Christmas is nearly upon us– boo! Every year, the holiday period becomes gradually more depressing as we all painfully embrace old age, but the games perennially deliver. In 2007, the 360 had BioShock, Mass Effect and Halo 3. Without a doubt, it was Microsoft’s year, while Sony struggled along with Lair, Heavenly Sword, Ratchet and, to a lesser extent, Uncharted. This year, I’m a little more confident about the PS3’s prospects; as well as the usual batch of exciting, exclusive titles, the range of multiformat games on the market is also more interesting than it has been in recent years. Here are our picks:
Fallout 3
Released: 31 October
It’s hard to gauge people’s interest in Bethesda’s follow-up to Oblivion, given that the game is a follow-up to two ancient, PC-only classics. Then again, the concept – post-apocalypse in Washington – hardly screams commercial success, so it’s likely to be one of those titles that sells steadily over an extended period of time. Then again, I don’t really care how many it sells. Fallout 3 will be incredible.
Mirror’s Edge
Released: 11 November
We received preview code for Mirror’s Edge in the office, today, so I’ll try and post some hands-on impressions later in the week. With the emphasis on pace, quick kills and daring acrobatics, Mirror’s Edge looks accomplished enough to live up to the promise of that first trailer. Bouncy.
Prince Of Persia
Released: 5 December
With issue 170, we became the first folk in the world, outside of Ubisoft, to play Prince Of Persia on the PS3. Of course, that only lasted for ten minutes, so we’re still in the dark as to what the game is really about, aside from one-on-one encounters, crazy platforming and the interplay between the Prince and new chick Elika. Gorgeous cel-shading, though. Can’t bloody wait.
LittleBigPlanet
Released: 24 October
Finally in for review, the response to LittleBigPlanet is fairly overwhelming…people seem to love it. While I panic that the limited memory of the creation tool will hamper gamers’ ambition, it still offers an unprecedented level of customisation. Plus, Stephen Fry provides hilarious narration.
MotorStorm: Pacific Rift
Released: 31 October (probably)
We loved MotorStorm, and our score stands as one of the highest on Metacritic. It lacked, however, a number of features that could’ve made it the PS3’s defining racing title. Split-screen multiplayer, for example. Differing environments. Monster trucks. Obviously, I’ve made a concerted effort to highlight stuff that’s actually in Pacific Rift, but you get the idea. This aims, and should succeed, going by what I’ve played, to be the ultimate version of MotorStorm. Aces.
Honorable mentions: Resistance 2 (too brown), Call Of Duty: World At War (by Treyarch), Far Cry 2 (PS3 version might be dodgy), Guitar Hero: World Tour (join a real band), FIFA 09 (blah, blah, blah), Dead Space (some flaws), WipEout HD (more of the same, but prettier) and BioShock (came out on 360 last year).
We recently got the chance to sit down Cliff Bleszinski, Lead Designer on Gears of War 2. Read on to find out what he thinks of host advantage, Unreal Engine licensees and…the PS3 controller?
The original Gears of War was massive, and when a sequel comes along people expect it to be doubly awesome. Where do you start with it? Do you just take it and make it bigger and better?
Yeah, we were originally saying the bigger, better, more badass thing which was marketing speak, and ultimately became a self parody of itself which is why we want to reinforce that the game is more epic, yet more intimate. We all kind of got together and went through a process of working out what would be new in Gears 2, what would be better than the original, and we came up with a huge list and talked about it for a week. Maybe the campaign would be a little longer, and we knew that we had a better story and would have new weapons, different multiplayer modes and Horde.
I think getting Josh Ortega on board helped a lot in having a fresh perspective on existing characters, and smaller things like having Steve Jablonsky who did an excellent job on scoring, not only on the battle music, but the in-game music as well. We got a very talented writer and composer, and hopefully we’ve built a package that people will play for years to come.
What was the most important thing you wanted to improve upon from the original Gears?
Well in regards to doing something that has a little bit of heart in there, the campaign and the story were the obvious ones. At the same time though I was dying to get back in and tweak the cover system. When I played the first game I thought we did a really good job, but then there were so many little problems with it too. You’d be running and accidently slam into a wall, or you’d dive towards cover or launch a swat turn and you couldn’t interrupt it, whereas you can now. And when you got knocked down I wanted to crawl around and all that stuff. We’ve tweaked all of those things to a very high level and that’s what I‘m really happy with.
Back to the script writing and the directions that the plot took. How much control did Josh have and what was the direction he took with the universe you created?
