61 Frames Per Second : ubisoft

Conspiracy Theory: Assassin's Creed II Protagonist's Telling Name

Derrick Sanskrit — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Assassin's Creed was the first game I played from beginning to end on a high-definition gaming console. It was kinda pretty, it was kinda fun, it was a whole lot of boring, but it did show a lot of really cool ideas, which is why I'm actually sort of excited about the upcoming sequel. The long-teased and only recently-confirmed Assassin's Creed II doesn't have a whole lot of info out just yet, only that it is set in 15th century Italy (at least, some of it is), based heavily on the work of Renaissance master Leonardo DaVinci, and that the protagonist this time is named Ezio.

People are justifying this name by stating that Ezio (that guy on the right) roughly translates to "like an eagle" in latin, much like protagonist Altair in the original game's name in Arabic, likely tying into the "eagle vision" skill used by the assassins in the game. Now, maybe it's just decades of sci-fi and comic books affecting my brain, but the name "Ezio" suggests a whole other meaning to me, one that I'm frankly surprised to see mentioned nowhere else that I've checked. I'm probably reading way too much into this. Then again, maybe I'm right on point.

Be aware that beyond this point I am going to be going into spoilers from the first game and a bit of rampant speculation on the second game.

We all cool with that?

Cool.

There, now, am I the only one who realizes that "EZIO" is "0123" flipped 180 degrees? Check out the graphic at right to illustrate just that point. Why might this be important?

Because in the first game you were actually playing as Desmond Miles in the year 2012, hooked up to a machine called the Animus in order to relive the memories of his ancestors. Clearly for the game series to continue, this shady research project must continue as well, and considering the narrative style of the first game it is all too easy to see a chapter of the game ending with its true protagonist waking up in a lab upside down and see the tag "0123" somewhere in the lab flipped around to resemble "EZIO". It's easy to believe that we may be playing as patient number 0123 or in experiment number 0123 or even that all the data collected by the kidnapped patients is being downloaded into android model 0123.

Considering how much the fans were worked up about the final screen of the first game, which showed statements regarding the end of the world in a variety of diffferent languages, you would think a potential clue like this would drive the internet wild, wouldn't you?

Am I crazy, or am I just thinking about this game a little too much? Probably both, right?

Related rumors and speculation:
If This is True, RIP Eidos
Castlevania Symphony of the Night 2: What is a Screenshot? A Miserable Little Pile of Secrets!
Rumors, Rumors, Riz-u-mors: Resident Evil 2 Wii and The Glory of Speculation

The 61FPS Review: Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X.

John Constantine — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 00:30:00 GMT

Guest contributor Adam Rosenberg covers games from his secret lair in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, typing, reading and playing the days away as his dog Loki looks on in bewilderment. In addition to the noble pursuit of video games, Adam enjoys spending time with fine film, finer food and his fine fiancée Bekah.

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. is a fun game. Flying a state-of-the-art combat jet over satellite-rendered landscapes in a game halfway between simulation and twitch thrills just works. The control is simple, the goals basic. But let’s be honest here. You don’t play game about flying a killer plane and look for a reflective experience. You play it for the rush of speed and vertigo, narrow escapes and quick action. H.A.W.X. provides that. Just not enough of it.

Unnecessary or not, there is context for the dogfighting. H.A.W.X. falls between Ghost Recon Advance Warfighter 2 and EndWar in the arching Tom Clancy timeline. You are David Crenshaw, a one-time USAF pilot who left the military life behind for better pay and hours as a contractor at Artemis Global Security. USAF pilots, in Tom Clancy land, are usually good and private military corporations like Artemis Global are typically bad, so you can probably guess what the big mid-story twist is. Crenshaw, in a cruel twist of fate/genre convention, learns that the sweet life isn’t necessarily the good life. This is Tom Clancy 101, meaningful for fetishists only, since it doesn’t serve much purpose beyond putting you in a plane.

The missions are uniform: you fly the unfriendly skies, zeroing in on yellow targets and protecting green ones. H.A.W.X. keeps the aerial violence speedy with its unique taskmaster, the Enhanced Reality System (ERS). Pressing a button when prompted activates the ERS, creating a tight tunnel of lit checkpoints on screen. By flying through the tunnel, players can intercept pursuing fighters and outfly incoming missiles. It also serves several mission-specific purposes, such as creating a flight path through heavily defended enemy airspace or lining up the correct angle of attack for a covered ground target. The ERS objectives show up infrequently, to great effect. It’s an ecstatic thrill to speed through the tight confines of an ERS tunnel, flak exploding around you, a ringing lock-on buzzer serves keeping you stressfully aware of your safety zone.

