level of risk factored into the match, you can gain dozens upon dozens of pins in a single chain of battle. Granted that can include the general currency pins, which are used to exchange for money, and aren't the 300 battle pins in the game, but there's a huge difference between taking the easy way out, gaining a few hundred credits to spend at a shop, or risking it all to find rare items, new battle pins, and upwards of 30,000 in cash all in one daring fight. It should be obvious at this point that we've had a blast not only playing the dual screened battles and messing with the huge risk/reward system in The World Ends With You, but there are some friendly warnings we have as well. We mentioned the style in the game is very "love it or hate it," and you'll find that the characters suffer from the same issue at times. The story is very interesting, as Jupiter managed to create a whole world full of its own rules, characters, and style, but the localization isn't much higher than a generic anime or manga, with many of the cutscenes leaving characters feeling a bit on the shallow side. In addition, the main character is very introverted and often irrational, and with no actual branching paths in the core story it's a little tough to get behind him at times; particularly when he's being a dick for seemingly no reason. Still, those issues pale in comparison to the rest of the well-crafted story, and luckily Neku has a pretty strong arch throughout the story, and eventually turns into the character we'd rather have played as from the start. It makes sense given the game's commentary on society (it is, after all, a modern-themed RPG), but you'll have to deal with characters that think and act differently than what you might do, and at times it did feel like we were watching a story, rather than truly living it.

Tin Pin Slammers is a neat mini-game, but that's about as far as multiplayer goes.

But in the end, we simply can't walk away from The World Ends With You without a laundry list of high points. As one final aspect of the game that caught our eye, its "out of game" experience is really entertaining, allowing players to gain experience while away from the system, but also go beyond that. In mingle mode, the game engages wireless transmission and looks for other DS units in the area. In games like Nintendogs (bark mode) this was a neat concept, but not actually something that was practical. The chances of you running into someone with their DS system in bark mode was laughable, but in the case of The World Ends With You, it works. The reason being that mingle mode has multiple levels of complexity. Run into someone else with the game in mingle mode and you'll swap player cards and data, so you can check out what your friends have seen and done in the game thus far. Beyond that you can also create a custom shop that can be visited even while away from your friends, so when you connect you're importing new shops, can purchase items, and then exchange cash again when you meet up with your buddy for a second time.

It goes deeper than that though. When in mingle mode, your DS also seeks out any DS wireless in the area, so if you're at an airport and see people playing wirelessly, turn on your system and "leech" off them to gain new items and experience. Let it run as long as you want, even with the DS closed, and you'll be gaining experience for finding other people. This still may not happen that often, but we can promise you we'll have our mingle mode on at Comic-con and E3 this year. Where there's DS action to be had, we'll be profiting off it. There's even a third form of communication called "alien," which we assume picks up other wireless signals of some sort, but haven't seen that one active yet. We tried PSP systems and Wii consoles, but neither had an effect. Intriguing nonetheless.

As for the overall presentation, you won't find many DS games that can trump The World Ends With You. Visually the game is a mix of beautiful, strange 2D sprite art on a 3D world, using basic models to distort and slide objects on the screen in a very strange fashion that needs to be seen to understand. The effects animations in battle are amazing, and we never saw the game take a technical hit during exploration or while fighting. On the audio side, more VO would have been nice, but you're still treated to one of the most diverse and fresh sound tracks on DS, mixing hip hop and rap with full lyrics. We need to get the sound track for this game, and from the sound of it Square Enix knows this, as it'll be hitting iTunes shortly according to the official game site. The uber-hardcore gamers out there that have imported The World Ends With You have their particulars about how the music has changed from Japan's release to Europe and the US, and while we agree that the Japanese tunes had a slight advantage, the US version still tears it up as far as sound production goes.

source: http://ds.ign.com/articles/867/867129p1.html

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time Review

2008-04-23T19:59:00.000-07:00

April 22, 2008 - The Mystery Dungeon series is a franchise that's been going on since the days of the Super NES – just recently Sega released a remake of one of the original Mystery Dungeon games: Shiren the Wanderer. The latest version in the series is the second one Chunsoft has made for Nintendo, titled Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness. The team created two versions of the same game, and more doesn't necessarily mean better. This sequel isn't much of a step up from the first game in the series, which wasn't all that great to begin with.

Mystery Dungeon features a distinct gaming style: it's all about randomly generated dungeons in a turn-based, real-time RPG hybrid design. The whole idea of Mystery Dungeon revolves around working your way through a series of multi-level dungeons, with each floor being generated on the fly when you get there. What this means is, potentially, you'll never see the same floor layout twice if you decide to enter the same dungeon multiple times, but since the dungeons are incredibly basic, tiled and angled layouts it's not that huge of a deal. And many times the dungeon generator will create a level that requires no exploration at all – you'll often find yourself placed in a room where you're standing right next to the exit.

