[This week, our partnership with game criticism site Critical Distance brings us picks from Ben Abraham, on topics including how to zero in on fun game mechanics, the portrayal of psychological trauma in games, and why interactive storytelling isn't always important.]

It’s This Week In Video Game Criticism. It'll be short and sweet this week as I have video games I need to get back to playing. Let's get straight into it then.

At the intriguing new blog Gamamoto, Pietro Polsinelli looks at Dinner Date, and has a nice wine to wash it down with it: "This is a game where living the story is everything. The story is completely canned, there is no interactive storytelling ... The craft went in the writing, and then supporting the story in a fitting environment, creating the right atmosphere."

Jaime Griesemer at The Tip of the Sphere blog talks about why he plays every game as if it’s a 7.5, and what that means for designers. "At the beginning of a project, when you are prototyping a new game mechanic, you are not going to have a polished, tuned experience. It’s going to be noisy and buggy and awkward," he writes.

Nicholas Geist at the Saved Games and Lost Lives blog writes about the idea of treating the “Reviews as a Lens” – i.e. ostensibly using the review format to look at games, irrespective of age, etc:

"For me, the importance of reviews isn’t rooted in whether or not to buy the game in question. It’s the value reviews offer as a genre of writing, as unique as the essay or the letter, that serves as a lens for looking toward a game. What reviews offer is a chance to change our stance toward the games we play, to think about them in a new and different way, and to draw conclusions about what the game means."

A pair of pieces from the Kill Screen website, the first: ‘Radical Dreamers’ by Jason Johnson talks about Timothy Leary and video games: "Leary had lofty ideas about the role and function of games. He wanted them to be intimate experiences. He thought they could exhibit the ultimate potential of the mind. As a result, overambitious ideas sunk most of his projects before they ever got started."

The second, by Brendan Keogh, is a story about fun times had at GDC, itself masquerading as a review of the full-body-action game Ninja. Even the piece is in a Ninja disguise! Another duo this week, but from the PopMatters Moving Pixels blog. Scott Juster grasps at the meaning behind Jason Rohrer’s Inside a Star Filled Sky, and Kris Ligman regales us with tales of ‘The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsless Rogue: Dragon Age II's Isabela’.

At GayGamer, Denis Farr gets in touch with Irrational’s Ken Levine to talk to him about the flamboyant character of Sander Cohen in Bioshock: "…as Levine confided, 'If you asked Sander Cohen if he was gay, he'd probably say no.' It's in the details."

The Escapist magazine has a very interesting piece by one Robert Rath called ‘Ghosts of Juarez’, exploring the violence plagued Mexican city’s relationship with one videogame, namely Ghost Recon: Advance Warfighter 2: "The game follows the Ghosts, a U.S. Army black ops unit that assists loyalist Mexican forces in putting down the insurgency. Though absurd to American audiences, this plot was incredibly provocative from the perspective of the Mexican government."

Do you remember the real-time, asynchronous multiplayer, browser-based space strategy game Neptune's Pride? Joel Goodwin of the Electron Dance blog was part of a cadre of video game bloggers who jumped into a game about a month ago and who has now written up the experience. Here’s the index page for the series, and this is how it kicks off, in the part titled ‘Sartre was right.’

At the Alive Tiny World blog, Katie Williams writes about the iPhone game Sally’s Spa, putting herself inside the rapidly fraying mind of the titular Sally. The author of The Gwumps blog wrote this week about ‘Post-Traumatic Wastelands’: "Two games especially – Dead Space II and Fallout: New Vegas – have tackled with various success two key elements that I think have been horribly, almost criminally, overlooked. These are: 1) The effects of violence on the psyche and 2) The emotional tolls of dealing with that violence."

Something for those interested in Game Preservation: at Bitmob this week, Rus McLaughlin talks to Chris Melissinos of the Smithsonian Museum's 'Art of Video Games' exhibition. And finally for this week (I did say it was going to be short!) the ‘Overthinking It’ blog author ‘Stokes’ looks at ‘Grand Theft Auto and the Problem of Evil’. An interesting look at an old subject, and one that could definitely see its implications fleshed out into a book chapter length investigation.

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Organizers of GDC Europe 2011 are reminding on the call for submissions for Main Conference and new focused Summits for this August's conference in Cologne, Germany.

Taking place Monday through Wednesday, August 15-17, 2011 at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost, GDC Europe 2011 will again provide the essential pan-European perspective of game development and business trends happening throughout the continent today.

The call for submissions for lectures will include main conference tracks in Business & Marketing, Game Design, Production, Programming, and Visual Arts.

Organizers are looking for leading practitioners to propose lectures and panels with major practical takeaways for today's video game market.

In addition, GDC Europe 2011 is introducing the Social Games Summit, Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit, Independent Games Summit, and Community Management Summit to its roster this year, and is also looking for submissions in these focused areas.

The Call for Submissions for both the Main Conference tracks and all four GDC Europe Summits is now open through Friday, April 8, 2011. You can learn more about the submissions process and guidelines at the official GDC Europe 2011 submissions page.

For more information on GDC Europe as the event takes shape, please visit the official GDC Europe website, or subscribe to updates from the official Game Developers Conference news page in RSS form, official Twitter page, or official Facebook page.

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Have you ever wished that you had your own miniature Shinji Mikami to keep in your office and create new games based on all your wacky Resident Evil ideas? You have? Really? Well, that's a very bizarre wish to have. 

Tango Gameworks, Mikami's new studio that was recently acquired by Zenimax, must have somehow heard your prayers somehow, as the developer has unveiled the first product it intends to ship: Shinji Mikami action figures.

The figures stand around 6.5 inches tall and have more than 250 moving parts. They also come with an attachable beard (Grows 1/4 inch per minute), swappable hands, and different caps. The limited version even spouts random phrases.

Apparently, if you press the button on his back, you'll launch him into outer space, too. Though the toy didn't go on sale until this morning, one reviewer is already complaining about the feature: "I pressed the button on his back and he flew way the hell up in the air and never came back. I want my money back."

You can check out more shots of this beautiful figure for the renown game designer, which we're absolutely postively completely sure isn't an April Fool's Day joke (though we haven't conirmed it yet), at Tango Gameworks' site.

Posted by Eric Caoili at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Bejeweled 3 fans, composer Alexander "Siren" Brandon tipped us to the release of the popular puzzler's remastered soundtrack. Subtitled "a musical quest", the album includes 20 tracks and nearly 50 minutes of music from Brandon and fellow demonscene notable Peter "Skaven" Hajba.

The two put together a quality album that's definitely worth your ears' attention even if you're not a fan of the match-three series -- you can stream it for free or buy it in your digital format of choice at Bandcamp for €6 (approx. $8.53) or more if you're feeling generous.

And after you've thoroughly enjoyed that, you can also pick up the newly remastered Bejeweled 2 soundtrack, which has 17 songs all composed by Hajba!

Posted by Eric Caoili at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The story of Bio Force Ape begins 20 years ago, when Nintendo Power published a brief preview (pictured below) of what sounded like an amazing NES game from Seta: a side-scroller starring a "genetically engineered super chipmanzee" that could suplex and pliedrive enemies.

The game was eventually cancelled, and those who believed that such a preposterous game even existed doubted that prototypes for Bio Force Ape would ever appear -- its status among collectors even spurred a popular and hilarious hoax at Digital Press several years ago.

In March 2010, though, a genuine prototype for Bio Force Ape appeared in a Yahoo! Japan auction, and Lost Levels' Frank Cifaldi managed to pull together donations from friends and the LL community to buy the cartridge for around $2,700.

And while today is the worst day to release something like this and convince people it's not an April Fools' Day joke, the ROM for Bio Force Ape has been dumped and made available for anyone to play in their emulator of choice!

You can download the game and read the full story behind Bio Force Ape at Lost Levels.

Posted by Eric Caoili at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

[Every week, we round up the titles released for the major console and portable digital delivery services, as compiled by editor Ryan Langley over at sister site GamerBytes.]

It's time to look at the digital-first titles debuting this week across both North America and Europe on the major console digital systems, including the Xbox 360's Xbox Live Arcade service, the PlayStation Network for PS3 and PSP titles, as well as Nintendo's WiiWare and DSiWare services.

Notable releases this week include the PSN and XBLA release of Konami retro remake Rush'n Attack: Ex-Patriot, the PSN release of musical puzzle game Chime: Super Deluxe and PSN's first Genesis title in Sonic the Hedgehog.

Xbox Live Arcade (Worldwide)

This week's releases are Island Of Wakfu, a downloadable action-RPG based on the popular free MMO for 800MSP, Konami's Rush'n Attack: Ex-Patriot for 800MSP, and G-Rev's crazy looking top-down scrolling shooter Strania for 800MSP.

But that's not all -- there are a number of deals on right now.

Deal Of The Week is for:

Raskulls - 400MSP
Worms 2: Armageddon - 400MSP
Worms 2 Battle Pack - 200MSP
A World Of Keflings

All for Xbox Live Gold members. Alongside that is the an "Extreme Shopping Sale Week" promotion available to everyone, which includes:

Yu-Gi-Oh 5D's Decade Duels - 400MSP
A Kingdom for Keflings - 400MSP
Crazy Taxi - 400MSP
3D Ultra Mini Golf 2 - 400MSP
3D Mini Golf 2: Fairy Tales - 120MSP
Costume Quest - 600MSP
Monkey Island 2 - 400MSP
Faery: Legends of Avalon - 600MSP
Gyromancer - 400MSP
Doom 2 - 400MSP
Quake Arena Arcade - 800MSP
Zeit 2 - 400MSP
After Burner Climax - 400MSP
Alien Breed 1: Evolution - 400MSP
Alien Breed 2: Assault - 400MSP
Darwinia+ - 400MSP
Defense Grid - 400MSP
Unbound Saga - 160MSP

PlayStation Network (U.S.)

Whew, big week on the PlayStation Network front -- we have Konami's latest resurrected classic with Rush'n Attack: Ex-Patriot, a sidescrolling game similar to Shadow Complex and Prince of Persia for $9.99, the 'Super Deluxe' version of Chime for $9.99, the original Sonic The Hedgehog for $4.99 and the Strider-like cooperative game from Square Enix called Moon Diver for $14.99! Demos are also available for Chime Super Deluxe and Moon Diver!

But that's not all -- you also get Free Realms, the super popular PC free-to-play MMO now available on consoles. You can grab the basic game for free, or purchase memberships for additional help and content ranging from $4.99 to $34.99. And if you've purchased the Back To The Future season pack, you can grab the second episode now!

PlayStation Network (Europe)

A mixture of new and old this week on the European PlayStation Store update -- after a week delay you can now pick up Swarm from Hothead for £9.99/€12.99, Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime for £7.19/€8.99, Chime Super Deluxe for £7.19/€8.99, and Square-Enix's Moon Diver for £9.99/€12.99. Demos are available for all titles.

We also have two new Minis -- Mr. Hat And The Magic Cube for £2.49/€2.99, and 3D Twist & Match for £1.74/€1.99.

WiiWare/DSiWare (North America)

Truly one of the most bizarre weeks in Nintendo download history -- no new WiiWare games! Only two demos -- Dart Rage and Learning with the PooYoos: Episode 2, which couldn't be more different from each other.

Alongside it are two DSiWare titles -- Simply Solitaire for 200 Points, and Faceez: Monsters! for 200 Points.

WiiWare/DSiWare (Europe)

Three new DSiWare games over the last few days in Europe -- DodoGo! Robo for 500 Points, Dancing Academy for 500 Points, and Simply Minesweeper for 200 Points. Of those, DoDoGo! looks to be the ticket.