Basic flight and ERS are all well and good, but H.A.W.X. is at its best after Assistance OFF mode is introduced, roughly three or four missions into the campaign. Double-tapping either trigger button activates a distant third-person view of the action, and the camera locks itself onto any targeted enemy. You’re left with a greater freedom of movement since the view is no longer restricted to what’s in front of you. The tradeoff is that your jet’s safety features are turned off as well, which means the engine will stall if you lose too much speed. That isn’t a big deal when you’re 50,000 feet in the air, but it’s a bit more worrisome when that number is closer to fifty.

H.A.W.X.’s problem is that there’s just not enough variety. Your time in the cockpit is over and done in just under eight hours, and at the end of it, you’ll only have earned about half of the experience needed to unlock all the game’s extra planes and weapons. H.A.W.X. does support cooperative online multiplayer as well competitive online play for two to eight, and both modes also earn the player experience. The co-op is enjoyable, especially since each player can set his or her own difficulty level, but since competitive play comes in just one flavor, team deathmatch, it does nothing to alleviate the end game doldrums. Compounding the problem of unlocking is that most of the big ticket challenges will have been completed by the time you’ve finished the campaign. With several thousand experience points separating each level, the 5-50 points earned per downed enemy fosters a monotonous grind which will turn most players off. Even then though, there isn’t a whole lot to do with all of those sweet unlocks.

H.A.W.X. desperately wants to be a great game. It gives you these beautiful environments, tons of fun to control fighter jets, little elements that scream “Love me!” Then a handful of hours have passed and you’ve seen all there is to see in the campaign and despaired at the thought of slowly grinding through the last experience levels. You had a little bit of fun, but you can’t help but think it could have been so much more.

Grade: B-

Previous Reviews:

Suikoden Tierkreis
Eat Lead - The Return of Matt Hazard
Dead Rising: Chop Til You Drop
Resident Evil 5
Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride

Atlus Shows You Love, Localizes Damn Near Everything

John Constantine — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 01:00:00 GMT

Actually, half of that headline might be a blatant lie. Depending on your point of view, it’s a distinct possibility that Atlus hates you and everyone with a sweet tooth for melodrama, a lust for turn-based battles, and a fetish for watching numbers get higher. They hate you because no one in the world has the time to play everything they’re releasing over the next six months. It’s not like you can put off getting the games either. Atlus’ print runs are so small that it’s a guarantee you’ll be paying three times the release price on Ebay just six months after a game comes out. You are cruel, Atlus. But so, so giving.

Turns out that not only is Atlus giving the Playstation 2 one last morsel with Devil Summoner 2: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon this spring. They’re also releasing *breath* SMT: Devil Survivor, Dokapon Journey, Crimson Gem Saga, Knights in the Nightmare, and Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Endless Frontier *phew*. It isn’t set in stone that Atlus will be releasing each and every one of these games in North America. They haven’t been officially announced. They did, however, all show up on Amazon’s schedule and then promptly disappear after word spread around the web. Considering Atlus’ relationship with Amazon – they’ve regularly run exclusive pre-order programs with the online retailer and have offered some games solely through the site – it’s a good bet they’ll all cross the Pacific.

Devil Survivor isn’t too big of a shock considering the Shin Megami Tensei franchise-umbrella’s growing popularity in the west. The same goes for Sting’s Knights in the Nightmare and Dokapon Journey, as they’re just the sort of cult software Atlus specializes in. The others, however, are pretty surprising. The Super Robot Taisen series has never managed to get much of a foothold in the west and OG Saga: Endless Frontier is covered in Namco’s characters. Crimson Gem Saga is even weirder. It’s original name is Astonishia Story 2. The original Astonishia Story actually came out in North America back in 2006 thanks to Ubisoft. Why the name change?

I’m pumped for Super Robot Taisen. Never got around to playing one of those. OG Saga: Endless Frontier has both giant robots and giant breasts so it seems like a good place to start.

(Link: Siliconera, NeoGAF)

Related links:

And Now Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Love: Atlus Reprints Persona 2
WTFriday: Atlus Takes on Third Wave Feminism
Persona 2: Innocent Sin Translation Complete
My Top 10 of 2008 in No Particular Order: Persona 3: FES
Persona 4: Harrowing, True Pre-Order Tales! With Prizes, Prizes, Priz-izes!

You’re Doing It Wrong: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Franchise Misuse

John Constantine — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 23:30:00 GMT

I understand. Using a familiar property to sell a game is a great way to make it popular. Just look at the myriad faux-sports games Nintendo’s made in the past decade. Would Tennis have been a hit on Gamecube? Hell no. That’s why you give Mario and everyone else living in a Mushroom Kingdom area code a racket and put them on the courts. The familiar will bring people in to play something they wouldn’t have otherwise. While the franchise-means-audience maxim holds true, I’m baffled by the way certain properties get used. Sonic Riders is a perfect example. Why in the hell would you make not one, but two separate racing games starring Sonic the Hedgehog when nobody runs? It would be like making a Transformers game where Optimus Prime spends the game renewing his trucking license.

