61 Frames Per Second : dark void

Dark Void Makes Me Want to Dress Up Like the Rocketeer

John Constantine — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:30:00 GMT

The whole shebang too. The helmet, the leather jacket, and the sweet jetpack. Dark Void’s jetpack is noticeably sweeter than the Rocketeer’s though. See for yourself.

Doesn’t that just look like a helluva good time? Dark Void disappeared from the map since its first public showings last summer, but it’s finally re-emerging. These videos show a dramatic improvement in visual quality. The muddy browns of earlier builds have been replaced by sterile but very attractive greys and blues. The gameplay looks like it’s congealing as well. The shooting play I got to see last summer was pretty messy, a weightless blend of Gears of War and Uncharted. Here it looks like its got some oomph behind it, especially the aerial combat. If Dark Void controls in the air as good as it looks here, it’s going to be a game for the ages.

Why haven’t there been more jetpacks in gaming history? It seems like such a no-brainer.

(Link: GameLife)

Related links:

Gone Vertical: Eyes-on With Dark Void
Going Vertical: How Capcom’s Developers Are Changing the Landscape of 3D Games

New Year’s Resolutions For a Few Of Our Favorite Publishers

John Constantine — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 00:30:00 GMT

Now, to close out the first full week of 2009, we will do for videogame publishers what we did for console makers: we will tell them how to live their sordid, godforsaken lives! You’d think developers would make the list, but no. No, I tend to trust them, so they will be left to their own devices, free from the crushing logic of advice from 61 Frames Per Second.

In 2009, the following folks should resolve to do the following things:

EA – Stick to your guns and keep investing in new IP. 2008 was good stuff, Riccitello. Keep promoting Mirror’s Edge and Dead Space, they will find their audience. And EA Sports? How about SSX4 already.

Capcom – Resolve to support Dark Void with an aggressive marketing campaign and release it during the summer. Do not let this one die during the holiday rush. Also, Street Fighter III HD Remix. You know it would be sweet.

Atari – Do not release Ghosbusters until it is perfect.

Namco – Push Klonoa like you have never pushed a game in your entire lives. Tell people it will make them lose weight, tell them it will make them smarter. And knock it off with the nickel-and-dime DLC already, what is this, 2006?

Square-Enix – S-E, I want you to go out tomorrow, hop on a train, and pay Jupiter Games a visit. You cut them a check, and you tell them to make whatever they can imagine. The people who made The World Ends With You should be allowed to make whatever they like.

Konami – Release a press statement claiming you were forced to make Rock Revolution at gun point.

Midway – Um. Hang in there?

Activision – Give Neversoft the vacation they so desperately need and deserve.

Atlus – More PS1 reprints!

Take-Two – If Bioshock 2 looks stupid, don’t be afraid to cancel it.

Ubisoft – Release Beyond Good & Evil 2 by the end of the year. Please. PLEASE!

XSEED – Keep on keepin’ on, you guys. Can’t believe you actually localized Retro Game Master. Just awesome.

Tecmo-Koei – No Dynasty Warriors: Dead or Alive games. Just don’t. I know you're thinking about it.

SEGA – Disband Sonic Team. It’s over. Enough.

And that about covers it. Happy New Year, everyone.

Related links:

Microsoft’s New Year’s Resolution
Nintendo’s New Year’s Resolution
Sony’s New Year’s Resolution
Virtual Console New Year's Resolutions

Gone Vertical: Eyes-on With Dark Void

John Constantine — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to actually play Dark Void. Not for lack of wanting to, let me tell you. Void’s producer Morgan Gray did, however, give the 61FPS crew a full level demonstration from the game. The third-person shooting on the ground in Dark Void could be any number of games from the past two years, the sort of duck-cover-blind fire-head shot play pioneered by kill.switch made famous by Gears of War. But even in their very early state, the vertical shoot-outs are a breath of fresh air. We were treated to one sequence that saw the game’s jetpack-clad protagonist Will – a cross between the Rocketeer and Boba Fett – scaling a literal mountain, hiding beneath outcroppings before flying to the next to grab and hurl Watchers (badguys) down to the increasingly distant starting point. The scale of the level was only made more impressive when Will reached the summit and took off into the sky to highjack flying saucers which could then be used for aerial dogfights. The game looks excellent at this point with Will’s character model, the mountain setting, and alien technology settling more on the side of steampunk than Star Wars. What remains to be seen with Void is whether or not Airtight Games will be able to keep both the look and play interesting over its proposed fifteen hour length. Dark Void is at least a year away from completion so time will tell but, as of now, things are looking up.