On the WiiWare side of things we have two titles -- Where's Wally? Fantastic Journey 1 for 500 Points, and Successfully Learning Mathematics: Year 4 for 800 Points, along with a demo for Fast Draw Showdown.

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a busy week for new job postings, Gamasutra's jobs board plays host to roles across the world and in every major discipline, including opportunities at Telltale, Sucker Punch, Sony San Diego, and more.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted this week include:

- Telltale Games: Art Director or Lead Artist:
"How would you like to work for an award-winning developer/publisher in the episodic game space? Telltale Games is seeking an experienced art director or lead artist with a strong portfolio to oversee the visual quality and art direction for one of our licensed games. You’ll also manage our internal and external game production artists. In this hands-on role, we are looking for someone who knows how to define a strong look and feel of games, manage a strong art team and who enjoys working collaboratively."

- Sucker Punch Productions: Lead Level Designer:
"Sucker Punch Productions is searching for a talented senior designer who has that rare ability to string together a handful of game mechanics into a cohesive mission that makes people’s palms sweat!"

- Sony Computer Entertainment America - San Diego: Senior UI Programmer:
"Be a part of the most exciting and innovating computer entertainment in North America. Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC (SCEA) markets the PlayStation family of products and develops, publishes, markets, and distributes software for the PS one console, the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 computer entertainment systems and the PlayStation Portable (PSP)."

- ZeniMax Online Studios: PR Manager:
"We are currently seeking a PR manager to work on our World-Class MMOG. If you're hardworking, game-loving, experienced, passionate, and know you can contribute to a large-scale MMOG, then let us know."

- Yoostar Studios: Director of Software Engineering:
"We are looking for an experienced software engineering director to drive the development of our next-generation cross-platform social game engine. In this mission-critical position, you will have a unique opportunity to lead a talented team of developers in charge of our core social video gaming products."

To browse hundreds of similar jobs, and for more information on searching, responding to, or posting game industry-relevant jobs to the top source for jobs in the business, please visit Gamasutra's job board now.

Posted by Tom Curtis at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With the Nintendo 3DS now launched and hundreds of thousands of people now having easy access to a glasses-free 3D device, Disney fansite Inside The Magic has launched "Theme Parks In 3D", a collection of photos allowing viewers to experience Disney World and other theme parks in stereoscopic 3D.

The collection so far includes over 120 3D photos from Disneyland Park, Walt Disney World Resorts, and Magic Kingdom that users can download to and view on their Nintendo 3DS. Shots from Epcot, SeaWorld, and other theme parks are forthcoming, and the site invites readers to submit their own 3D photos.

Along with offering instructions for downloading the .MPO files to 3DSes, the site also has anaglyphic and side-by-side versions of each image for those who don't have the new handheld yet. You can see them all here.

Posted by Eric Caoili at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[Every week, IndieGames.com: The Weblog co-editor Tim W. will be summing up some of the top free-to-download and commercial indie games from the last seven days on his sister 'state of indie' weblog.]

This week on 'Best Of Indie Games', we take a look at some of the top independent PC Flash/downloadable titles released over this last week.

The goodies in this edition include a score-based arcade game that features a familiar-looking green dragon, a puzzle platformer about the sun and the rain, a Japanese spa management simulator, and an iPhone App pick that tasks the player with saving a baby from a specter named Mr. Grimm.

Here's the highlights from the last seven days:

Game Pick: 'Bug Hunt' (Lazy Brain Games, freeware)
"Bug Hunt is a score-based arcade game that features a familiar green dragon with a sticky tongue, hungry for a serving of insects like flies and mosquitoes. The jungle is swarming with these little critters, so all you have to do is stick out your tongue to catch some food and fill up your tummy."

Game Pick: 'Go Go Sunshine' (Bored, browser)
"Go Go Sunshine is a puzzle platformer about the sun, the rain, and the people of Go Go Land. Your job is to make the sun jump from cloud to cloud, dodging lightning, birds and other assorted nasties."

Game Pick: 'Interlocked' (Nikita Leshenko and Ido Tal, browser)
"Interlocked is a block-shifting puzzler game that is both calming and anger-inducing in equal measures. There are various 3D shapes coupled together, and your task is to simply pull them all apart."

Game Pick: 'Hot Springs Story' (Kairosoft, commercial indie)
"Hot Springs Story is a game about Japanese spa management. You place down areas for customers to sleep, bath, eat and play, and then watch the money roll in. Over time, you'll be able to invest money in outside projects to boost the economy, and take part in magazine competitions to have the best spa in the country."

Game Pick: 'Grimm: Ride of the Perambulator' (Robox Studios, commercial indie)
"In Grimm: Ride of the Perambulator, a mother has accidentally left her pram at the train station along with her baby in it. The creepy top-hat wearing Mr. Grimm wants to get his hands on that pram, and your task is to tilt your iPhone to move the pram out of harm's way."

Posted by timw at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you have an iPad, you've likely already purchased Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP after all the attention it's received from nearly every gaming/Apple site out there, taking in its lovely 8-bit inspired scenes and Jim Guthrie's euphonic synth/string score.

Those of you who've enjoyed the music will be happy to hear that Jim Guthrie will release Sword & Sworcery LP: The Ballad of the Space Babies, the game's soundtrack and the first album released under the artist's name in eight years, on April 5.

The album will be available as a digital download with bonus songs on Bandcamp for $7.99 and iTunes for $8.99, but the real treat is the $30 special edition 12" vinyl record, which comes with a limited edition print (pictured) designed by EXP publisher Cory Schmitz.

With this announcement, Superbrothers also reminded non-iPad owners that they will be able to download the game soon, too, as it intends to release Sword & Sworcery for iPhone/iPod Touch some time this month with support for "several geneerations of iOS machines".

Posted by Eric Caoili at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[GameSetWatch is pleased to welcome Metal Steve (AKA Steve Dewitt) to its team of columnists to start out April. Those who are familiar with Steve’s body of work know he brings a unique perspective to games journalism that is truly beyond comparison. We limited our editing of Steve’s work to a minimum (we only fixed spelling errors) in order to retain the one-of-a-kind style that comes across in his writing. For his GameSetWatch debut, Metal Steve takes a look at the recently-released Nintendo 3DS.]

An Introduction From a Man That Needs No Introduction

Hello my faithful readers and welcome to my first column for GameSetWatch! You might be saying, “Whoa, Steve, I thought you retired from writing about games to focus on your band! What gives?” Well, as the old saying goes: Money talks and Metal Steve walks! Haha! That’s right, Metal Steve gave in to the all-mighty dollar and answered the call of the guy who runs GameSetWatch to write something about the Nintendo 3DS for you. Your eyes do not deceive you. I am truly back! Haha!

But just in case you’ve been living in a cave for the past few years and you’re saying “Metal WHO?” let me give you a short introduction. Hi there, I’m Steve Dewitt, better known as Metal Steve. I play guitar in a band called Mighty Talon that you’ve probably heard of, and maybe you’ve even attended some of our shows. Hey, maybe I even slept with your sister or girlfriend after she was wowed by my guitar skills at one of our shows! Well, unless they got pregnant and in that case it wasn’t me! Haha!

But when I’m not playing in my band or working as an assistant manager, I like to play video games. I think that’s enough about me. You’re here to read about games, so let’s get on with the show. “PRESS START TO BEGIN!”

So, you’ve probably heard of my website, Game Riffs. But just in case you haven’t heard of it maybe you should go see a psychiatrist because obviously you’re crazy and need to get your head examined! Haha! Hey, I’m just kidding! Don’t take it personally! “YOU NEED TO LEARN HOW TO TAKE A JOKE!”

But anyway, Game Riffs was my site where I put up my METAL REVIEWS of all kinds of games from different systems, and I would always provide some inside information that only real game enthusiasts like me know about. And by inside information I mean the type of stuff you can’t learn by reading GamePro or Nintendo Power!

But I decided to retire from writing about video games so I could focus on my job and more importantly focus on writing and recording a new Mighty Talon album. My band’s been having some trouble lately, I’ll admit, and I also broke up with my long-time girlfriend Samantha. So your buddy Metal Steve was kind of down in the dumps.

But not to worry, because the guy who owns GameSetWatch sent me an e-mail and was like, “Hey Steve, if I pay you $200 and send you a Nintendo 3DS and some games will you write about it for my site?” It was like Princess Leia talking through that robot to Luke but only it was some British guy with a gaming site talking through e-mail. “HELP ME METAL STEVE, YOU’RE MY ONLY HOPE!”

So today, my rabid legion of fans, Metal Steve has decided to come out of retirement to provide you with what you’ve all been waiting for. Prepare for a METAL REVIEW of Nintendo’s new handheld system the Nintendo 3DS and I’ll even talk about some undercover information while I’m at it! You’ll learn about some history of Nintendo that you didn’t know before about the Nintendo 3DS and the guys who made it. So, are we ready to go here, my video game friends? Your leader has all systems go! “THERE’S NO GAME OVER HERE. IT’S ONLY GAME START!”

METAL REVIEW of the Nintendo 3DS

Did you know that Nintendo tried to make a 3D system before? It’s true, but you wouldn’t know it if you asked them. You might call Nintendo’s customer service and be like, “Hey, Metal Steve said you made a 3D game system before” and Nintendo would be like, “Um, let me put you on hold” then never come back to the phone. Why, you ask? Good question, my wise pupil! Haha! It’s because Nintendo’s previous 3D system was a total failure. It was called the Virtual Boy and nobody bought it. And it even caused one kid to go blind, I think! It collected dust on store shelves then Nintendo told the stores to send it back so it could be buried in the desert.

But 3D is really big right now, and when the guy who makes most of the games for Nintendo, who is named Miyamoto, went to see a movie in Japan one day, he saw one called Avatar that was a huge success and required you to wear 3D glasses. He was like, “Wow, this is really cool to see things in 3D, but glasses are terrible.” Which is true: glasses ARE terrible. When Mighty Talon was auditioning new drummers a couple years ago a dork showed up in glasses and before he could even try out we were like, “Next!” No self-respecting metal player wears glasses, except for weird hipster metal players and nobody like those losers! Haha!

So when Miyamoto got back to Nintendo he told everyone that 3D was big and Nintendo decided it was time to try again. But Miyamoto issued one challenge. He said, “Guys, wearing glasses is terrible. We need to make 3D without glasses.” Everyone thought this was impossible and there were even rumors that the guy who runs Nintendo, Reggie, was going to fire Miyamoto because nobody thought having 3D without glasses was possible. But then one day at a meeting Miyamoto pulled a box out and inside was the Nintendo 3DS. He got his assistants to invent a new technology that allows you to see 3D without glasses. “THE FUTURE IS NOW!”

When Nintendo announced the Nintendo 3DS at the big game convention, E3, nobody was prepared for it. Everyone thought they were just going to show off a new The Legend of Zelda game or something, but then Reggie came on stage and all the journalists who were at the convention knew something special was going to happen. The last time Reggie came on stage he announced the Nintendo DS and told the audience he was going to kill them and make a list of all the people he killed!

Would Reggie do it again? “PREPARE TO DIE!” No, Reggie was in a good mood and smiling and then he said, “Who likes 3D?” Everyone raised their hands. Then he said, “Who likes glasses?” A couple nerds from EGM or something raised their hands, but they got booed and Reggie laughed at them. Then Reggie said, “Glasses aren’t cool, but THIS is!” Then from his pocket he pulled out a Nintendo 3DS! Everyone gave a standing ovation and some people even started crying! I think they worked at IGN.