For the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series, players enter the world of Pokemon as a Pokemon itself. The story revolves around discovering who turned you into a Pokemon and why. Just like in the original Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, your persona is decided at the start after you answer a series of questions about your personality. Depending on how you answer the questions, you can end up as a Bulbasaur, Skitty, Piplup, or one of a dozen and a half Pokemon in the game. Once you've landed on a mysterious beach it doesn't take long for another Pokemon to show up and join your team – his appearance is to give your character someone to play off of, and to help out in battle. This Pokemon partner is just as important as your own: if you let him perish in the game, it's just as punishing as if you were the one that failed in the dungeon.

Just like the original Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, the core gameplay of the sequel revolves around performing jobs that show up on the message board. These jobs are usually rescues or delivery tasks that require players to enter the same dungeon over and over again. As you accomplish more tasks and knock them off the list, you'll drive the story forward and learn more about the mysteries of Time, Darkness, and why there's a team of jerk Pokemon trying to get in your way.

Even though Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is a Pokemon spin-off and not the true, coveted Pokemon RPG experience, Chunsoft lifts a lot of classic Pokemon elements for its dungeon crawling gameplay. A lot of the useable items and moves are lifted from the classic Pokemon, as are a lot of the Pokemon strategies: if you're a Fire-based Pokemon, you'll be strong against plant-based Pokemon enemies. Likewise, bird Pokemon are strong against bug pokemon, and on and on. And just like the classic Pokemon, you can also acquire additional monsters during battle, but this element is extremely basic and requires no strategy. Enemies will simply stop and ask if they can join.

The Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series is obviously aimed at the younger crowd, so Chunsoft and Nintendo have clearly lightened up a bit on the Mystery Dungeon difficulty. Shiren the Wanderer was brutal and unforgiving – if you died anywhere in the game, you lost all your possessions, your character lost all of his experience and strength, and you had to start the game right back at level one. In Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, if you lose in a dungeon you lose many of your possessions and all of your money, but you don't lose your progress in the game -- anything you've completed up to that point is saved. There are a few hardcore gamers out there that like Shiren the Wanderer's vicious challenge and difficulty, but personally, even though this game's lightened up for the kids, I think that Pokemon Mystery Dungeon's way of doing it is a much more satisfying game design. At the very least you retain the feeling of accomplishment instead of Shiren the Wanderer's "punched in the gut" sensation every time you die in battle.If you've set up your system for Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection you can use Chunsoft's updated "request a rescue" system that the team first introduced in Shiren the Wanderer. If you fail in a dungeon, you can choose to send out an SOS to the Wi-Fi Connection for another player to rescue you. Once you link an email account for your game, you'll be able to get alerts from friends needing rescue or notices when an SOS mail has been received on your email device like a PC or cell phone. Very cool.

But even though I believe that Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is a better Mystery Dungeon doesn't mean I think Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is a great game, because I don't. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon might have some charm in its story, but the gameplay -- while having some bouts of fun -- is still sluggishly paced, tedious, and repetitive. And even with the randomly constructed dungeons they all end up looking and feeling the same. There are two versions of this game, but it feels incredibly forced since there's almost no differences between them. It made sense in the first game in the series since Chunsoft made a GBA version and a DS version, but in the sequel there are two versions on the same system that play identically and only offer up a hidden character or two.

The game's menu system is incredibly clunky and feels like an unfixed relic from the Game Boy Advance version. It's pretty shameful to see just how similar this sequel recycles a lot from the original Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series. In fact, this sequel foregoes the Game Boy Advance version and ends up as a Nintendo DS exclusive, but it doesn't look, sound, or feel like a current generation DS title. Thank god that touch screen control is completely optional because it's the absolute pits. It's clear that Chunsoft spent little to no time working on stylus control because it's almost pointless to bring out your stylus for anything but typing out names. And even then it's still sketchy. Just stick with the D-pad and buttons because that's the only way the interface has been balanced.

source: http://ds.ign.com/articles/868/868722p1.html

NYCC '08: Metal Gear Online Hands-on

2008-04-20T23:39:00.000-07:00

April 18, 2008 - The Metal Gear experience has always been a solitary experience. It's been great and we've embraced it for the awesome single-player gameplay that it has brought to the table, but there comes a point in a series' lifespan when it's time to expand. Time to break the former boundaries of one's youth, spread those wings and fly into the world of online gaming. Beta keys are currently making their way into some lucky gamers' hands, but at this year's New York Comic-Con Metal Gear Online was on display for anyone to come up and play for themselves.

The setup was simple. Eight LCD screens, four facing one side, four on the other. It was red vs. blue in a classic team deathmatch scenario on Blood Bath, one of the five maps that will ship with the game. The introduction to the game was very simple. Being someone that has never played Metal Gear Solid 4's single-player game, I had absolutely no problems jumping in, setting up my primary, secondary and projectile weapons and kicking things off. There's also an interesting option that lets you pick different sets of music. There were only two available in our version. One featured thumping rock tunes that felt a little out of place when things slowed down, and the other track was much softer and stealthier sounding.