Ubisoft’s new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game for Wii is just as misguided. A Turtles fighting game isn’t an inherently bad idea. Actually, the long-forgotten Tournament Fighters has a decent reputation. But it’s not a genre the franchise is best suited for. TMNT: The Arcade Game's beat ‘em up model is perfect for the property because it’s about co-operation, not competition.

All that aside, the real reason this game is a terrible idea is that Ubisoft is wasting a great license, a license celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary, on a game that doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of finding an audience. Who in their right mind puts a Smash Bros. clone on the Wii? That the game is developed by Smash Bros. dev Game Arts is beside the point. That the Turtles are very popular is beside the point. The point is that Wii owners will have no incentive to buy this game. Turtles fans don’t get the action-adventure game that would appeal to them and Smash Bros. fans already own two copies of Smash Bros. Well done there, Ubisoft.

Considering that no one knows anything about the game yet, I could very well be wrong. The new Turtles game could have a deep, lengthy co-operative campaign for all we know. As of right now though, a “TMNT Smash Up” seems like a waste. Now, if Ubisoft and Nintendo were re-releasing Smash Bros. Brawl with Turtles characters and levels added in, that would be a different story…

Related links:

Sonic Unleashed is Filled With Lies
Sonic the Hedgehog: I'm Just Not that Into You
Sonic Unleased: Worse Than Syphilis
Alternate Soundtrack: Battletoads vs. The Blood Brothers
A Perfectly Cromulent Beat-Em-Up

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

The Death of Death

Cole Stryker — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 19:00:00 GMT

While we were on break, Ludwig Kietzmann over at Joystiq raised an interesting question about the nature of games, elaborating on a point made earlier this month by Penny Arcade's Tycho here. The basic idea is that death in games is an outmoded convention that often makes games frustrating for no reason other than because that's the way it's always been done. Prince of Persia is the game that has raised these questions.

Basically, Prince of Persia provides you with a cute sidekick that rescues you when you're about to die. From what I understand, it's relatively easy to complete the game without dying. It's a seamless, spawnless jaunt through a wonderland begging to be discovered through your character's physics-defying acrobatics. So why are people complaining?

I'll start with Tycho's point, since he was first:

Prince of Persia is incredibly easy, too easy in my opinion, but I don't think it's easy for the reasons people are saying. It's true that your mysterious witch friend Elika can save you from harm, either from a platforming misstep or from poor combat performance. They're both failure states, in any event, which is to say deaths: they just decided to automate the process of loading from save. This is similar to the philosophy behind Final Fantasy XII, as expressed by our own Gabriel: if all I'm going to do is select attack from a menu, why shouldn't it handle that part? There are people this doesn't work for. For example, there are players who demand a very clear, even brutal framework to establish a metrics of reward and disaster. I'll just type the words "corpse run," and leave it at that.

For those of you who don't know, a corpse run happens when your RPG avatar dies and you spend twenty minutes running through dungeons defenseless until you can find the loot your corpse dropped. It's a really silly mechanic when you think about it, and certainly doesn't add anything to the game.

Here's Ludwig:

The truth is, Toad doesn't lay down a wreath in front of that bottomless pit that swallowed Mario and forever concealed his body. Rather weirdly, nobody in the world seems to remember nor acknowledge when the main character meets his demise. To them, it never happened. Thanks to the omnipotent, extra-dimensional save and checkpoint gods, the hero's demise is erased from the timeline, his body safely deposited out of harm's way.

And the money quote:

When examined in this way, Prince of Persia's life-saving companion character isn't particularly innovative -- she's a glorified checkpoint with a plunging neckline.

Bingo. I agree completely. Game death, as it's usually handled, should have died along with coin-ops. Death was a way to make the player put more money into the machine. So why are games still operating on this premise, decades later? Ubisoft found a clever way to avoid hours of annoying repetition. Let the curmudgeonly oldies complain about Prince of Persia's ease of use. This is the future, and we're better off for it.

The 61FPS Review: Prince of Persia

John Constantine — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 19:30:00 GMT

Guest reviewer Adam Rosenberg resides in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, where he slaves away daily as a contributing editor for UGO’s Gamesblog as his dog Loki looks on in bewilderment. In addition to the noble pursuit of video games, Adam enjoys spending time with fine film, finer food and his fine fiancée Bekah.

I’m not really sure the title “Prince of Persia” is relevant anymore. After all, in Ubisoft’s latest – a reboot of the trilogy started with Sands of Time – you play a wandering scoundrel: two parts Han Solo, two parts le Parkour founder David Belle and one part Indiana Jones. You could argue that the open-world, Middle Eastern-flavored surroundings might be situated in an ancient, fantasy-world version of Persia, but it just as easily might not be. But hey, that’s brand recognition for you.