One important thing for anyone buying a Nintendo 3DS is to remember you can actually turn the 3D on or off. When I first got my 3DS in the mail from Simon I thought he was playing a joke on me because I couldn’t see the 3D. I don’t read instruction booklets because they’re dumb, so I didn’t know you could turn the 3D on or off. I called Simon and was like, “Hey Simon, this is Metal Steve. Very funny. I guess you want to get your ass kicked!” but Simon then figured out why I was mad and was like, “Hold on, Steve, you can turn the 3D on or off!”

Whoops! I almost beat up a British guy for nothing! It would’ve been like Independence Day all over again except our country is already free! Haha! “AND CROWN THY GOOD WITH BROTHERHOOD FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA!” So Simon was off the hook and before I knew it I was playing a new Nintendo DS only it had 3D on the top screen which makes it worthy of the name Nintendo 3DS. It really works and you don’t have to look like some glasses-wearing nerd when you play it, which pretty much earns a stamp of approval from Metal Steve right there! Haha!

But What About the Games?

So now you have read my METAL REVIEW of the Nintendo 3DS but you might be asking yourself, “Yeah, but why should I spend $400 on a new game system if there aren’t any good games on it?” Well, my faithful followers, the wise and great Metal Steve is here to proclaim that there are indeed some good games on the Nintendo 3DS that make it worth spending your hard-earned money for! Or even spending your easy-earned money if you’re some type of snooty rich kid that doesn’t have to work like the rest of us. Haha!

Metal Steve’s top pick for the Nintendo 3DS is Super Street Fighter IV 3D, which is exactly like the arcade and Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 version of Super Street Fighter IV only in 3D. It was kind of a funny story how this game was made, too. When Capcom, who are the guys who make all the Street Fighter games, brought Super Street Fighter IV to the Xbox 360 and arcade and Playstation 3, Nintendo started rubbing their hands together saying, “Okay, next up is a Wii version!”

But then Capcom didn’t make a Wii version and instead made an iPhone version and Miyamoto and Reggie were really mad. I think Reggie even said he was going to kill someone at Capcom. “THE MAN IS A MONSTER!” Haha! But the killing thing is a joke, it’s like his trademark. Nintendo told Capcom they could no longer make games for Nintendo systems. But Capcom had a secret and on Miyamoto’s birthday he got a package in the mail from Capcom and when he opened it he saw Super Street Fighter IV 3D inside and a note from Capcom saying, “Happy Birthday. We wanted this to be a surprise and you can release it for the Nintendo 3DS!”

Another pretty good game is Nintendodogs + Cats. Before you get any wrong ideas, Metal Steve is all man, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t like Nintendogs + Cats because it’s not just for little girls even if it looks like it is if you see its game case cover. Did you know that in Japan it’s against the law for citizens to have pets like cats and dogs because their homes are so small, so Nintendo made billions of dollars with the first Nintendogs game for the Nintendo DS because Japanese people were like, “Neat, now I can see what it’s like to have a dog!”?

Nintendogs was the most accurate pet simulator ever made. The game was so popular that people in the United States thought, “Okay, if everyone in Japan likes this game it has to be good, right?” and the game was a hit when it was out on the Nintendo DS in the United States. Nintendogs + Cats has all of the same stuff as the first game but makes it so you can tease your dog by throwing cats at it or something and then taking your cats on walks instead of the dogs. And it’s in 3D! “MY EYES CAN’T BELIEVE WHAT THEY ARE SEEING!” Believe it! Haha!

There are also a bunch of other games that Simon sent me to do METAL REVIEWS of, but none of them are worth mentioning. Well, I guess Ridge Racer 3D is pretty good, but it’s just a version of the Playstation One game because Namco didn’t have a lot of time before the Nintendo 3DS came out and they just took the Playstation One version of Ridge Racer and added 3D to it. Nintendo almost didn’t let them release it but Namco promised Nintendo they would bring Tekken to the Nintendo 3DS next year, which is a Metal Steve guarantee you won’t find in the pages of your precious game magazines!

And here is one more Metal Steve bit of information for you that you didn’t know before: Nintendo is releasing a new Super Mario Bros. game for the Nintendo 3DS! It hasn’t been officially announced yet, but your buddy Metal Steve’s secret contacts say that it might even feature the return of a certain costume first made famous in Super Mario Bros. 3 on the Nintendo Entertainment System. I can’t give it away because I don’t want Reggie to kill me, but let’s just say it’s a certain type of animal that is brown and black and has a long tail. “STEVE, MY MIND HAS BEEN BLOWN!” You’re welcome. Haha!

Well, my ravenous fans, it is time for your friend Metal Steve to bid you a fond farewell. I hope you enjoyed my first GameSetWatch column and as long as the owner of GameSetWatch Simon keeps paying me to write, I’ll probably keep on writing! Haha! I might need to take breaks when things get too busy with my band Mighty Talon or when things get crazy at work and I need to put in more hours, but otherwise I will be here reporting on video game stuff for all my faithful fans. See you all soon! Remember, as your pal Metal Steve says, “GLASSES ARE FOR NERDS, BUT 3D IS FOR EVERYONE!” Later!

[Metal Steve lives in Fresno, CA and is the founder and lead guitarist of the band Mighty Talon. He is best known for his METAL REVIEWS on his website, Game Riffs. Steve is a lifelong video game player and enjoys drinking beer, listening to metal, and wearing cowboy hats.]

Posted by Metal Steve at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

For those of you anxious to play the latest from Locamolito, the Spanish developer behind last year's shoot'em-up gem Hydorah and L'Abbaye des Morts, he has just released his "medical terror arcade game" Viriax for Windows PCs.

The game features retro-style visuals and music (chiptunes composed in PXTone by Gryzor87, who also worked on Hydorah's soundtrack), simple controls, procedurally generated levels, boss battles, and a great antatogonistic plot:

"Be part of the Viriax infection and show humans who set the rules in the Earth. Infect important organs one by one, and destroy the ultimate defensive hope of humanity, the Nanobot Assembly System, implemented as a chip near the brain.

Reach the organ core to infect it, but watch your energy level: each time you move up or attack you will lose part of your energy, as also you will lose a bunch of energy if you get hit by an enemy cell. Collect red globules to keep your energy full and think when it's a good moment to stop and make some points."

Posted by Eric Caoili at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After teasing us last month with the promise of an iOS game that "lasts 1000 days" and offers "1000 heroes to guide, 1000 levels to explore and 1000 relics to gather," RedLynx has a gameplay trailer to show off its boastful 1000 Heroz project.

The iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad game is a mix of platforming and racing, and it appears to play a lot like RedLynx's popular physics-based stunt racing series Trials, except with people doing the platforming instead of motorcycles.

Every 24 hours, the game will present a new hero to navigate a new stage and find a new treasure. Players can take part in daily time-based challenges and compete on the daily stage's leaderboards, or go back to play previous levels to gather gold and relics for their Hall of Records.

"We've designed 1000 Heroz to last for a thousand days, so whether you play every day or play only occasionally, there's always something new for you," says RedLynx creative director Antti Ilvessuo. "It's a new idea, where you can get your daily dose of Heroz right from the start."

RedLynx plans to release 1000 Heroez for $0.99 on the iPhone/iPod Touch and $1.99 on the iPad this April.

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[“The Blue Key” is a bi-weekly GameSetWatch column from writer Connor Cleary. This week, he applauds the rise to prominence of games that emphasize player creativity, points out some of the more notable examples, and mentions the benefits of player-created content capabilities.]

Here at The Blue Key, I talk a lot about the desirability of immersion in gaming – about losing yourself entirely in a game. But there is another side of gaming which takes almost the opposite approach to player interaction, and it seems to be gaining a lot of ground lately.

In this alternate realm the goal is not to make the player feel like they are entirely inside the game, but rather to acknowledge the player as such and utilize their creativity to enhance the gaming experience.

Of course player-creativity has long been an aspect of gaming, whether you're trying to come up with an inventive combination of equipment and/or skills and/or magic, devising a tactical plan of attack in an FPS or an RTS, or trying to find a new way to think about a puzzle that's stumping you, games engage you in a way that few other mediums can.

When you boil it down though, video games are based on the idea of “play,” and the recent wave of creativity-games really embody that basic idea and take it to the next level. In fact some games are little more than physics playgrounds, like the popular Source-based Garry's Mod. But even when there are predefined goals (generally agreed to be a defining characteristic of a game) many of these creativity-centered games have a distinctively “playground” feel to them.

Look at Scribblenauts for a great example. If you've never heard of it: the game allows you to write a noun and and summon nearly any object you can come up with (exceptions include anything trademarked, offensive or vulgar) in order to solve a variety of puzzles.

With over 20,000 objects available for use in-game, every level has at least a handful of solutions. But if all you do is rush through each puzzle and get to the end, you're missing the point of the game. Sure, you could use a “jetpack” or the “ROFLCopter” on nearly every level and never look back, but the real brilliance of the game is to be found in returning to the levels you've already completed.

In order to “Master” a level in Scribblenauts, you have to go back in and complete it three more times without using the same object twice. So if you use the “jetpack” in your first round, you'll have to find another way to reach that ledge in both of the following rounds. This mechanic pushes the player to think of some really crazy combinations.

But even when your attempts fail, just experimenting can be extremely fun for its own sake. From “teleporters” to “portals” to “time machines,” Scribblenauts developer 5th Cell went all-out to add some serious hilarity to their game, and when the player's creativity is the catalyst for that hilarity, it is so much more satisfying

Some other notable examples include: Crayon Physics, I don't want to think about how much time I spent just playing and experimenting with the physics in that game. Although, 3D Dot Game Heroes failed to draw me in as a game, I had a great time designing my personalized MegaMan character in the custom character editor and watching him come to life, then designing a Samus character for a friend.

Even games like Angry Birds and World of Goo force the player to engage their creative mind to come up with one of many possible solutions, since neither of those games have rigidly defined parameters on how to complete a given level

Even the fairly linear Trine is a good example. If you're playing Trine single-player you'll miss out on a lot of the more mind-bending puzzles that you're forced to contend with when you're playing multiplayer.

In single player, it's a relatively simple matter to swap in the Thief and swing over most bottomless pits, or swap in the Wizard and draw yourself a bridge, but when you have multiple players and only one player can occupy a given role at a time, you're forced to find ways of getting everyone across. This often requires - if you'll excuse the unavoidable pun - thinking outside the box and getting really creative. If there are only two of you, there is always the option of switching to the Thief or Wizard one at a time, but that is kind of missing the point and I would suggest it only as a last resort to avoid frustration.

Of course, how could I talk about the Era of Player Creativity without mentioning the current reigning champion, Minecraft? As far as I can tell, the only “predefined goals” of Minecraft's single-player experience are these: survive and be awesome.

There is something so deeply satisfying about looking up at your impenetrable fortress each day, and remembering its humble beginnings as little more than a hole in the ground where you cowered in the dark while spiders hissed and zombies groaned and skeletons clanked around above you. Now you look down upon them from atop your unscalable battlements and scoff. To add a further level to that satisfaction, you know that this world and this building are uniquely yours, you know that no one else in the world could possibly have the exact same fortress as you.

I couldn't close this piece without also mentioning Minecraft's Creative Mode; a friend recently took me on a tour of the reddit creative server and it absolutely blew my mind what people are building in there. Which leads into a quick point about player-created content (a topic that could easily occupy its own column altogether). This aspect of the game industry may not be “new” per se - I was creating custom player-models for the original Half-Life and custom maps for the original StarCraft over ten years ago – but it seems to have risen to a new level of prominence in the past few years.

I am consistently impressed with the gaming community, whenever they are given access to a level editor (or any similar custom-content capacity) it is just incredible what the community is able to produce. Even if we only took Minecraft, LittleBIGPlanet, and Blizzard's 'Craft games as evidence, there is clear proof that developers can vastly extend the shelf life of their games by giving gamers the tools they need to create custom content. People simply love to create, it must be in our nature.