Basically the way we do the process is, I come up with a two page treatment and then Rod and Mike tear it to shreds, and then I do another treatment and another until we have something that feels like a solid outline of the game. So we have a two page outline of all of the levels and then Josh comes in and that’s the way that Gears 2 panned out. We’re all just learning as we go, the process is continuing to evolve but, erm…Josh is a very charismatic guy, he’s a force of nature. You know he’d battle and push so that we got the product and, more specifically, the best narrative in the end.
Is there anything particular that he pushed for that was maybe a challenge?
I can’t answer that without spoiling any of it to be honest. You know, narrative-wise we’ve taken some risks and we’re doing some things that I haven’t ever seen in a video game before.
Let’s leave the format war between Sony and Microsoft and explore a gaming phenomena that unquestionably improves current gaming trends — Artificial Intelligence, or AI to many. Touted to make new breakthroughs and trends in the world of gaming, AI is the enabling of intricate decision-making capabilities in a software. Speaking of AI, the Xbox 360 boasts of an AI-capable system designed and developed by many brilliant and innovative engineers. Though the Xbox also has this feature, it is more pronounced and better in the new console combined with the HD DVD technology.
Of course, such high-quality consoles deserve top-notch games and the developers stepped up to the challenge. Game developers for Xbox and its new improved counterpart also added AI programs to their games, giving the in-game personas the ability to think like a real person. With the vast power of the new consoles, the whole universe of gaming comes alive. A summary of the improvements AI bring to online gaming: non-player characters or NPCs act in realistic manner, not to mention that allies are more helpful and enemies become more fiendish than ever.
Such simplistic notions cannot fully express the benefit of AI in a game sequence. The simplicity of the summation only contrives to hide the complexity of the AI behind the Xbox 360. But the concept of AI is not a modern one. In fact, AI is a subject of discussion, debates, and practical simulations within the academic setting for years. Chris Satchell, Microsoft’s General Manager for Game Development, attests to this fact. From the development of Pac-Man, game designers and developers have been employing the use of AI, even if it is just in its simplest state. Take Pac-Man for example, wherein the main objective is to eat as many golden pellets as possible without being eaten by the “ghosts.” This simplicity is matched by the elementary pre-scripted AI patterns used. The ghosts almost always follow a straight line but they deviate from their path when they sense your presence. It is noticeable especially when your Pac-Man does not change position at all — the ghosts move according to the path, changing directions only when they get close to you.
Twenty years later since Pac-Man, family computers, and many computer hardware changes, game developers still use the same simplistic AI tricks. The hardwares evolve to accommodate the intensity of the modern graphics as well as the sound system for more biting audio. However, despite these changes, AI programs continue to be a sort of last-minute addition. In fact, the programs are deemed to be unimportant in gaming. As a result, the NPCs, largely remained as stupid bots who don’t move even if caught in a crossfire. This is what the AI programs for the Xbox 360 take care of.
Satchell affirms that the new processing model composed of three powerful symmetric cores more than makes up for the lack of “reality” of the old console models. He asserts that this new Microsoft innovation is really a paradigmatic shift because the standard for game consoles and computer hardware is the use of a single core. He added that this shift to a three-core system will add considerable burden to the lives of game developers but add to greater delight of all Xbox 360 gamers. This is because a fully AI-capable three-core system provides greater flexibility and more cycles which make gaming more exciting and interesting.
The key to achieving that is to make sure that the AI programs of the new Xbox run smoothly on all three cores. Therefore, the developers need to take extensive sections from their codes and test it on all three cores. As a result of all these great efforts, the CPU’s main processor does not take all the burden of handling multiple tasks; instead, the added cores take over the job. The results are more efficient gaming, sharper graphics, quality audio, and thinking characters which give Xbox 360 games advantage over others. Link
CNET’s Crave on Friday reported on Nielsen’s latest VideoScan figures, showing that Blu-ray Disc’s market share in the video disc market has slumped in the past week.
According to Nielsen, Blu-ray’s market share dropped to just 8 percent of the overall market, giving DVDs a whopping 92 percent ownership.
Granted, those figures show only one week’s performance, and Blu-ray may have a huge week soon and capture more of the market, but let’s be honest with ourselves: do we really think that will happen?
According to a study released in August by ABI Research, more than half the people it surveyed had no plans to buy a standalone Blu-ray player in the near future, and 23 percent are considering it, but not until 2009.
When your format is limping along with just 8 percent of the market, the last thing you want to hear is that only 23 percent of the population actually wants a Blu-ray player.
But wait! There’s always the PlayStation 3, right? Surely, everyone who knows about Blu-ray is picking up a PlayStation 3 to watch their movies. After all, won’t that product be the savior for which Sony has been waiting?