Prince of Persia is a streamlined spectacle, lighter on challenge than previous series entries but also more visually appealing by several orders of magnitude, thanks to the face-lifted, cel-shaded art design. Meanwhile, the gameplay remains fundamentally unchanged; as the titular (not-)Prince, you’ll still be wall-running, column-groping and bar-swinging, all of it supplemented by increasingly frequent dalliances with magic.

But to be honest, there’s not much in the way of "game" in Prince of Persia. It is essentially a massive, player-guided Quick Time Event broken up by occasional displays of QTE-fueled swordplay.

Traversing the game’s environments is surprisingly fulfilling, the Prince’s fluid grace keeping your eyes glued to the screen. The platforming is successful because it hides its QTE-nature behind a series of environmental signifiers. Outside of combat, the game never explicitly tells you which button to press after the tutorial ends. If you come across a brass ring affixed to the wall or ceiling, press B when the Prince reaches it and he’ll automatically use it to maintain his momentum. At other times, the screen will start to grey out during a longer-than-usual jump; quickly press Y in these situations to call in Elika for an aided double jump.

Elika, the Prince’s constant AI companion, is Persia's two-birds-one-stone solution to the recent trilogy's tropes: a love interest and a way to cheat death. But where last generation's Princes demanded skillfull use of those games' time-warping to fix mistakes, Prince of Persia’s play is entirely risk-free: Elika simply won’t let the Prince die. Ever. Fall off a ledge or land in a pool of deadly Corruption and her glowing hand will appear to catch you and drag you back to the last bit of solid ground you stood on. “Die” in combat and she’ll resurrect you instantly with the only penalty being a slight health boost for you opponent.

The words “Game Over” never appear on the screen for Prince of Persia’s duration. It’s a ballsy move for Ubisoft, and I’m not so sure it pays off in this outing. The problem with Prince of Persia is that it leaves most of the work in the hands of AI, whether it's the Prince's pathfinding or Elika's helping hands. That’s why the platforming compares so easily with your average QTE; all the player ever has to worry about is running in the right direction and pressing the jump, grab or Elika buttons at the proper moments. The no-fail, low-risk arrangement fosters experimentation, but the paths in Prince of Persia’s are far too linear to make such experimentation feel worthwhile.

The disparity between the platforming and the combat is sizable. The combat is schizophrenic, vacillating in the space of a single encounter between absurdly easy and unforgivingly difficult without ever really striking the proper balance. Each fight is a one-on-one encounter in a closed, arena-like space. Combos are performed by alternating between sword, acrobatic, gauntlet and Elika attacks, each of which is mapped to its own face button. Enemies frequently break up combos by performing special attacks which trigger proper, on-screen-button-prompt QTEs. A single-button QTE also appears when the Prince is nearing death, as a sort of restorative last-minute save which puts you back in the fight without the enemy gaining any health back. Unfortunately, there's no solid rhythm to these battles. You're given an unforgivingly short window to pull off special attack QTEs, to the point that you need to recognize the attack animation and respond with a button press before the actual prompt appears. Conversely, the last-minute save QTEs are next-to-impossible to fail. As such, basically every combat encounter features the same pattern of attack combo, failed QTE, successful QTE, repeat.

The overarching narrative: a formerly imprisoned, recently freed malevolent god has corrupted the land. There are four main “zones,” each one broken up into six unique areas: an entry point, a boss tower, and four discrete spaces lying between the entry and end points. The goal in each of the twenty-four areas is to reach its Fertile Ground, which Elika can use to wipe away the surrounding Corruption. Persia's story is secondary, but unsuccessfully so. Exposition in Prince of Persia is a momentum-killer. Dialogues with Elika, the game's chief source of story, requires coming to a complete stop and triggering a string of non-interactive cutscenes. It's comforting that most of these expository moments are optional, but it's a less-than-ideal way to relate the story.

What’s amazing about Prince of Persia is that, in spite of all its shortfalls, it’s actually a blast to play. The combat never manages to hit its stride and the optional expository moments quickly become more of a chore than anything else, but the simple beauty of moving from A to B keeps the proceedings entertaining throughout. I’m not sure Prince of Persia’s challenge-free dynamic will appeal to every gamer, but it succeeds brilliantly as interactive spectacle and provides a great entry point for inexperienced gamers who’d like to tunnel into the Core.

Grade: B

61FPS Reviews:

LittleBigPlanet part 1, Part 2
Dead Space
LOL
Dragon Quest IV
Ninja Gaidan 2 part 1 & part 2
Metal Gear Solid 4 part 1 & part 2
Wii Fit
Grand Theft Auto IV part 1, part 2 & part 3

Should I Or Shouldn't I: My French and Japanese Coach(es)

Nadia Oxford — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 02:52:00 GMT

I live in Canada. There are a lot of French signs in Canada. As long as I am living in Canada, I would like to brush up on my French so that I can fully read these signs. How else can the Government adequately warn me against stealing wood from ravines and possibly inviting the alien Asian Longhorn Beetle into my home to eat my family?