Want to play the beta? Click the photo and get your Beta Key now!
Want to play the beta? Click the photo and get your Beta Key now!
The gameplay is obviously classic Metal Gear fare, but with seven other humans running around. I found it interesting that there is no free-fire option. Pressing down on the right trigger alone is a melee attack with your gun, while pressing the left trigger brings up the aiming reticule for you to aim around as you see fit. There's a togglable auto-aim feature that didn't work for me at all. I was taken down repeatedly while trying to make use of the auto aiming feature. Maybe I wasn't using it right, but for me the targeting reticule was the way to go.

As any Metal Gear fan would expect, there's a cover system for players to utilize in Online. It doesn't work as in other third-person shooters, but it serves its purpose. The one escape maneuver is a dive move that will undoubtedly be used like crazy by online players. There were pieces of cover throughout each of the three levels in Blood Bath – catwalks are above, there's a middle level where the bulk of the action takes place and a lower sewer-like level – and people constantly dove behind them to evade my barrage of bullets. In other deathmatch games I would have just lobbed a grenade at the press of a button but in true Metal Gear fashion you'll need to select grenades from a menu to use them.

My character also came outfitted with a box in his tools menu that could be equipped at any time. There are also random box shells sitting around the environment that are indiscernible from what players can equip. There were a few occasions when I found myself feeling a little paranoid and wound up blasting the hell out of a few innocent boxes. Of course it was the one that I didn't annihilate that housed the guy with a combat knife. Live and learn.

There's no question that Metal Gear Online is a different breed of online shooter. It's not fast, it's not based around reflexes, no, it's much more thought-out than that. Your player doesn't move with blinding speed (I kept looking for a sprint button), nor will you find rocket launchers laying around for you to pick up and play with. You'll need to play the angles, keep behind cover and work worth your teammates to be successful. In my brief play session I didn't have enough time to get into the intricacies of the game, but felt as though I had just played exactly what fans have been asking for. It's Metal Gear Solid 4, but it's Online. Same graphics, same gameplay, same awesomeness.

Keep an eye on the PS3 front page later in the weekend or early Monday for a much more in-depth preview on the Beta and what features you can expect to find in the final Metal Gear Online release in June.

Source: http://ps3.ign.com/articles/867/867855p1.html

The Bourne Conspiracy Progress Report

2008-04-20T21:28:00.000-07:00

April 18, 2008 - Since July, we've been breaking arms, shooting foes in the chest and running around embassies in the Bourne Conspiracy, but in those nine months, we've never had a chance to really sit down and play the game until our eyes bled.

Or at least we hadn't until Sierra rolled into San Francisco last week.

Our time with High Moon Studios, the folks who brought us Darkwatch and are in the middle of bringing us Bourne, was twofold. To begin with, we got to sit in on an Xbox 360 demo of a handful of new levels -- Bourne vs. an APC, Bourne vs. some European cops, Bourne vs. the Professor in a burning barn, Bourne vs. every inanimate object in a European library -- but when the developers were done beating on foreigners, they handed us a PlayStation 3 preview build of the game's first four missions.

Our hands-on time actually covered a few parts we've seen in previous previews, but that only helped showcase the changes High Moon has made and gave us context to Jason Bourne's story. The game begins with a cutscene of Bourne floating in the Mediterranean Sea after the famed failed Wombosi assassination that kicked off the Bourne Identity and flashes back two days earlier to when Jason was woken up by a cell phone call. On the other end of the telephone line is Conklin -- Jason's cover is blown, another assassin named O'Connor is on his tail, and Wombosi's blowing town.

Bourne's got to fix all of that.

From our two hours or so of Bourne Conspiracy, it would appear that most of the game is going to flow in this format. High Moon has gone on record as saying that about 60 percent of the game is playing through original flashbacks and forty percent is playing through re-imagined parts of the Bourne Identity. In our time, when something reminiscent of Identity came up, we'd flashback. Remember that scene in the movie where some dimwitted cops disturb a sleeping Matt Damon and he lays them out? That's a cutscene in the game that flashes you back to one of your old missions. You don't actually play the cop beatdown … or look like Matt Damon.

Back to the problem at hand. Before Bourne can focus on his Wombosi mission, he's got to eliminate O'Connor. The game starts off with Jason making his way through a populated courtyard as the tutorial kicks in to tell us about the Bourne Instinct. If you've been reading our previews of Conspiracy, you probably know all about Bourne Instinct -- press a button, and the game highlights enemies and objectives. However, the special vision has been tweaked this time around. Now when you click the button, the screen switches to a washed-out black and white while objectives, enemies and hidden items switch to a flickering yellow highlight.