Related:
Gone Vertical: Hands-on Bionic Commando
Going Vertical: How Capcom’s Developers Are Changing the Landscape of 3D Games
Street Fighter HD Makes Me Freak Out
We're Playing The New Bionic Commando, And We Can Only Assume That You're Not

Street Fighter HD Makes Me Freak Out

Peter Smith — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 18:00:00 GMT

As promised, yesterday brought me my first in-person look at Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, and if such a thing is possible, I am now even more psyched than I was. The only thing I can say against the game is that crying in front of Capcom's cute publicist Melody made me look foolish. (Tears of joy, folks. Tears of joy.) Internet complaining about the redrawn art, I can now say with assurance, is thoroughly misplaced; the notion that higher-resolution graphics would make the animation appear jerky couldn't be further from the truth. Though only Dee Jay, Ryu, Ken and Akuma were selectable in this build, they looked beautiful, meshing perfectly with the newly luscious backgrounds. And the new widescreen mode is zoomed closer to the action, so the characters approach Art of Fighting stature on-screen. Even at this pre-release stage, it looks gloriously polished, and I truly relished handing my colleague his ass multiple times in a row, even more than I usually would. The future's looking bright, friends. (Mel — call me.)

[Above: me facing off with Dark Void producer Morgan Gray. Below: a sight for sore eyes. (Click for larger size.)]

Gone Vertical: Hands-on Bionic Commando

John Constantine — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Seeing, as the kids say, is believing. As I said just a few weeks back, I’ve been impressed with the forward thinking at work in Capcom’s upcoming action titles Bionic Commando and Dark Void. Preview footage of both games has emphasized their unique hooks - a grappling hook and jetpack respectively - but they’ve also implied an approach to level design that could elevate those hooks beyond gimmickry. I got my hands on Bionic Commando at Capcom’s preview event in New York yesterday and, at fifty percent complete, the jury’s still out on whether it can deliver on its ambitions.

Commando’s grappling hook is exhilarating stuff, more demanding and nuanced than the stick-and-swing play of Treyarch’s Spider-man games, but far more satisfying and tactile as a result. It’s tricky to get a hang of at first since the game does none of the work for you. First, you aim at the part of the environment you want to hook to with your right analog stick, then grapple with the left trigger, and finally set your direction and speed to determine trajectory using the left analog stick. However, once you start swinging, you also have to keep using the using the right analog stick to manage the game’s camera angle. That’s a lot to handle, especially in an action game that demands quick reactions to environmental changes. It’s a shame that GRIN hasn’t found a way for their camera to interpret a player’s choices; I acclimated to it after a few minutes but anyone not adept at using a traditional controller may be overwhelmed.

My biggest concern at this point is Commando’s levels. I only got to play a portion of a single area, the destroyed city street shown off in the very first Commando preview. There was an impressive layout of architecture for swinging but, at least in this small section, there wasn’t much opportunity for creative use of the space. Fun as it was, it felt more like a gimmick than the new approach to 3D gaming it could, and may well, turn out to be. Also problematic was how empty the level was at this point, with only a few enemies scattered about the terrain.

Bionic Commando is still a long way out and will no doubt change dramatically on the road to completion. I may have reservations, but Bionic Commando’s already a blast to play. Seriously, I had that stupid grin on my face the whole time I was playing.

Click here for thoughts on Dark Void and check out these links for more of 61FPS’ time at the preview event.

Related:
Going Vertical: How Capcom’s Developers Are Changing the Landscape of 3D Games
We're Playing The New Bionic Commando, And We Can Only Assume That You're Not

Going Vertical: How Capcom’s Developers Are Changing the Landscape of 3D Games

John Constantine — Tue, 20 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Development teams Airtight Games and GRIN are both working on titles for Capcom with unique hooks for three dimensional gaming. While both trade in that most common of play mechanics, shooting things, they’re both predominantly focused on providing the player with a unique way to move about their respective worlds. GRIN’s revitalization of the Bionic Commando franchise is built around a grappling hook and Airtight’s Dark Void is built around having a jetpack. Superficially it might seem that these sorts of tools are little more than a gimmick, shallow expansions on the sort of gravity play that has been essential to gaming since the first time Pitfall Harry jumped on a vine. But what they really offer is new solutions to the problem that’s plagued 3D games since Mario 64: precision control on the Z-axis. Nintendo’s Mario Galaxy itself had a novel answer to the problem in building the game around small, spherical play fields allowing microcosms of gravitational law reign in movement in 3D space. Airtight Games and GRIN have gone with vertical spaces instead and, instead of direct manipulation of gravity, have used tools to give the player more control and freedom. The grappling hook ties the player to the environment directly in Bionic Commando and the jetpack in Dark Void gives the player powered flight to scale the game’s levels (Mario himself has had flight in his 3D games but not thrust and so the mechanic has traditionally been used to “glide” over more horizontal spaces). They’re exciting ideas from the both teams and stand to make an impact on the way designers broadly think about 3D gaming not tied directly to the ground.

Head over to 1up.com to check out their exclusive preview coverage of Dark Void and you can get an in-depth look at Bionic Commando (61FPS early hopeful for 2008 Game of the Year) at the game's homepage.