Oh, I do have a certain level of understanding. It's impossible not to absorb French through osmosis if you like to read the backs of cereal boxes while you eat breakfast. In fact, I immediately recognised the joke behind the surnames "Froid" and "Chaud" from the Mega Man Battle Network series and I suffered as those who never had French forced upon them referred to the characters as "Freud" and "Chawd."

So, I want to brush up on my French. I am a willing learner and the way I hear it, Ubisoft's My French Coach for the Nintendo DS is a capable teacher. Though the game won't implant an instant translator into your brain (that would be nice), the interactive lessons do wonders for the learning process versus the nasal drone of a stale-perfumed French teacher who wears litres of jewelery and rattles like a pirate skeleton.

(Madame Benlolo, Grade 7. Sacred nickname granted by the classroom tribe: Madame Benhoho.)

I'm also thinking of picking up My Japanese Coach 'cause everyone drives Gundams to work in Japan and I want to live there. Learning Japanese would be an interesting experience (though not as interesting as Turning Japanese) because I know far less about that language than I do about French. I do know that at some point, Japan decided that their moon language wasn't crazy enough so they stole about two thousand Chinese kanji to throw into the mix for shits and giggles. These kanji scare me, but if they're what stand between me and my vast Rockman manga collection, I will conquer them.

Oh my God I'm a geek.

Related Links:

Two Years In: The Wii's Feats of Strength and Its Disappointments
Wii Music: A Rare Miss For Miyamoto?
Miyamoto Says: "It Would Be Great If Music Education Started With Wii Music

Portrait of the Prince Pre-Persia

John Constantine — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:00:00 GMT

There’s something about seeing the physical inspiration for a fictional character that is both deeply exciting and unsettling. The pizza missing a lone slice, covered in tomato sauce and bubbling cheese, is downright creepy when you think about it as a basis for Toru Iwatani’s Pac-Man. Seriously think about it. That’s what Pac-man would look like if he was skinned! What does that say about Iwatani, or even me for thinking about it? Take good ol’ Mario Segali as another example. You can practically see the ghost of a red hat perched atop his mustachioed dome. Now picture him breaking bricks with his scalp and jumping on turtles. Sickly fascinating, no?

I’m told this footage of Jordan Mechner’s kid brother has been floating around the net for quite some time, but today’s the first time I’ve ever laid eyes on it. Some twenty years ago, Mechner dressed the lad up in whites and then set him off running, climbing, and falling as a model for his seminal masterwork, Prince of Persia. Thing is, the boy looks exactly like the Prince in motion.

Unsettling: I watch this terrified of long falls and hidden spikes. Exciting: Mechner didn’t have motion capture technology, just a primitive scanner and animation skills that resulted in a sprite every bit as fluid and human as the real deal.

The Prince certainly doesn’t look like Mechner’s brother any longer, having transformed into a goateed swashbuckler five years back, then into a scowling cosplayer/GWAR-fan, then into a sort of starry eyed dude covered in scarves who looks like he escaped from a Yoshitaka Amano print.

Know what’s creepier than seeing the real life basis for a game character? Seeing the character re-translated into reality. Behold your bother’s legacy, Mechner!

Editor's Note: That is not Mario Segali at all, merely a cruel hoax.

(Link: 1UP)

Related links:

Trailer Review: Prince of Persia
Character Case Study: When Good Characters Get Bad Attitudes
The Ten Greatest Opening Levels in Gaming History
Yeah, But Is It Art?: Pac-Man Championship Edition
Burn Your Skin for Pac-Man
Ms. Pac-Man: Feminist Champion

Sex/Violence: Oneechanbara and the New Localization

John Constantine — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:00:00 GMT

I thought about filing this under the Japan Scares Me category, but frankly Oneechanbara doesn’t scare me. It merely makes sense. I am not surprised that Japan makes games about a woman in a cowboy hat and lingerie who runs around with her pre-pubescent sister killing zombies with a gigantic sword and who ultimately goes insane when she’s completely covered with blood. This is just what Japan does. I’m pretty sure that there are soft drinks whose canisters are decorated with the exact same scenario. It’s probably called Refreshing Breast Blood No Zombie Drink White Plus. Chances are I would drink it. Because I delight in these things.