Please. According to NPD’s latest numbers, Sony sold just 185,000 PlayStation 3 units, which represented a 17 percent drop, compared to July sales numbers. Worse, it barely beat out the PlayStation 2, DVD player and all.
The PlayStation 3 isn’t going to be Blu-ray’s savior, and neither is that sub-$200 price tag. At this point, I simply don’t see how Blu-ray has a chance.
Eight percent of the market is nothing. Sure, it’s a young product, and DVD started out slowly too, but do all the people who espouse the belief that Blu-ray will succeed somehow forget that the jump between VHS and DVD was substantial?
Find yourself a VCR, and pop a tape into it. After that, throw a DVD into your player, and watch it on your HDTV. When you’re done with that, do me a favor, and pop a Blu-ray movie into your PS3. Notice anything shocking when comparing VHS to DVD and anything, well, disappointing when comparing that DVD movie to Blu-ray?
That’s what I thought.
Why would I want to buy a Blu-ray player and Blu-ray movies, which are more expensive than DVDs, when I can get the same basic experience (if not quite as enhanced) for little or no additional cost?
Worse, why would I want to buy my library of movies all over again, once Blu-ray becomes the de facto leader in disc media? That’s an added expense I’m not willing to incur.
But the issues with Blu-ray go far beyond the slight difference (except on large HDTV screens) between DVD and Blu-ray. How about the fact that Blu-ray movies can’t be brought, well, anywhere?
Sure, you can buy a Blu-ray movie at the store or get one from Netflix, and play it on your PS3 or standalone player, but you won’t be able to play it on your notebook unless you have the latest and greatest laptop on the market. And you certainly won’t be able to watch it in the car on a long ride. And unless your friends have a PS3 or a Blu-ray player, you won’t be able to watch it with them, either.
Mobility is a key reason why DVD is such a success. You can buy a portable DVD player or pick up some movies, and play them practically anywhere you are. At this point, you simply can’t do that with Blu-ray.
We also can’t forget about HD downloads, the various streaming services on the Web, set-top boxes that let you stream movies to your home theater, cable boxes, and countless other technologies that put Blu-ray’s usefulness and its entire future in doubt.
Services like Hulu are becoming increasingly popular, and products like the Roku Netflix box could easily command much of the market, as more people realize that streaming movies to an HDTV is more than possible. Better yet, iTunes now has HD video, which means that taking HD from your computer to your HDTV is getting simpler with each passing day.
And all the while, Blu-ray is the wild card, hoping against hope that someone, anyone, will finally find considerable value in the product, adopt it, and start making everyone around them jump on the bandwagon.
But alas, the possibility of that happening is slim. Blu-ray, while appealing in its own right, is simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. As the inertia of the industry starts pulling us away from physical media formats, and HD video can be easily found elsewhere, everyone will realize that what they really need to do is move past Blu-ray and start using the products that will carry them into the future.
It may have beaten HD DVD, but Blu-ray doesn’t stand a chance against DVD, nor the broader industry it’s a part of. It’s as simple as that. Link
(Note: This article was written and submitted by SlapStic reader Colin Anderson. If you’d like to write for SlapStic, just check out our “Submit Your Article” form! Any well thought out article is accepted.)
I don’t just go out and buy any video game that has guns or boobs in it: I have a filter, like an online server list. I mentally sort out the good, the bad, and the ugly before buying anything. I can’t afford to buy every average shooter that comes out. In order to warrant a purchase, a game must be, for the lack of a better word, “great.” As a consumer, there are a number of things that I look for when spending my hard-earned cash on a full-price game, and without these things, I tend to assume that a game is just average.
The first thing I consider when buying a full-price game would have to be the single player and multiplayer aspect. Some games only have single-player whereas some just have multi-player, or both. I’m fine with any but if a game is single player only, I want the environment to be so immense and immersive that I would just want to live the experience like in Bioshock or Fallout 3. For every other game I would rather have multi-player on the side, like in Call of Duty 4. I don’t normally buy single player only games that aren’t that type of Bioshock experience. I mean, once it’s beaten what else is there to do? Multiplayer can be played millions of times over and be different every time, since the experience is determined by the other players. Even if it’s just co-op like in Mercenaries 2, Fable 2, or Crackdown it’s still somewhat enjoyable being able to play with a person that doesn’t walk into walls or get in your way until you blow them up with your beam cannon (like the AI might do). If a single player game has 400 hours of gameplay and it’s not about doing the same thing over and over, I’d be fine with that, too, but most video games just don’t last that long.