There are so many possibilities for the gaming industry in this direction, and personally I'm happy to see this trend gaining so much momentum. I believe the rise of creativity-games has the potential to produce a variety of desirable consequences.

First, they will probably appeal to a much broader audience than just the average gamer. Second, I think they will eventually be proven to be good for the development of critical thinking skills in kids - especially since many of the current incarnations are family-friendly games. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, they will expand the gaming medium into previously unforeseen realms.

Posted by Connor Cleary at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

OneBigGame unveiled the final line-up of contributing composers for its upcoming charity music release OneBigAlbum, including Grammy-award winning artist Christopher Tin (Civilization IV) and rhythm game pioneer Masaya Matsuura (Parappa the Rapper).

Working with Game Music Initiative, a group dedicated to promoting the art of video game music composing, non-profit publisher OneBigGame (Chime, WINtA) has gathered 17 award-winning composers to create new and original tracks for the charity album.

OneBigGame plans to send a minimum of 40 percent of net proceeds from the collaboration album's sales to its charity partners, Save the Children and Starlight Children's Foundation, which both seek to "help vulnerable children across the world".

The complete list of participating composers and their credits follows:

• Michiel van den Bos (Unreal, Deus Ex, Overlord)
• Allister Brimble (Alien Breed, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Hydroventure/Fluidity)
• Marc Canham (Far Cry 2, Driver II-IV, Split Second)
• Andrew Curnock (Escape Vektor, Pop, Avatar: The Last Airbender)
• Jason Graves (Dead Space series, Command & Conquer IV: Tiberian Twilight, Prey 2)
• James Hannigan (Harry Potter series, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, Evil Genius)
• Akari Kaida (Breath of Fire III, Megaman BN series, Onimusha 3: Demon Siege)
• Frank Klepacki (Command & Conquer series, Blade Runner, Universe at War)
• Masaya Matsuura (Parappa the Rapper, Vib-Ribbon, WINtA)
• Peter McConnell (Psychonauts, Grim Fandango, Brütal Legend)
• Mike Reagan (God of War I-III, Darksiders, Spider-Man 2)
• Chris Rickwood (Age of Empires Online, Global Agenda, Ghostbusters: The Videogame)
• Bart Roijmans (Club Penguin: Elite Penguin Force, Aliens in the Attic, Dragonhunters)
• Cris Velasco (God of War I-III, Prototype, Clive Barker’s Jericho)
• Christopher Tin (Civilization IV, Pirates of the Caribbean Online, Cars Online)
• Jonathan vd Wijngaarden (Adam's Venture, Fairytale Fights, Sims Medieval)

Veteran recording artist Tom Pearce of Practical Music, who has had over 30 years of experience recording, mixing, and producing with famous acts like Eric Clapton and John Lennon, will handle OneBigAlbum's final mastering.

"The idea for the OneBigAlbum instantly met with tremendous enthusiasm from video game musicians all over the globe and we were thrilled to see so many of them contributing with a track for OneBigAlbum," says Game Music Initiative founder Ruud van de Moosdijk.

He continues, "We think we have a very strong and diverse line-up for our album and one which fans of games and game music the world over can really look forward to." OneBigGame and Game Music Initiative will announce a release date and pricing for the album at a later date.

Posted by Eric Caoili at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

To celebrate its 20th anniversary, Esquire UK invited some famous folks to produce a series of 20 covers for the men's magazine, including fellos like The Simpsons creator Matt Groening, The Rolling Stones Guitarist Keith Richards, portrait and fashion photographer Rankin, and The Office creator Ricky Gervais.

Rockstar Games, developer of blockbuster games like Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, contributed this unsettling piece to the Take Cover project, which forms the studio's logo out of snakes, ants, and bees. There's also "a caffeine-hungry Statue Of Liberty, an eagle and a helicopter" somewhere in there.

"Our cover art, designed to reflect the decay that exists alongside all things beautiful, definitely warrants close inspection – not only is it a little creepier than it appears at first glance, but you might see a few things you recognize from our games across the years," explains Rockstar.

[Via @leighalexander]

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Indie outfit Adhesive Games posted a new trailer for Hawken, its much buzzed about multiplayer online mech combat game, demonstrating what the small, Los Angeles-based team has accomplished so far after working on the project for around nine months.

While the last, gorgeous clip was mainly third-person in-game footage and a few seconds of first-person action, this new video is all shot from inside a mech, so you can see the HUD and what it will look like when you're jumping around the devastated city, strafing behind cover, and firing away at your opponents.

There's still no word yet on when Adhesive expects to finish the title or what platform Hawken will release for, but the studio says it's interested in Xbox 360, PS3, and PC.

Posted by Eric Caoili at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

['Homer in Silicon' is a biweekly GameSetWatch-exclusive column by Emily Short. It looks at storytelling and narrative in games of all flavors, including the casual, indie, and obscurely hobbyist. This week she looks at Reflexive Entertainment's Matches and Matrimony, a visual novel/dating sim based on the novels of Jane Austen.]

Matches and Matrimony takes the plot, characters, and banter of Pride and Prejudice, together with some borrowings from Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion, and blends them into a Ren'Py dating sim.

These days, of course, you can get Pride and Prejudice remixed more ways than Coke at a soda fountain. Mr Darcy tells the story from his point of view. Elizabeth Bennet happens to meet Emma, for extra cross-over fun. Elizabeth Bennet meets Mr Darcy on a ship on the way to America, or as a Sheikh in the Algerian desert. Elizabeth Bennet solves murders. Elizabeth Bennet fights zombies. Mr Darcy turns out to be a vampire, more than once. Elizabeth and Darcy experience their first, second, third, Nth years of marriage. Charlotte Collins' daughters grow up.

And, of course, in the way of all fanfic, beloved side characters die, and Darcy and Elizabeth get it on, repeatedly and in lurid detail, including with variations where theirs is a gay romance or both of them have secondary lovers. And I have barely penetrated the thinnest surface of this genre. The search "pride and prejudice sequels" on Amazon delivers a mind-boggling 167 results; "pride and prejudice variations", 89 results.

That may not cover all the novels about Jane Austen herself as a character, or of course the modern remakes, and the movies, stage plays, musicals, television miniseries, and Marvel comics.

Consequently, there is a sweetness about how earnestly Matches and Matrimony takes its material. It uses a lot of original text, and its help files are all about reminding the player how the heroines of various novels acted and encouraging the player to emulate them. It's not trying to say something else through Austen; it's just doing the stories. It's like seeing a Shakespeare play where the director has had absolutely no funny ideas about arming the Capulets with parasols or making King Lear drive a vintage Rolls onstage: surprising.

The form of dating sim does introduce a few new demands -- namely, a choice of several suitors, and encouragement to replay. Often figuring out the right thing to do depends on being fairly familiar with the original stories, to the point where at least one player suggested the game might function as a helpful review for students.

The attempt doesn't completely work, for several reasons; and yet I had fun with it anyway.

I must get my fangirl complaints out of the way first. Matches and Matrimony gets a certain amount wrong. Some of the wrong spots are clearly deliberate adaptations of content to make the game flow more smoothly and keep the roster of NPCs from becoming overwhelming. The Bennet family has only three daughters rather than five; Lady Lucas is Eliza's aunt, neatly cutting Mrs and Mr Gardiner out of the story; Wickham is changed to Wickeby, a character with most of Mr Wickham's background and also a few nods to Willoughby from Sense and Sensibility. All of those changes make a kind of sense, even if they feel odd to people who know the texts well.

Less obviously intentional are the anachronisms. Matches and Matrimony repeatedly refers to Austen's era as Victorian, though Austen first drafted Pride and Prejudice in the 1790s; and when she died in 1817, there were still twenty years to go before Queen Victoria ascended to the throne. The Big Ben clock tower (completed 1858) appears in the background of a London scene.

The player character has a chance to read during the course of the game, too, and her readings include works by Elizabeth Gaskell (born 1810), Charles Dickens (born 1812), and Oscar Wilde (not born until 1854 and not flourishing until the last decades of the century -- and the mind reels at the idea of Eliza Bennet thumbing through, say, the script of Salome with the Beardsley illustrations).

I admit this is nitpickery, and not all players would notice or care about such references. But these details jarred me a bit, not least because they called to mind the manners and morals of a culture that had changed hugely and rapidly after Austen's death. It was a little like finding references to the Beatles and Michael Jackson in a book set during World War I.

The more serious issues, however, are structural. Part of the challenge is that it's not completely obvious where to attach the gameplay into an Austen novel. Matches and Matrimony borrows the scheduling focus from some existing dating sims: each week, the player can choose what to do with her time, choosing from activities such as reading, visiting friends, and working on embroidery. The choice of activities affects the protagonist's statistics in areas such as "wit" and "propriety", and these in turn gate certain choices in conversation and interaction with other characters.

This is somewhat sympathetic with the concerns of the text: Austen does discuss how her heroines spend their time, and the effect of those choices on their personalities. The officious Emma visits sick tenants; the flighty, overly sensitive Marianne Dashwood reads a lot of poetry.

But the really critical choices in Austen's novels are often about secrets (told when? to whom?) and emotional openness or restraint.

Through its scheduling mechanics, Marriage and Matrimony lets us get at those choices only at second hand. In order to refuse the marriage proposal of Mr Collins, be sure to go on lots of long walks outside first, as this will raise your willfulness stat and equip you to say no under pressure. And because it's hard to tell in advance which stat is going to be critical in an upcoming encounter or how high that stat is going to need to be, there's a lot of unguided thrashing around to do. In several playthroughs I found myself backing up the story repeatedly to take another run up to a critical decision, because I hadn't realized my character was going to have (say) a vitally important pianoforte performance in that chapter.

The other issue lies in the way the story branches. In some dating simulations, the idea is that all of the possible dates are available simultaneously, and you play through the game a number of times in order to figure out how to get with each one of them. (See Date/Warp, for instance.) Matches and Matrimony, by contrast begins as a more or less straight lift of Pride and Prejudice. Though it opens the possibility for the Elizabeth Bennet analogue to steal Mr Bingley from her sister Jane, wed her relation Mr Collins, or fall for the outrageous Wickham-alike, it essentially frames those outcomes as less desirable possibilities and nudges the player towards the proper and ordained romance with Mr Darcy.

Winning Mr Darcy is fairly hard, though. If the player misses the plot junctures that would make this happen, the game starts to introduce options from other plotlines, bringing in Colonel Brandon from Sense and Sensibility and Captain Wentworth from Persuasion. Wentworth's introduction is particularly bizarre, because it requires informing the player halfway through the game that her character had a hitherto-unmentioned prior love affair that Mrs Bennet scotched. The idea of Mrs Bennet opposing any marriage for any of her daughters doesn't match well with the characterization we've seen so far, and neither does being told that the protagonist has aged unhappily since the Wentworth encounter, when earlier scenes explicitly indicated that she was still fairly young.

Thanks to these structural choices, it's easy to get into a situation where the overall narrative arc of the game makes no sense: it introduces Darcy, then Brandon, and then finally Wentworth as possible love interests. If the player pursues one of the later gentlemen, the result is a conclusion that has nothing to do with any of the initial hooks or premises of the story.

Then, too, the game often trades in player agency in favor of preserving the original story. Most of the dating Ren'Py games I've tried make a storytelling virtue out of the fact that you have to learn the different suitors' preferences in order to pursue them. Matches and Matrimony partly follows this tradition, but the difficulty about predicting when a stat will be needed and how effective it will be makes it very hard to drive; and feedback about Mr Darcy's preferences is deliberately withheld, so you can't see when you've made him like you better, perhaps to recapture that sense of mystery about his character.