It’s curious, though, that Oneechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers is coming out in America at all. It’s actually the sixth entry in a franchise spawned out of D3’s Japan-only Simple 2000 series, bargain titles that typically riffed on basic game types that were *ahem* self-descriptive (see: Simple 2000 Vol. 15: The Rugby, Vol. 37: The Shooting,) but sometimes had bizarre, and distinctly Japanese, premises. Like Vol. 95: Zombies Vs. Ambulances, Oneechanbara is an odd one: instantly familiar as a game thanks to the raunch and violence, but just as familiar for its J-grindhouse tropes. It’s the sort of game – not especially well-made and too extreme to get a marketable ESRB rating – that Western gamers have only got a sampling of over the past twenty-years, a devoted-importer-only title. But D3 is bringing Oneechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers anyway, and they’re not altering it a bit, adding English to menus, subtitles for the dialogue, and nothing else.

The trend’s growing. Sega of America, after two years of acting like the game didn’t exist, just brought Yakuza 2 to the States, foregoing the B-list-Hollywood voiceovers that plagued the domestic release of its prequel, and making no effort to localize the game’s many mini-games built on Japanese cultural eccentricities. For example, the hostess bars you can go to certainly have English subtitles and menus, but there’s no effort to make them culturally relevant to an American or European player like you see in games like Phoenix Wright. Similarly, rogue-likes Izuna: The Unemployed Ninja and Shiren the Wanderer are also starting to appear, two-dimensional niche titles that don’t have a prayer of selling more than a handful of copies and would, previously, have never left Japan for exactly that reason. So why are games like Oneechanbara crossing the Pacific?

Two factors to consider: one, the cultural cache of Japanese media is no longer restricted to seedy basements covered in Evangelion wallscrolls and fan-subbed VHS tapes. Walk into any Barnes & Noble in the world and there’s an aisle of manga littered with be-hoodied people nose-deep in stories about schoolgirls killing zombies for you to step over. Also, as has been discussed many times in the past year, videogames are an international business now, so if a Japanese publisher is going to turn a profit on their game, they have to make sure that every dollar available in every corner of the planet can be spent on their product. But I’m not sure that these are the sole factors behind our newfound access to such peculiar games. What am I missing, dear reader?

Related links:

Whatcha Playing: Weight of the Stone
Surprise of the Week: Sega Releases a Good Game
Japan Scares Me: To Love-Ru - Exciting Outdoor School Version
It’s Dangerous to Go Alone
Whatcha Playing: The New Adventures of the Nintendo DS

Easy Access: Ubisoft and the Subtitle Initiative

John Constantine — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:00:00 GMT

About a month back, as the devoted 61FPS reader may recall, I found myself thinking about the more taxing aspects of playing videogames. Not the calorie-burning inertia of Wii Fit or the it’s-time-to-roll-me-nurse bedsores of MMORPG play, but the fact that playing videogames demands players use all five of their senses (and in the case of twitch shooters, a sixth sense.) You have to follow the action with your eyes, control it with your hands, listen for aural cues, and you inevitably have to taste and smell your own general foulness after a marathon session of Rock Band. Videogame design, not unlike theme park rides, does not consider the physically disabled. It can, though, and should, as it would not only open the form up for new players but also force creators to reconsider how interactive media works on a fundamental level.

It’s a small move forward, but I’m impressed with Ubisoft’s new initiative to subtitle all of their in-house developed games. It might seem like a small thing to have subtitles in a game considering most include them for dialogue passages, but Ubisoft will be adding subtitles for any and all aural information in the game. It’s all well and good that someone legally deaf can follow a cutscene, but I’d wager tutorials and ambient chatter don’t exactly translate well. Ubisoft also announced they’ve partnered up with Handicap International to create Handigo the Game, a mini-game collection based on educating players what it’s like to live with disability. It isn’t quite the groundbreaking sort of software that could be made to fully engage disabled players, but it’s another sign of serious commitment to an audience sitting outside the world of videogames.

My question is this: if a monkey can control a robot arm with its arm in 2008, when will humans be able to play games with little more than brain function?

(Link: Gamasutra)

Related links:

Easy Access

Where Will You Go, Tecmo? What Will Happen to Our Love?

John Constantine — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 22:00:00 GMT

This has been something of a tumultuous year for Tecmo. In the past twelve months, they’ve shipped just four games, three of which are Ninja Gaiden games. The fourth, Fatal Frame IV for Wii, wasn’t even developed in house (it was handled by Suda 51’s Grasshopper Manufacture.) None of these games were actually published by Tecmo, relying on companies as diverse as Eidos, Ubisoft, Microsoft, and Nintendo for distribution. In June, their public face and star designer, the outspoken, boozing womanizer Tomonobu Itagaki, quit the company days after Ninja Gaiden II released to middling reviews. In August, their president resigned and Square-Enix tried to take over the company. Today, Tecmo announced they’ll be the latest Japanese company to find refuge from shrinking domestic business by consolidating. Their new partner will be Koei.