Eat it, O'Connor!

It might be a minor tweak, but after wailing on some of O'Connor's men in a local pub, we pressed triangle by accident and the Instinct actually spotted a Passport -- these hidden documents are key to unlocking Achievements, Accomplishments and extras -- that we missed.

Eventually, after taking out some guards with the trademark takedowns -- you fill a three-tiered half circle around the HUD called the Adrenaline Meter as you fight and can then use each tier for a one-button instant kill -- and hoofing it through the streets, we caught up to O'Connor on rooftop and took him out with some hand to hand combat … we also smashed his head into a neon sign. That was cool.

Now, our previews have talked about how the fighting system in Bourne works, but this was our first time really getting the chance to go at it again and again. So far, one thing has stood out: breaking jaws doesn't get boring.

Let's face it, the fistfights could have easily gotten tiresome thanks to the three-button control scheme -- light attack, heavy attack and block -- but the ferocious hits and combos that have your enemies spitting blood, the real-time damage to Bourne's face, and the stiff punches that knock people out standing up kept us entertained. That could change when we spread the experience out for multiple hours, but for now, it was fun.

Of course, the ability to do multiple-person takedowns helps. Now when you're running through a level, the camera is behind Bourne. You can control it and swivel it with the right stick, but the default position is behind you -- at least until you get into fisticuffs. You can engage an enemy from afar with a weapon and the camera won't leave your back, but once you get within a few feet of an enemy, there's a quick scene of him hitting you or you hitting him depending on who ran up to whom and then the camera changes to this Fight Night-esque standup that puts Bourne on one side and the enemy on the other.

The POV can't be changed by you until you've taken down all of the bad guys you're fighting by hand or until the enemies make a move. See, when you get surrounded by a group of fistfighters, they'll come at you one by one, but occasionally on of the other guys will try to throw a jab your way. When this happens, you get a quick-action event and have a chance to reverse the attack.

Quick action comes around again when you're ready to take out a number of bad guys with a takedown. I ran into one of the later airport levels chasing a fleeing prisoner with my tiers already full, and three guys jumped out at me. I hit the takedown button -- circle on the PS3 and B on the 360 -- cleaned the first guy's clock, pressed the on-screen button, kicked a guy in the gut behind me, pressed the next on-screen button and kneed the guy in front of me in the balls. The action slows down when these prompts come up so you get to see Jason's move heading for its brutal landing.

For as much as we got to fight in this demo, we also got to shoot. Once you're through the O'Connor mission/tutorial, Jason's generally armed with a secret agent staple -- the silenced handgun. As we took on the hordes of Wombosi troops on our way to the main man's ship, we picked up shotguns and machine guns, but as we progressed through the game, it seemed we were constantly falling back on the pistol.

Now -- keeping in mind that this is a preview build of the game -- gunplay in Bourne seems to be a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, you have this Gears of War interpretation of cover where you'll be walking along, a bad guy'll pop up and a note on your HUD will let you know you can tap a button to grab cover. It's a nice feature. It you're running at the cover spot, Jason will slam himself into the barricade and grimace in pain. From there, you can rotate the camera and press a shoulder button to pop out, get a sight and fire. But here's where the "other hand" comes in. To begin with, moving the tiny aiming dot on the screen takes a lot of time. True, you can adjust look sensitivity, but it's still a pain. On top of that, if you don't shoot an enemy right between the eyes, he becomes a Terminator.

True story: I was chasing that on-the-lam prisoner from before through the Zurich airport, and a guy popped out and started coming at me while I was in the free aim mode. I took a bead on him, started firing, and came up with a good three or four rounds in his left arm. The dude didn't react. He didn't stop coming at me. He didn't act like it hurt. I had just ripped this man's bicep apart, and he was cool as a cucumber.

Silence is golden.

Above all, these stop-and-pop battles don't really feel like Bourne. For three movies, we've been trained that Jason can and will run into a battle and take out a person hand to hand. Lot of times, that shows through in the Bourne Conspiracy -- you'll come into a room, and you'll need to shoot one guy to death before running up and engaging the second guy in hand-to-hand combat. However, there are also more than a few times you'll run into a room full of bad guys, take cover and slowly eliminate them all by shooting them in the throat four or five times. Worse, I had times where one of the group of shooters would engage me in a fistfight, and while I did my best to KO him, the dude's friends would shoot me to death.

We're not condemning the Bourne Conspiracy by any means. The fighting is fun, the takedowns are brutal and it seems like each level -- there are 11 of'em -- will keep you playing for awhile. If you're ready to loose your memory and grab a shotgun, a Bourne demo is coming to the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live in May and the game ships this summer.

Until then, watch for our signal to catch your next mission update.

Source: http://ps3.ign.com/articles/867/867814p2.html