Fundamentally, then, Matches and Matrimony falls down by failing to observe that interactive stories often must present plot possibilities in parallel that static fiction presents serially.

In the text of Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth must first misunderstand and be unpleasant to Mr Darcy, and then come to see his positive qualities. But this doesn't always make a very satisfying arc for the player, especially the player who is trying to be nice to Mr Darcy from the outset. (And we can fairly assume most players will try to get with Darcy.) Forcing the player to go through an arc of treating Darcy badly and then well recapitulates the narrative of the book, but at the expense of agency and a natural interactive rhythm.

This is why in games, we often have a failure state (not seeing the truth about Darcy) and a success state (realizing he's a good guy after all) and they are both open to the player at the same time; it's just likely that the player will see the failure state first, and incorporate that into an overall sense of the narrative possibilities.

Alternatively, Matches and Matrimony could have backed up a level and explicitly modeled the character flaws that make Elizabeth initially unable to get along with Mr Darcy -- perhaps by tracking her incorrect opinions and attitudes, and challenging the player to find ways to overcome these. (There are a few moments of discovery like this in the game currently, but they occur where the book puts them; they're not procedurally or systematically presented, and there is no way for the player to achieve a revelation about Darcy without going through the confrontations proscribed by the text.)

This choice would have distanced the player a little from the character, since we would then be working against her a bit, explicitly manipulating her personality from without. But it, too, would have been a consistent and interactively sound way of exploring the themes of the novel.

All that said, I did enjoy this piece, as one often enjoys revisiting a favorite milieu or context.

And there are notes that do work entertainingly well. Mr Collins in particular is well handled from a procedural point of view. Against all the normal rules of dating sims, he likes more or less everything the player does. Be kind to him or insult him, it doesn't matter -- his admiration of the protagonist only increases, with his proposal as an inevitable outcome.

But in general, Matches and Matrimony confirmed an existing sense I have about interactive retellings of non-interactive originals. Setting, characterization, and mood can all be carried over. By all means leave out the zombies, sheikhs, and musical numbers that adorn the more fantasy-prone adaptations. But most of the time, it's vitally important not to be faithful to the original plot.

(Disclosure: I played a free review copy of this work.)

[Emily Short is an interactive fiction author and part of the team behind Inform 7, a language for IF creation. She also maintains a blog on interactive fiction and related topics. She also contracts for story and design work with game developers from time to time, and will disclose conflicts with story subjects if any exist. She can be reached at emshort AT mindspring DOT com.]

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Publisher Square Enix has announced that Moon Diver, the new co-op side-scrolling action game from Feelplus (MindJack, Lost Odyssey) and Strider designer Koichi Yotsui, is now out for PlayStation Network (XBLA version releasing some time next month).

The new game "pays homage to [Strider] with hordes of enemies and gigantic bosses", but adds 3D graphics, a dynamic experience/leveling system for characters, and four-player local and online co-op (instant drop in and out) that spans 12 stages. 

Moon Diver also features "MoonSault Combinations" which are upgradeable and cooperatively combinable character special abilities that include area-of-effect attacks, passive power boosts, invisibility, and more. The game is available now on PSN for $14.99.

Posted by Eric Caoili at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A year after Slick Entertainment (N+ for XBLA) released the vehicular combat racing game on XBLA, Scrap Metal is now available on the App Store with a Universal Binary release, Retina display support, Game Center leaderboards and achievements, and more. 

Slick Entertainment has a development blog post about the port in which the Vancouver-based studio talks about how it settled on the directional steering touch controls, automatic firing, and four game modes (Race, Derby, Survival, and Time Trial) with five races each instead of a big campaign.

Scrap Metal for iOS is available to buy for $2.99 on iPhone (3GS and newer), iPod Touch (Third Generation and newer), and iPad. The team says it's also workin on an Android version but hasn't announced a release date for that yet.

Posted by Eric Caoili at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

['Defying Design' is a bi-weekly GameSetWatch-exclusive column by Jeffrey Matulef analyzing gaming conventions and the pros and cons of breaking them. This week's column takes a look at games that dramatically alter their mechanics in the third act.]

I loved Splinter Cell: Conviction until I hated it. For most of the game it was an accessible (if divisive) take on the stealth genre, mixing tactics and shooting into a quick-paced adventure.

Levels were somewhat open with multiple routes inviting players to shimmy around ledges and crawl though windows before silently taking enemies out from behind. Silenced pistol ammo was an unlimited resource, so shooter veterans could go about popping enemies in the head if they were alone. Even if Fisher was spotted, he could slip away in the shadows and take out the opposition by force before hiding again.

About a two-thirds of the way the game everything changed. The level design shifted to aggressively linear paths with no room for deviation. Enemies traveled in groups, so there was no way to take out more than a few at a time without alerting the rest of the squad.

Worse, none of the lights could be shot out -- something absolutely essential for sneaking. These levels didn't even make sense as Fisher, an agile soldier adept at climbing, couldn't crawl over waist high shrubbery. It was no longer an action/stealth hybrid, but rather a straight up third-person corridor shooter, and not a very good one because Fisher would go down after a scant few shots.

This is by no means an isolated case. Lots of games switch up their focus too much in the third act leaving a sour aftertaste.

Cult classic Mirror's Edge was notable for being a first-person game that wasn't a shooter. In fact, the entire game could be beaten without firing a single bullet (there's even a "pacifist" achievement for it).

The early levels of Mirror's Edge barely had any enemy soldiers and the game seemed like it was going to be something special. But as it wore on the enemy count grew denser culminating in one particularly awful sequence where Faith is trapped in a small parking garage with four soldiers. The only way out is a locked door that requires turning a crank several seconds. 

There are only two ways to get past this: disarm a foe and use their gun to shoot everyone else, or isolate the soldiers one by one and take them out with melee attacks. The former turns the game into an unremarkable shooter, and the latter is an exercise in frustration. Either way ruins the game's best quality; its sense of speed from free-running.

An emphasis on combat in the conclusion also plagued Tomb Raider: Anniversary. Most of the game was a lovely throwback to early adventure game design, focusing on the raiding of tombs rather than the ass-kicking of soldiers.

Throughout most of the campaign Lara would encounter deadly creatures sparingly, just enough to punctuate the slower, thoughtful exploration and puzzle solving that made up the vast majority of the game. Though in its final couple levels, the ratio of exploration to combat flipped and it became a poor action game. A pity as combat was always the Achilles heel of the series.

While an over abundance of combat bogs down games about sneaking, running, exploration, and puzzle solving, in a game that's explicitly about fighting, the former can be just as damaging. 

God of War was an exceptional hack-and-slash title until it got to its penultimate level, the aptly set Hades. This prolonged section forced players to navigate Kratos over a series of raised platforms over the river Styx.

It was a great premise and I love platforming, but that was never Kratos' forte, and these sequences were incredibly frustrating due to an unhelpful camera pulled way too far back making it difficult to gauge depth. With better execution and more foreshadowing, this could have been a nice respite from the action before the final boss, but instead it was an exercise in tedium.

Switching things up isn't always a bad thing as when done well, it can keep players surprised while still staying true to the game's concept.

One of my favorite examples of a game that does this well is Metal Gear Solid 4. The first half of the game was relatively traditional MGS "tactical espionage action" (i.e. it's a stealth game) with a few modest tweaks like being able to move in first person or fighting alongside a warring faction. Midway through that all changed and there were only a couple more conventional stealth sequences the rest of the game.

Instead, the second half focused on boss fights (of which there was only one in its first half, yet six in its second), on-rails vehicle sequences, and an interesting variation on stealth where players have to sneak past robots that behave very differently from traditional soldiers. 

These changes worked for me because they built upon mechanics used earlier in the game. There was already one vehicle mission in the first half and one boss fight, so these elements weren't completely our of nowhere. And while sneaking past robots is very different from enemy soldiers (your camouflage doesn't make a difference for them. They either see you or they don't), it's still stealth based and forced players to concoct new strategies to get past these parts undetected. 

The progression from sneaking past human (albeit nano-machine enhanced) soldiers to robots is also indicative of the game's themes that there's no longer a place for Foxhound's aging soldier. This switch in tactics might be a bit overkill (since the first half was so good that it leaves us wanting more, then doesn't deliver), but there's a reason for the game to switch (metal) gears as often as it does.

"Wow 'em in the end" was screenwriter, Robert McKee's advice to a fictitious Charlie Kaufmann in Adaptation. This advice rings true of games as well. Part of being wowed is doing something new, but there needs to be a buildup to this. When done well these transitions can be a welcome change of pace, but when done poorly they feel jarring and don't play to a title's strengths.

Part of the fun of games is honing one's skills at something, be it sneaking, jumping, or fighting. So when this knowledge is no longer needed it can feel like taking a final exam where most of the material was never covered in class.

[Jeffrey Matulef is a freelance writer whose work can be found at G4TV.com, Eurogamer, Paste, Joystiq, and Kill Screen among other places. He's also a regular on the Big Red Potion podcast. You can contact him at jmatulef at gmail dot com.]

Posted by Jeffrey Matulef at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Giving this set of El Shaddai figures the serious voiceover and presentation it deserves, Bandai produced this awesome trailer for the adorable Enoch and Lucifel toys mimicking the original, offbeat trailer for Ignition Entertainment's action game El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron.

This series is the latest from Bandai's Deformeister Petit label, and includes action poses like... Lucifel talking on his cell phone and gingerly handling an umbrella while winking. Enoch almost looks intimidating with his Arch weapon, but those big eyes and that smile makes you want to just pinch his cheeks.

These and several other mystery figures from the set will release in Japan "about July", a couple months after the El Shaddai game hits the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 there.

[Via @ShaneWatch]

Posted by Eric Caoili at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The latest issue of ARTnews -- described as "the oldest, most widely-read fine arts magazine in the world" -- has an excellent article on the art world's embracing of games in the last decade with exhibits showcasing experimental titles like Mark Essen's Flywrench and installation's like Cory Arcangel's "Beat The Champ" coming to the Whitney Museum this May.

Describing "how video games became art", the piece presents a number of examples of video game/art crossovers, like Eddo Stern's Best... Flame War... Ever (an online argument turned into an animation or two masks quarreling over "armor class mitigation and "shadowknights"), Ian Bogost's Independent Games Festival finalist A Slow Year, and many others.

The article also covers the challenges of games seeking acceptance in the art scene, such as interactive experiences having to shed "their gameness" to court museums, the art world tending to "focus on certain types of gaming art and overlook others", and museum patrons that have set habits of spending only a few minutes with pieces on display.

There are also some great quotes in the ARTnews feature, like this one from Chris Melissinos: "People always ask me, 'If video games are an art, where is your Great Gatsby?' I like to remind them that it was almost 50 years after it was published before Gatsby was hailed as a classic." In the world of art and video games, the game has hardly begun."

Posted by Eric Caoili at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Strania: The Stella Machine, the new shoot'em up from Japanese developer G. Rev (Senko no Ronde, Border Down) that promises "retro-style graphics and old school shooting action", released to Xbox Live Arcade today across all major territories.

The game features sword-wielding mechas, co-op support both locally and online, and an "Over Dose" feature that gives players limited invulnerability for a short period of time while multiplying their score.

As shown at the end of the above trailer, G.Rev is already working on a downloadable content release called Side Vower for Strania, which will allow gamers to play as the opposing forces from the original game, experiencing the story from the perspective of the Vower army.

You can download Strania for 800 MS Points or grab a free demo at the XBLA marketplace.