Tecmo, I’m worried about you. Times are tough for Japanese developers developing traditional games for home consoles. We’ve had wonderful times together and I’m still looking forward to Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff this fall. Remember all the good times we had with Tecmo Bowl? Yeah. Corporate mergers are a good thing for Japanese developers. Look at Namco-Bandai, that’s gone well! That totally cut down on all those terrible licensed anime games Bandai made. Mergers are also good for creativity. Sega totally kept their strong creative streak after ducking out of the hardware business and merging with Sammy. Look at Square and Enix! They keep on making the same new, adventurous software they did fifteen years ago when they don’t have to. Why, they could just keep on cranking out things with the words Final and Fantasy on them and make a buck.

…

Bottom line, I’m concerned about Tecmo retaining their identity after the merger. They are, after all, merging with the house of Dynasty Warriors. Tecmo doesn’t always release great games, but they have a rich history of fun and interesting games. It would be a shame to see them just fade away.

(Link: Edge Online)

Related links:

Trailer Review: Tecmo Bowl – Kickoff
Whatcha Playing: Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword
The 61FPS Review: Ninja Gaiden 2
Where is Shuichi Sakurazaki, Creator of Ninja Gaiden?

E3 Day 4: No Blades, No Bows. Leave Your Weapons Here.

John Constantine — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Much as I’d like to say things are winding down for E3, they’re really not. You have to wind up before you can wind down, after all. The announcements are over, the plans are in place, and 2008’s heavy hitters have finally been played. There isn’t too much more to say about E3 08’s broad implications for gaming as a medium and today didn’t yield any revelations that would necessitate any further waxing philosophical (though the Wii did finally surpass Xbox 360’s install base in North America. Surprise, surprise, surprise.) That said, while it’s still too early to call it a trend, two of E3’s more intriguing titles share a unique quirk: Ubisoft’s just announced I Am Alive, teased only with a CGI trailer, and EA’s freshly playable Mirror’s Edge are both blockbuster positioned games that de-emphasize violence.

As exciting as the gaming medium is today, full of fresh ideas and tempting technology, few games are total mold-breakers. Nonviolence, on the other hand, is truly novel. The vast majority of videogames find their most basic play in violence, whether it be shooting, cutting, or simply jumping on turtles. Violence is immediate, a readily accessible and exciting hook to elicit an emotional and visceral response from a player. It’s not that game designers and gamers are bloodthirsty so much as it’s a base fundamental of all forms of play, digital and non. Just look at the world’s most popular sports, soccer, football, tennis, baseball, etc. Athletic, competitive sport is, in large part, based around hitting, around impact. Hell, look at board games; chess is one of the world’s most respected intellectual pursuits and it is about slaughter and regicide. Mirror’s Edge is about avoiding confrontation, escaping from hostile forces through flight. When violence does rear its head in the game, it’s typically to disarm. Assaulting your aggressors with a weapon is penalized, hampering your greatest asset of free movement.

I Am Alive, unfortunately, is still an unknown quantity regarding actual rules-of-engagement. The trailer, depicting a young man pursued by urbanites in the aftermath of a city-leveling disaster, also implies a game about steering clear of conflict. The protagonist’s route to escape is not entirely free of bloodshed; he lures his pursuers onto a glass surface that cannot support their collective weight and they plummet to an aurally messy end. But the solution is still one free of outright brutality.

Perhaps, after thirty years, game makers are finding their way around the ever-roiling controversy that surrounds the medium by taking the weapons out of players’ hands. No harm, no foul, as they say. I like to think that, instead, artists are finding inspiration in alternative modes of stimulation. No blades, no bows. Leave your weapons in the past.

Related links:

E3 Day 3: No Alarms and No Surprises
E3 Day 1: Microsoft, Sony, Final Fantasy, and For Whom the Bell Tolls
E3 Day 2: Spin, Malaise, Sony's New Clothes, and Nintendo's True Disruption

E3 Day 3: No Alarms and No Surprises

John Constantine — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:00:00 GMT

With the Big Three’s press conferences out of the way, E3 has settled into immersion mode, the vast majority of the press and publishers getting into a groove of demoing games, showing off videos, and hosting meeting after meeting after meeting. Publishers Take-Two, Konami, Ubisoft, and Capcom have all held press conferences and the extent of big news was the Capcom’s making a movie out of their sci-fi shooter Lost Planet and Ubisoft is making a game called I Am Alive, in which the player tries to survive natural disasters. Exciting stuff, eh?

Not to beat a dead horse — 61 Frames Per Second prides itself on beating only a select number of dead horses — but what, exactly, is the point of this year’s E3? It certainly seems to be running more smoothly than 2007’s air-hangar-showroom debacle, but it’s become clear that everyone in the business of making games is not using the event as a venue for announcing new titles. The obvious implication is that, with the expansion of the gaming audience and the broadening of mass market releases throughout the year, publishers no longer need a centralized event to show North America what’s on the horizon.

There is, however, a more subtle implication.