In modern games, I’d like to see “creatability.” If I can carve my name in the wall with bullets, that’s cool but is that all I can do to customize the game? Why not be able to move stuff in the game levels to make it different like Halo 3, LittleBigPlanet, or FarCry 2? Video games take us to realms unthought of in real life. Can’t we be a part of that creativity in games? After all video games are somewhat an art form and art has a lot of creativity and if games were all “creatabilized” we would strengthen our ability to imagine and create things the game designers themselves wouldn’t have thought of.
Replayability is a big factor to warrant a $60 price tag. If I can unlock things like levels or guns or characters or some sorta magical device you put on your body to look different, then that’s always a plus. I used to play Timesplitters all the time, back in the day. I would try and push my limits and unlock every item or medal in the game. It was pretty hard and grueling, but after succeeding, I felt like I had gotten somewhere, and I loved that sense of achievement. In modern games, if you do something particularly hard it often earns you something like an achievement, or a trophy, or maybe a piece of candy. Trophies and Achievements are great, because it encourages me to do things in games that I wouldn’t normally do, like kill myself with my own air mine. On the other hand, however, there are some that are as easy as pressing the start button or watching the end credits of the game.
I’m not saying I want all these aspects in every game I buy, but that I’d be happy to have at least one or two… The day that someone effectively combines all three, however, I’ll be in video game heaven. Link
As we all know, the holiday season is absolutely crucial for most industries, and that most certainly includes video games. This year, and for the very first time, I can honestly say Sony’s next-gen machine has Bogarted all the momentum as we head into the always-lucrative holiday months.
Why? It’s not about the smaller picture; it’s about the bigger picture, which means we have to analyze 2008 and the near future; let’s say, the first part of 2009. Consumers are most interested in how a product has fared recently, and whether or not they’ll be happy with their purchase down the road. Of course, the consumer realizes it’s impossible to predict the future, but in the game industry, they can definitely examine the next 6-12 months or so. Now, the Wii has a substantial lead, but without the software, that lead is bound to dissipate (no arguments from the Wii fanatics; that system has nothing all that significant on the horizon as far as I can see), and the Xbox 360 has been slipping. The reliability issue is still there - sadly - Too Human flopped, and Microsoft is going to pin most of their holiday hopes to Gears of War 2 and Fable II.. …those are fine games to pin your hopes to, of course, but in my opinion, it’s not enough to steal away the acquired PS3 momentum.
For the first time in 2008, the PS3 outsold the 360 consistently during several months, and we’ve seen two of the defining games of the generation already. One of them is the multiplat Grand Theft Auto IV but the other is the PS3 exclusive, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. And before 2008 is out, the PS3 will have LittleBigPlanet, Resistance 2, MotorStorm: Pacific Rift, SOCOM: Confrontation, the freshly released Wipeout HD and more. Furthermore, in moving to that bigger picture: Blu-Ray will continue to become more accepted - it’s the default high-definition movie choice, and the PS3 is the only game console capable of HD movies - and both the Network and Store have come a long way. The Network remains free, and with the mammoth 160GB PS3 set for the holidays, there will be plenty of appealing benefits to considering a purchase.
Then, down the road. In terms of exclusives, the PS3 easily leads the 360 in 2008 (although it’s closer in comparison to the Wii), and that lead should expand in 2009. Killzone 2, God of War 3, Heavy Rain, InFamous, White Knight Chronicles, and others will probably lead the way, and gamers are well aware of the impending schedules. Lastly, in terms of price, the PS3 has come down $200 since its launch less than two years ago, and as of now, there’s little difference between the 360 and PS3. The Wii clearly is the most affordable and the most accessible for the casuals, but without the system-selling games, the PS3 will gain ground. So many analysts and journalists have already called 2008 “the year of the PS3,” and this holiday season should solidify that claim. Oh, and what’s really stopping 2009 from being another big one for Sony’s machine…? Momentum is essential, and whoever has it in October has the big edge in December.
The PlayStation 3 just scored, promptly picked off the QB on their opponent’s next possession, and is once again driving the field in front of a roaring home crowd. The defense is their heels, the bench is goin’ nuts, and the receivers have super glue on their fingertips. Can’t see it any other way. Link
The NPD Group has released the latest 360 software sales figures for the U.S.A., and there are a couple of surprises in there.
While no one’s going to be confused by a top three consisting of GTAIV, Call of Duty IV and Madden, the games in fourth and fifth place are Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2 and Army of Two, respectively. If nothing else this comprehensively proves that Americans really, really like guns.
But it also proves that in the face of being the only new franchise in the top five and receiving merely good-to-average review scores, Army of Two still went on to sell some 900,000 copies in the US.
Our guess is that to some the lure of co-op is so strong it makes the game itself seem like virtual wrapping paper. Brr.