[Via Mecha Damashii]

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[GameSetWatch correspondent Jason Johnson talks with the heads of Berlin-based indie Spaces of Play about their enchanting iOS puzzler Spirits, their different lifestyles and approaches to level design, and more.]

Spirits is a Lemmings-tinged puzzler with a whimsical, well, spirit. It emphasizes player choice, creativity, and freedom. Other times, it’s a diehard brain-teaser with the elasticity of a crossword puzzle. Its harmonious discord echoes the creative differences of its creators, and their remarkable ability to play off each other to orchestrate a multi-award winning game.

I rang up Mattias Ljungström and Marek Plichta of the Berlin-based indie collective Spaces of Play to talk about how their contrasting styles came together to shape a cohesive vision.

Spirits is filled with little creatures called spirits. When I first saw them, I thought they were jellyfish, or mushrooms. What exactly are spirits?

Mattias Ljungström: If you look closely, the spirits actually spawn from piles of leaves.

Marek Plichta: Each one is the spirit of a fallen leaf.

You say they are spirits. Is that kind of like ghosts?

ML: We don’t have an extensive story. We like to hear other people’s interpretations. But, yes. They are the spirits of dead leaves. They have fallen from a tree. So they are the spirits of a tree. Of nature.

In the prototype, the spirits were originally ants. Later, they were changed into the adorable creatures that appear in the final game. How did their redesign influence the overall direction of the game?

ML: We didn't know what we wanted the game to be when we started. I had a basic concept– to get from point A to point B. I used ants. But Marek doesn’t like ants. He turned them into spirits. They looked like they’d float, so we added wind. The idea for the wind came from the artwork. And wind ended up being a key element in the game.

MP: We designed the game and the art at the same time. We designed everything in a holistic way. If we changed one thing, we changed the other.

ML: Our studies encouraged this approach. I was an assistant professor in Potsdam. I taught game design. The curriculum brought together technology, design, and art.

MP: I was a student there. Mattias was my teacher. He left the university before I graduated.

ML: I went to California for a year. I worked at Smule (who developed the Ocarina app).

MP: When Mattias moved back to Berlin, he asked me to join Spaces of Play.

Berlin sounds like an exciting place to live. What’s a Saturday night like there?

ML: What’s today again? [Laughs.] The problem of freelancing–. Maybe Marek can tell you.

MP: I'm a little more ambitious. Last weekend I went to a quite famous club and stayed till nine in the morning.

So, you two have different lifestyles.

ML: I do go out to the local bar and have a beer or three.

GSW: The levels in Spirits also have different styles. Some are very strict, while others are freeform. Did one of you tend to design the stricter levels, and the other, the open ones?

MP: It's funny you say that because it's so true. Mattias tended to make open levels. I designed rigid levels. But we tried to mix it up so that the player shifts his way of thinking all the time.

You must have designed the Two Cycles level.

MP: Yes!

That one had me stuck for a while.

ML: You shouldn’t feel bad. I spent two hours playing the first version of that level. [Laughs.] And I never could solve it. That level is pretty hard.

What’s your favorite level in the game?

MP: I like All for One because it’s actually easy…

ML: That's what he says. [Laughs.]

MP: People seem to get stuck on it. But once they figure it out, they say it’s simple. That they should have known it all along. That makes me happy.

ML: My favorite is the Three Paths level. It’s easy, and it has a lot of different solutions.

When you are designing a puzzle, do you imagine yourself as the player, or the designer?

MP: I try to think as the player would think. I try to surprise myself.

ML: I have a couple of different approaches. I designed some of the levels geometrically. I envisioned the shape of the path that the player would take and tried to build a level around it. Sometimes I’d just build randomly and keep rebuilding until it worked.

It seems the two of you have different approaches to making games. What did you disagree about while making Spirits?

ML: Everything. [Laughs.]

MP: I disagree! [Laughs.]

ML: We discussed a lot. How open the game should be. How hard it should be.

When was the last time you two argued?

ML: Um, yesterday maybe. [Laughs.]

MP: We weren't arguing. You were ignoring my question. [Laughs.] We discuss a lot. I wouldn't call it arguing.

ML: We try to keep them intelligent. Sometimes I find we debate stuff without even knowing the answer. I think it's like this. No, I think it's like that. Nowadays, we just try it and see.

That sounds very logical. If Spaces of Play were the crew of Star Trek, which one of you would be Spock, and who’d be Kirk?

ML & MP: [Laughs.]

MP: I think I’d be Spock, and Mattias would be Captain Kirk.

ML: I think it’s the other way around.

MP: But I’m better at Drop 7.

ML: [Laughs.] Yes. He is better at Drop 7...

Posted by Jason Johnson at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

8bitpeoples and The Tank have announced that Blip Festival, the premier chiptune concert series featuring renown micromusic performers and visual artists from around the world , will return to New York City for its fifth year, running from May 19 to 21 at Manhattan's art and technology center Eyebeam.

This year's lineup includes big names like Anamanaguchi, Bit Shifter, cTrix, Henry Homesweet, Nullsleep, and many other artists not yet announced -- you can see all the musicians revealed fo far on Blip Festival 2011's official site.

In addition to the nighttime performances, Blip Festival will host an "array of daytime workshops, lectures, and demonstrations that illustrate the openness and encouragement that are hallmarks of the chip community." 

You can purchase three-day passes for the event right now. Single-night tickets will go on sale starting April 19.

Posted by Eric Caoili at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Crate Entertainment, an independent studio formed by veterans of Titan Quest developer Iron Lore Entertainment, is working on another Diablo-clone that hopes to "better perfect the magical formula of exploration, character advancement, and loot collection" pioneered by Blizzard's game.

This first gameplay clip for Grim Dawn, which uses the same technology that was employed in Titan Quest, mostly shows off the hack-and-slash title's soldier class, um, hacking and slashing monsters, doors, and a threatening chair, sending chunks of flesh and wood everywhere.

Grim Dawn will feature fve classes with distinct and multple skill trees (more classes planned as DLC), destructible environments, dynamic weather, multiplayer support, crafting, a loot system designed to drop less junk items, and more.

There's no word on when Grim Dawn will release, but you can purchase the game in advance for $19.85. If you preorder the $32 Epic Fan edition, you'll get beta access, your name in the credits, and an in-game accessory. The $48 Legendary Fan version comes with all that and alpha access.

[Via butsomuch]

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After running the finest satirical Sega fansite available on this snarky internet for 15 years, Gary "Commander Zorg" Cutlack announced that UK Resistance is closing due to what he describes as "a general feeling of disconnection from a games industry that no longer accomodates or reflects our needs".

For those pitiful readers who never had a chance to enjoy UK Resistance (or its Blue Sky In Games campaign), it was "a site about games and game paraphernalia and how nothing's as good as we remember it, probably because we used to inhabit a fantasy world."

It was also the best online collection of lamentations over Sega's/Sonic the Hedgehog's fate, cheeky Sony-bashing, photos of spirals resembling the Dreamcast logo, and lewd artwork of Cream the Rabbit in uncompromising positions.

"It's time," explained Cutlack. "Or rather, it was time about three years ago and we have only just got around to making it formal." While the site will no longer receive updates, UK Resistance "will remain online in archive format for the forseeable future.

One UK Resistance reader, obviously devastated by the news, could only react by asking, "Does this mean the Dreamcast 2 isn't happening?"

Posted by Eric Caoili at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Even though it already released a Stainless Games-developed remake of classic arcade title Warlords to XBLA a few years ago, Atari announced that it's bringing another remake to XBLA and PSN this summer, this time with the help of Griptonite Games (Marvel Super Hero Squad).

As with the original, up to four players will "defend [their] castle walls from the destruction of fast-flying fireballs". They'll do this by moving moving their respective castle's shield around to bounce fireballs away Breakout-style, or grabbing and charging fireballs to send them at opponents.

This "reinvention" will add local and online game modes for up to four players, including competitive variants like co-op siege mode, 2 vs 2, or free-for-all battles. It also gives players a group of minions to capture control points, and gather power-ups that can improve defenses or harm enemies.

You can find more info on the new Warlords remake and watch a trailer at Atari's official site for the game.

Posted by Eric Caoili at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Now that Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is out for iPad, Toronto-based indie developer Capybara can focus on promoting another imminent release: Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes HD, a port of the fantastic DS RPG/puzzler to Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network.

Publisher Ubisoft and Capybara released this new launch trailer, which says the PSN edition will hit April 14 (presumably, they meant April 12), and the XBLA version of Clash of Heroes HD is expected to release some time around then.

The new clip shows off the game's titular high definition graphics with redrawn sprites and new visual effects/animations. The port will also add online and offline multiplayer modes, new multiplayer-specific artifacts to enhance characters' powers, and more.

Posted by Eric Caoili at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[In his latest 'Sound Current' interview for GameSetWatch, Jeriaska talks to Square Enix's Takashi Tokita and Naoshi Mizuta about producing and composing for the newly launched in Japan Final Fantasy Legends mobile title.]

Square Enix first set out to create a turn-based role-playing game in serial installments with Final Fantasy IV: The After Years. The positive reception of the episodic form led game designer Takashi Tokita to use the same approach with Japan's mobile and iPod Touch title Final Fantasy Legends. Featuring an original storyline and game world, Legends harkens back to the sprite art of the Super Nintendo era.

For the original music score, composer Naoshi Mizuta was tasked with capturing the chiptune feel of earlier console eras. The musician, perhaps best known for his work on Final Fantasy XI, has performed as part of the Star Onions band in addition to writing music for Blood of Bahamut and Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light.

In this interview, Final Fantasy Legends' producer and composer discuss the pros and cons of developing serialized games for digital distribution platforms. Gamasutra will be following up with a further Takashi Tokita interview on the international release of Final Fantasy IV Complete Collection for Playstation Portable, an enhanced port containing Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy IV: The After Years.

Naoshi Mizuta and Takashi Tokita at Square Enix's offices in Shinjuku

As someone who has been involved in game design since the influential Famicom era, what kind of play experience were you interested in capturing in returning to the Final Fantasy series?

Takashi Tokita: Final Fantasy IV: The After Year marked the first time in quite some time that I was involved in the creation of a new series installment. During development on the DS remake of Final Fantasy IV, it became clear that there was room for expanding the series onto mobile platforms. We thought it would be interesting to make a new title that incorporated the original style of pixel art. It turned out to be an enjoyable concept, and then there was the added novelty of the title's publication in serial installments.

On the original Final Fantasy, I worked as a graphic designer. Later I was involved in testing on Final Fantasy II, contributed sound effects to Final Fantasy III and was assigned to main scenario planning on Final Fantasy IV. I played a minor role on the development of Final Fantasy VII toward the end of production, as well as in the remakes of Final Fantasy I and II for Gameboy Advance and Nintendo DS.

At one point in time, I was involved in the development of Live A Live, which consisted of separate chapters. The player could select any chapter upon the completion of each character's scenario. Today, it has become possible to release new chapters of an RPG on a monthly basis, along the same lines as a television or graphic novel series. For me this was an altogether new experience that provided a welcome change of pace. It quickly led to the realization that publishing the chapters of an RPG in installments invited a different kind of play experience.

What do you see as the major advantages of releasing a game like Final Fantasy Legends episode by episode as opposed to as a single package?

TT: The greatest advantage has been witnessing the reactions of game players as each installment goes live and then integrating that feedback into the development of the following chapter. This is a familiar process to developers of online titles, and I think that updating the game experience through downloadable content is a more likely standard for the future than fully packaged and finalized retail games. Also, serializing a game scenario still leaves room for publishing the title as a full package after all the episodes have been completed. Although this particular game was designed for mobile devices, the experience provides insight into strategies for various platforms.