The lack of marquee title announcements at E3 2008 shows that the business of game creation has finally adapted to the information age. Now that the main source of gaming news and coverage is online venues and any-and-all information (right down to press conference rehearsals) is transmitted to the public instantaneously, the preview cycle for videogames is shortening. Games could be shown in early, unplayable states in the past because of the delay of that information reaching consumers and enthusiasts. It takes a month to put together a print magazine, publish it, and get it into readers hands, a whole other month for creators to work on their games before anyone sees or hears about them. Now, things are being kept under wraps until they’re in a state where they’re in a form close to finished.

The internet broke you, E3. Now go away.

Related links:

E3 Day 1: Microsoft, Sony, Final Fantasy, and For Whom the Bell Tolls
E3 Day 2: Spin, Malaise, Sony's New Clothes, and Nintendo's True Disruption

BREAKING: Beyond Good & Evil 2 Debut!

John Constantine — Wed, 28 May 2008 18:55:00 GMT

Oh, it’s more than in development. It’s more than a glint in Michael Ancel’s eye. Beyond Good and Evil 2 is so real it hurts to even think about it. Gamersyde is streaming the trailer that’s debuted at Ubisoft’s Ubidays event so click over there to get an eye full.

My excitement. It is boundless.

Our thanks to NeoGAF user Blablurn for trumpeting the good news ‘cross the webs.

NPD Wrap: The Times Are a Changin’

John Constantine — Fri, 16 May 2008 18:00:00 GMT

April’s come to a close and now, under the cold, hard light of math, three things are becoming clear. First, people freaking love Nintendo games. Sure, we already knew that, but over a million people bought Mario Kart for Wii in less than a week. Second, people freaking love Grand Theft Auto. Nearly two million people bought that in even less time. Third, our access to new videogames is going to change dramatically in the very near future. While these numbers may just look like numbers to us, to the people who publish videogames, the people who control when we get to engage these creations, the math is saying that 2008 is different. Tradition dictates that high profile, big hype games are held in reserve for the holiday push from late September through December and the rest of the year is just a slow trickle of quality goods. The math of March and April 2008 says that people will buy many, many games throughout the year, not just around Christmas. What happens now? Going forward, we’re going to see more games, more often. At least, until digital distribution destroys physical media and the whole issue becomes moot.

While the gigantic March sales numbers didn’t keep their drive through April, even with five days of juggernaut sales from Grand Theft Auto 4, all the players put in impressive showings. Wii sales kept pace, down to just 714K units from 721K, but Nintendo DS sales saw a more precipitous decline, down to 414K units from a powerful 698K despite the healthy software debut for both Pokemon Mysterious Dungeon SKUs. GTA4 moved the huge numbers expected, selling 1.85 million units with only days left in the reporting period but it failed to make an impact on HD console sales. Microsoft and Sony saw sales of their home consoles drop below the 200K mark but both companies can expect bigger sales through May thanks to GTA4 momentum and anticipation of marquee June titles Metal Gear Solid 4 and Ninja Gaiden 2. Software sales were cool on the whole. GTA4 and Mario Kart Wii dominated, but no third party was able to replicate the success Ubisoft and EA had in March with the debuts of Rainbox Six Vegas 2 and Army of Two.

Hardware Sales

Wii - 714,200

Nintendo DS - 414,800

PSP - 192,000

Xbox 360 - 188,000

PlayStation 3 - 187,100

PlayStation 2 - 124,400

Software Sales

GTA IV (360) – 1,850,000

Mario Kart Wii -1,120,000

GTA IV (PS3) – 1,000,000

Wii Play – 360,000

Super Smash Bros. Brawl – 326,000

Gran Turismo 5: Prologue – 224,000

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness – 202,000

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time – 202,000

Guitar Hero III – 152,000

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (360) -141,000

Out thanks to both Next-Gen and Kotaku for their coverage.

Michael Ancel is das Ubermensch: Beyond Good and Evil 2 Exists!

John Constantine — Fri, 16 May 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Remember that delightful French auteur Michael Ancel? Penchant for lavishly detailed cartoon worlds and limbless characters? What happened to that guy after he made that King Kong game that was totally better than the movie? He worked on Rayman Raving Rabbids.

Yech.

But the man’s making up for lost time. Though there’s damn near no real information to speak of, Ancel has confirmed that he is creating a sequel to his cliff-hanger-ending, science fiction epic, Beyond Good & Evil. The original BG&E released back in 2003 and, despite a handful of flaws, is a remarkable piece of game due in no small part to its ambitious presentation, active world, and its protagonist, Jade. Jade remains a beacon of gender equality in a medium dominated by sexless anthropomorphics and muscle bound he-men. While publisher and IP holder Ubisoft have yet to kick the game into “full production”, it’s out there. Viva la Jade, baby.

And, Kotaku? JeuxVideo? You guys are the best.