©2010,2011 SQUARE-ENIX CO.,LTD. All Rights Reserved. ILLUSTRATION／©2010 YOSHITAKA AMANO

During Square's inception as a game company, you had worked in the sound department, for instance on Red Racer. Was being a colleague of sound designers and composers something that has added to your ability to make games as a director?

TT: Mentioning that does brings back memories. During the NES era, the company only had [Nobuo] Uematsu working on Final Fantasy titles, together with one outsourced sound programmer. At that time, Uematsu-san was going as far as to implement the sound file data himself. To help out, graphic designers and planners such as myself would create sound effects in our spare time. After all the scenarios had been written and designs were completed, we would chip in on the sound design during the latter half of production. Back then, numerous employees were participating in various stages of the production. This did offer a kind of hands-on experience that was applicable to work in direction.

Today, game production is divided into very specialized fields so that it's nearly impossible for a single person to be deeply involved in every stage of development. However, that was routine in the early console eras. It's kind of like you were in a four-member band and learned to play every instrument. Among the younger generation of game designers, in my observation mobile teams are creating their own products in a similar manner.

Were you working with an Iranian programmer named Nasir Gebelli on Rad Racer?

TT: That's right. Back when NES developers were focusing exclusively on 2D graphics, he was the one who was able to simulate that perspective of the scrolling oncoming road. It was a very tricky program to write for that game system. We had only one programmer per game back then, so it was an asset to be collaborating with critical thinkers. The programmers at Square had that engineering mindset paired with strong personalities.

Nasir Gebelli was originally making games for Apple. [Hironobu] Sakaguchi was a fan of his work and that was how he was recruited to work for Square. I remember [Hiromichi] Tanaka, who's more recently been a central contributor to the design of Final Fantasy XI, would communicate with him in English back in the day. It was an interpersonal dynamic that seems to have anticipated our current climate of globalization in the industry.

The visual design of Final Fantasy Legends is built up from the pixel art style that was prominent in '80s home consoles. Do you see this as an artform with timeless appeal, or is its inclusion meant to target a niche audience?

TT: As with Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, the central idea was to create a new game that captured the vibe of the original Final Fantasy series. It's part of a revival. You could see it as a "back-to-the-basics" approach for us.

I've since realized that those super-deformed characters with their low-res look have an iconic appeal even among many younger game players today. It evokes nostalgia among some and carries pop culture significations among others. It's the kind of thing that is capable having an appeal among different generations.

As a scenario writer, what unique opportunities were presented by the serialized format of Final Fantasy Legends?

TT: In exploring the theme of warriors of darkness and light, the episodic treatment allows the focus to shift to each new protagonist, one after the other. At the same time, the origin stories for each of these characters is situated in the same location, regardless of where they are in the darkness versus light dichotomy. This allowed for the exploration of an unusual narrative structure, consisting of two contrasting storylines that are consciously interwoven into one.

Another vital factor informing the storytelling process was leaving room to integrate player feedback into the latter half of development. The protagonists' origin stories had already been set in stone, but their fate was still up in the air, so we had a unique opportunity to listen to our audience and act accordingly. The results were a game whose narrative unfolding was kind of alive. It was a novel experience to be a part of.

Announcement trailer from the Square Enix YouTube Channel

How would you describe the process of working with Takashi Tokita during the development of Final Fantasy Legends?

Naoshi Mizuta: Initially a meeting was held where we discussed the direction of the game. After that, I was free to work on my own, keeping in contact through email, sending in demos to hear if changes needed to be made. It was a fairly unimposing environment to work in creatively.

Your music has set the tone for multiple titles in the Final Fantasy franchise, including Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light. Do you have a personal philosophy concerning what game players have come to expect from a Final Fantasy music score?

NM: When it comes to music in a Final Fantasy title, it's difficult to escape the monumental figure of Uematsu-san. The music he created has established an ideal. That's why I feel a little pressured whenever I'm asked to write something for a Final Fantasy game, because there are so many passionate fans who expect a certain sound.

For me, the challenge has always been to create something that meets those expectation but without sacrificing what I feel to be personal. It's not easy, but yeah, I feel it's worthwhile.

Your music for Final Fantasy XI has thrived outside of the game itself. There are the arrangements performed by your Star Onions band, as well as acoustic renditions appearing on the Piano Collections album. As a composer for games, what are your thoughts on these alternative presentations of your music compositions?

NM: My priority in writing music for a game is to make sure it suits that particular title. Once that goal is met, certain repercussions are out of my hands. That's a consequence of the music interacting with different people in different places. Sometimes it returns, having taken on a different form.

It’s kind of a reward for me and something I'm able to look forward to. Oftentimes these music tracks are transformed in unexpected ways. For instance there are arrangements created by listeners that I get to watch on YouTube. Observing that level of interest is a source of inspiration and sparks new ideas.

How do you approach recording music in the studio versus performing live on stage?

NM: They are very different from each other. If a live performance is planned, I have the freedom to call the shots and do it pretty much any way I want. Because my responsibilities as a composer are are to ensure that the music works well in the game, once I've satisfied that demand, performing on stage is like an omaké extra. It's meant for me to have a good time with the audience.

The music tracks found in Final Fantasy Legends, particularly the battle and fanfare themes, share certain qualities with early Final Fantasy titles. Are you looking to emulate certain traditional soundtrack styles for the mobile game?

NM: What you notice in the earliest Final Fantasy games is that the music tracks are comprised of three sound channels, resulting in a very strong melody line. More recent game scores tend to focus more on atmospheric sounds and downplay the presence of melody lines. There was a point in time when it was crucial to have a strong backbone to your melodies, something that the player could hum or whistle. I think it's something we might want to preserve in games.

The challenge with this title is to build strong melodies while working within the hardware limitations, and also finding evocative colors to introduce to the background music. It doesn’t necessarily matter if the technology is groundbreaking or not. My motivation is not so much to do something technically advanced, but to pursue how far we can push the artistry on this mobile platform.

In closing, what are you most interested in communicating to your audience with Final Fantasy Legends?

TT: The theme for this game is darkness and light. Making comparisons to contemporary society, you find that judging what is good and bad has become ever more complicated. There are no simple answers. Through this theme, I hope we have explored some questions that players actually deem applicable to their lives. It used to be that games typically took a very moral, strident tone. Over time, as visual design has grown in complexity, so too has there become a greater need for increasingly nuanced storylines.

In this game we've returned to a limited graphical presentation, but we didn't want to overlook novel avenues for using those visual elements to evoke unfamiliar emotional tones. For me, that was a central concern. I haven’t yet decided how it will end, and user feedback will influence that as well. Living in such an uncertain economic climate cannot help but impact the way the story will arrive at its conclusion.

NM: Ideally, you want for people to enjoy your games. The way that music factors into that enjoyment is kind of a magical in that it's hard to describe. How do you put it into words? Above all, I'm looking to find an atmosphere for this game that people can feel and enjoy.

This content will be available in Japanese as part of the Videogame Music in Context DVD series. Images courtesy of Square Enix. Photo by Jeriaska.

Posted by jeriaska at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Grasshopper Manufacture already has several projects in the works -- Shadows of the Damned, Sine Mora, and the mysterious Codename D for Kinect -- but it has announced a new game that will release before all those: Frog Minutes for iOS devices.

Though the developer hasn't revealed much beyond the game's logo or name, it announced that the iOS title (Grasshopper's first) will hit the App Store this Wednesday. Grashopper also said that it will donate all proceeds from the game to the Japanese Red Cross for earthquake and tsunami relief.

[Via Joystiq, Famitsu]

Posted by Eric Caoili at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Namco Bandai has registered trademarks for two mysterious items in Europe recently: Katamari Amore and Katamari Amore Rolling Whopper. Could this be a new and main entry for the series? Or a sequel to the I Love Katamari mobile releases? Or some new kind of Burger King promotion? Who knows?!

Whatever it is, it likely won't have the involvement of Katamari Damacy creator and Noby Noby Boy father Keita Takahashi, who hasn't worked on the series much since We Love Katamari in 2005 and left Namco Bandai last year to pursue other projects.

I personally am hoping that Katamari Amore is a localization of Namco Bandai's Japan-only, Tetris-esque puzzler for DSiWare Korogashi Puzzle Katamari Damacy (pictured) -- it features a song "performed" by Hatsune Miku!

[Via Siliconera]

Posted by Eric Caoili at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[GamerBytes editor Ryan Langley examines PlayStation Network's debuts and successes during February 2011, using leaderboard and chart data to analyze their sales and downloads.]

The PlayStation Network on PlayStation 3 was quite busy in February -- titles like Stacking, Plants Vs. Zombies, Explodemon and Back To The Future were all released to acclaim. Unfortunately, as is often the case with PSN releases, not many of them had Leaderboards that we could follow.

Here we do our best to try and make sense of the PlayStation Store, how well games seem to be selling on it to help developers understand the ecosystem they're getting into:

About The Undergarden

Unfortunately we were unable to test for all games that came out during February – only 3 had Leaderboards we could follow.

The Undergarden added only 3,624 players to the Leaderboards from the 1st of February till the end of the month. This is actually a little bit better than the Xbox Live Arcade version has fared since its release, but still very low.

TNT Racers was only released in Europe, and on the 24th, so seeing a low number was likely – but only 555 players have apparently played the game. The XBLA version received 1,275 leaderboard submissions in a similar time frame worldwide. Again, this is extremely low on both fronts.

About A Blob fared a little bit better than the others, but once again, seems to have not sold a whole lot. It did fare better in reviews with a generally favorable response to the game, but ultimately was ignored. Releasing alongside Stacking, Plants Vs. Zombies and Explodemon probably didn’t help either.

All other games were were unable to follow for one reason or another. We do know that Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 seems to have sold much less than the original on the Xbox 360, at least. We also know that Space Ace was only reviewed by one Metacritic contributor, and that Days Of Thunder for the XBLA and PSN has yet to be reviewed by anyone, which doesn't automatically bode badly, but does not happen often.

Other Statistics

Unfortunately we were unable to continue to check Leaderboards for Dead Nation, Tetris or Eat Them on PSN in February – we may update for the March list if possible.

Outside of those title, not much has changed. Modern Combat has added a lot of players, but do remember that it includes both players of the full and retail title. Blacklight: Tango Down had less “new players” than January, despite the game being on sale during February. Both DeathSpanks and Castle Crashers seem to be doing reasonably well for themselves, so long after release.

Lousy Smarch Weather

March 2011 looks to be good for the PlayStation Network – with releases including PixelJunk Shooter 2, Hard Corps Uprising, Swarm, Slam Bolt Scrappers and more, so we should hopefully see some successes this month.

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's not clear what particular game or games the vandal was offended by, but someone spraypainted the Yokohoma headquarters building of developer and publisher Koei with words like "shitty games", "garbage", and more alarmingly "die".

While many have often criticized the repetitiveness of Koei's Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors series, the company is responsible for bringing a number of beloved titles to market for around 30 years, including titles like Gitaroo Man, Gemfire, and Uncharted Waters. 

It's also possible that the vandal doesn't hate Koei at all and was targetting Tecmo (which Koei merged with in 2009). I know Quantum Theory received some very negative revies, but I don't think it was worth defacing private property over!

[Via @sprsk]

Posted by Eric Caoili at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Bennett Foddy, who created the very amusing QWOP, has released a new rock climbing game called GIRP that he calls "very loosely a spiritual successor" to the near impossible ragdoll-based running game.

In GIRP, you need to grab onto a scattered collection of rings to ascend by hitting their associated letter on your keyboard to reach them. Your character's body is flailing around the entire time, though, so you'll need to hit spacebar or shift to get him to jump toward the rings.

The challenge comes in swinging your character to reach the other rings while holding down the key for the currently gripped ring. More than a few times, I let go of the wrong key to reach the next ring, and sent my guy crashing into the water.

And if that's not challenging enough, when you reach a certain point, a bird begins to harass you and decides to hang out on the next ring you need to grab, forcing you to choose another path. I'm sure there are more annoying obstacles, but I couldn't make it past 14 meters!

I make this all sound really annoying, but like QWOP, it's very addicting and makes you want to have "just one more go" to see if you can climb higher. It's free and playable in your browser, so go check out GIRP.

[Via @mossmouth]

Posted by Eric Caoili at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In addition to an upcoming release to WiiWare, Amanita Design has announced a digital download release for Independent Games Festival award winner (Excellence in Visual Design) Machinarium on PSN later this year.

Originally released to Windows and Mac, Machinarium was also meant to appear on Xbox Live Arcade, but the independent Czech developer said Microsoft passed on publishing the charming point-and-click adventure game.

"They weren't interested because the game was already released for Mac and Windows, and Microsoft demanded it as part of an exclusivity deal," said Amanita's Jakub Dvorský at GameCity Nights over the weekend. "We're not interested in Microsoft anymore."

Amanita also revealed three games in development to PC Gamer, including Osada, an interactive music video with "Czech psychedelic country music" and a visual style that appears to be influenced by Terry Gilliam, coming out in a couple of weeks as a free download.

The second title Amanita unveiled is Botanicula (pictured), a "simple but quite large" point-and-click adventure about "five tree critters on a quest to save their home's last seed from a pack of evil parasites", releasing at the end of the year.

And the studio also mentioned Samorost 3, a sequel to its unique and surreal browser-based adventure series, which is planned for PCs and consoles this time around. This release is meant to be more polished, more intricate, and longer than the previous award-winning installments.

[Via Casualgaming.biz]

Posted by Eric Caoili at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

['Game Mag Weaseling' is a weekly column by Kevin Gifford which documents the history of video game magazines, from their birth in the early '80s to the current day.]

Most NES and Famicom collectors around the world are probably aware of Hacker International, the Japanese bad boy publisher of 8-bit consoledom and distributor of titles such as Soap Panic (Bubble Bath Babes), by this point.

I (like a lot of NES fans, I suppose) first heard about Hacker from David Sheff's book Game Over, where he mentions that the company attempted to defy Nintendo's third-party licensee system for the Famicom, was sued, and went out of business shortly thereafter.

The only factual part of that synopsis is that Nintendo sued Hacker, but it wasn't for anything related to publishing unlicensed FC porn games and it was settled out of court before a verdict was reached.

What's more, Hacker had a very long history -- long enough to result in 16 Famicom games, 22 Famicom Disk System titles (more than most legitimate FDS licensees), 13 PC Engine games (seven on CD-ROM), 15 licensed PlayStation releases under the name Map Japan, and even a handful of Windows titles.

That's not bad for a company so associated with 8-bit pornography, the producer of such illustrious titles as Sexy Invaders, Miss Peach World and the unforgettable Strip Fighter II.

Hacker was founded and led by Satoru Hagiwara, an entrepreneur and former music producer who thought he'd cash in on the personal-computer boom when it hit Japan in the mid-1980s. Their first product was a monthly PC magazine titled Hacker (above), as he explained in a 2005 issue of Game Labo:

"PCs were hitting it big at the time and tons of PC magazines were getting launched all over the place, so I asked a friend of mine who ran a publishing business if he was interested in putting one out. I figured that once we started releasing a magazine, the writers and know-how would come naturally. That's how 'Hacker' got started -- it's a bit of an embarrassing name, but since we were launching after the pack, I went with something that had impact."

So Hacker International wasn't meant to be an "underground" outfit in the beginning?

"Not at all. But people who were into that sort of thing were attracted to the name, and they came to us. A lot of our writers were into games, and they came up with a lot of ideas for offbeat and fun products. I created Hacker International to help put those ideas out on sale.

At around that time, I had a lot of negative emotions toward the collusion and under-the-table agreements [console game] publishers had with each other. Even so, none of the products we made broke any laws. The music industry ran under a set of well-defined laws, so perhaps that experience affected me a little too, but either way, I didn't think to myself that we wanted to break the law with our products."

Following the magazine, Hacker launched a product called the Hacker Junior, an upgrade to FC consoles that added composite-video output and new controllers with turbo functionality. You could buy the upgrade parts yourself, or send an FC to Hacker's offices and they'd perform the upgrade for you. Nintendo sued to get the product off the market, claiming copyright infringement.

"That was an incredibly gray-market product. I'm not allowed to discuss the terms of it, but we did enter a full settlement with Nintendo. The lawsuit took place long after we stopped producing the Hacker Junior anyway -- it took a lot of work to produce for not very much profit."

Hagiwara was obviously having fun tweaking Nintendo on their home turf, though, so his company followed up soon after with the Disk Hacker, a Disk System utility disk that let you break the protection on FDS disks and copy as many games as you wanted, all without any special hardware. The Disk Hacker went through several versions.

"While we were doing the Hacker Junior, we'd have technically-gifted people bring us software. The first Disk Hacker came from that. Our distributors and other people all told us that there was a demand for a backup tool."

From that came original games, mostly made by amateur hobbyists who reverse-engineered the Famicom in their bedrooms and brought the results to the Hacker offices. Given that most of these amateur hackers were otaku nerds, the great majority of the games they made were adult in nature.

"We had no documentation, so none of the games were all that interesting content-wise. Because they were weak games, a lot of them went down the adult track -- we called them 'semi-adult.'"

The original Disk System games were popular enough that Hacker moved on to FC cartridge releases, many developed by assorted companies in Asia and the US. When the PC Engine was released in 1987, Hacker established the Games Express brand to support the console, again in a totally unlicensed manner.

"We established the Games Express brand near the start of the PC Engine's life. I liked the Hacker brand because it had sort of a bad-boy image, but by that time it was starting to get too associated with criminal behavior, so I felt like it needed to change. Hacker earned a lot of its fans during the PCE days and we sold a surprisingly large amount of games. Although they didn't do so directly, we did receive thanks from NEC for our games, because they helped them sell hardware."

Given the PCE's software girl game-laden lineup in the later years, it's little surprise that Games Express's adult releases proved to be such great system sellers. But how did Hacker get away with making unlicensed porn games for consoles all those years?

Part of it was that Hacker was extremely careful when it came to tiptoeing around the law, making their cartridges in a way that didn't break Nintendo's patents. Another reason: The third-party licensee system Nintendo pioneered was untested at the time, and apparently they weren't as willing to test out its legality in courts as their American branch was when Tengen broke their NES licensee agreement. Hagiwara brings up another fact, though:

"It's because we were 'semi-adult,' by Japanese standards. The fact that we never climbed over that wall was key; if we did, it'd all be over. As long as we were living in Japan, it was absolutely vital that we didn't have any brushes with the law."

Things changed with the PlayStation, which Hagiwara decided to become a legitimate licensee for. Why the change of heart?

"The biggest reason was that I liked how Sony was doing things. The PlayStation basically destroyed the game distribution scheme that was in place when it launched; they had a stated goal of creating a completely new type of game business, and I was really impressed by that.

Once we started developing games, though, other makers got into the scene, you started to see 2800-yen rereleases, and worst of all, I stopped being interested in games. So that's why we quit the business -- I wanted to wrap that up while we could still do so and try something new."

Hacker and Map Japan closed up shop in 2001, with Hagiwara moving on to other businesses. They leave behind a legacy of... well, smut, yes, but also of thumbing their noses at authority and being the sort of freewheeling, independent geek entrepreneurs that Akihabara was known for all through the '80s and '90s. I have to give them a round of applause for that, at least.

[Kevin Gifford owns over 8000 video-game and computer magazines. Despite this, he is capable of sustaining a conversation with a woman for at least three minutes per go. He runs Magweasel, a really cool weblog about games and Japan and "the industry" and things, and in his spare time he does writing and translation for lots of publishers and game companies.]

Posted by Kevin Gifford at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[In this opinion piece, sister site Gamasutra's editor-at-large Chris Morris discusses why the latest delay to Gearbox's Duke Nukem Forever is actually a good thing, with other upcoming gaming releases taken into account.]

Given the game's long, dubious history, the latest delay of Duke Nukem Forever shouldn't have come as a shock to anyone.

It's certainly not a long one, by Duke standards. And while some doubters in gaming forums across the internet have seized on this as a chance to say "I told you so!," most fans and developers have barely blinked at the news, except perhaps to tip their hats at the clever way Gearbox announced the news.

But the ironic part of this delay is that it's probably the best thing that could happen to the game.

Sure, no title ever suffers from a little extra polish time, but that's not where the real advantage lies here. By moving DNF to June, Gearbox and 2K Games are getting it out of the way of a very crowded month, where it potentially could have been overwhelmed by competition.

In the action category alone, May is fairly packed with Bethesda's Brink, Warner Bros.' F.E.A.R. 3 and THQ's Red Faction: Armageddon scheduled to ship. Also on the calendar are LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean, Dirt 3, Dungeon Siege III and Hunted: Demon's Forge.

But the 500 lb gorilla, of course, is Rockstar's L.A. Noire due out May 17. Like last year's Red Dead Redemption, the game is something of an unknown. It's a new franchise, which normally wouldn't be cause for concern, but with the Rockstar name attached to it, it could quickly devour anything in its path, including any previously released titles that are showing momentum – like Duke Nukem Forever.

L.A. Noire is different than Red Dead in one key aspect, though: It is solely a single player experience. By not having a multiplayer component, a one month gap between releases lets core players explore and complete L.A. Noire before turning their sights on Duke Nukem Forever, which comes with a complete, if controversial, multiplayer component.

Conversely, the delay also protects Take-Two, should DNF become this year's breakout hit. With the potential that its multiplayer element keeps players tuned to Duke, the company doesn't have to worry that the long-in-production (and incredibly expensive) L.A. Noire might be ignored.

The most curious part of this week's announcement is actually the flip-flopping of which players get to see the game first. Initially, U.S. gamers were set to get first crack at Duke Nukem Forever, but now international audiences will see the game four days before Stateside players.

That could be a dangerous move. A four-day window is plenty of time for pirates to upload the game to torrent sites. (Hell, it will likely happen long before the official release date.)

People who prefer to steal their games are going to do it regardless. But will Duke fans, who have been waiting for over a dozen years to play the game, be willing to sit on their hands when others are exploring the world of Pigcops and Octabrains? It's a question no one can honestly answer.

Gearbox isn't talking about the piracy fears, but as to the reversal of who sees the game first, it says "We have a commitment to our fans to get the game out as early as possible and every day counts. New games are available on Tuesday in North America so we’re getting the game out as early as possible in this territory."

"The international markets do not adhere to this release timing, and it just happens that they will be able to release the game a few days before North America. We don't want to hold it back, we want to get it into the hands of consumers as soon as possible."

As for the reasons behind the delay, Gearbox isn't talking much about that either, aside from the expected references to "polishing." But the company can't be overjoyed with the announcement. As far back as last year's PAX, when Gearbox surprised fans with news that the franchise was alive once more, it had a ship date in mind – and wavered on whether to announce it at the show.

It opted not to, realizing that if the date slipped, fans might lose faith. Thursday, it found itself in the exact situation it had hoped to avoid.

Duke loyalists seem to be sticking with the company, though some of them are doing so with a heavy dose of humor.

"It merely says 'June 14' on the poster. They didn't give a year..," noted commenter 'xeropulse' on Shacknews.

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)