We traverse back to Three Kingdoms-era China and find a few surprises in the latest of this long-running series.
You may think that after six Dynasty Warriors games, there’s little new to discover in this sprawling hack-and-slash series. Tecmo Koei is hoping to pleasantly surprise cynics with the newest addition–Dynasty Warriors 7–by adding in a considerable amount of new content, particularly in the form of a brand new faction that comes with its own set of new characters and battles.
Dynasty Warriors games have long focused on the three warring clans of Shu, Wu, and Wei, but Dynasty Warriors 7 will for the first time include the Jin clan. For those of you up-to-speed on the original historical Chinese novels the Dynasty Warriors game are based on–Romance of the Three Kingdoms–the Jin was (spoiler alert) actually the clan that ended up ruling China after this tumultuous period.
As such, Dynasty Warriors 7 will include new battles in which to fight in, as well as including several new Jin generals for players to take control of. With dozens of playable generals already available in Wu, Shu, and Wei, there won’t be any shortage of characters to take on the massive hordes of soldiers you’ll be up against in this game.
The story, too, is supposedly taking a more realistic turn. In previous games, any clan was able to “win” power over China, but history clearly shows that there was only one winner amidst many losers. Dynasty Warrior 7′s narrative will now more closely resemble those events.
Game play, too, has been enhanced, both in minor and major ways. The biggest addition is the ability to wield different weapons for each character, as opposed to having one weapon which you can find upgraded versions of as in previous Dynasty Warriors titles.
We slip and slide all over the place in this eccentric platformer.
The Fancy Pants Adventure is a game about pants. More specifically, fancy pants. Well, at least that’s the goal. You don’t start out the game with fancy pants. In fact, the pants you begin the game with are downright plain. All solid colors and whatnot.
But the more time you spend with this eccentric 2D platformer, the more pants you unlock. We’re talking plaid pants, striped pants…you name it. All the pants you can imagine!
Yes, The Fancy Pants Adventure is an extremely silly game. If you dig below the surface, however, what you’ve got is a fairly straightforward core: It’s a 2D side-scrolling platformer in which you attempt to run and jump in a generally left-to-right direction across a variety of treacherous levels. But layered on top of all of that is a thick smattering of ridiculousness.
Fancy Pants, based on a free Flash game by then-college student Brad Borne, is presented in a hand-drawn stick-figure art style that feels more than a little bit like you’re peering at someone’s notebook doodles. The controls are also quite different from most platformers because building momentum speed plays a huge role in how you move about the levels–you’re basically sliding all over the place as though running on ice.
GDC 2011: Rockstar San Diego’s Western triumphs at Game Developers Conference’s annual ceremony; Mass Effect 2, Limbo, Minecraft, also honored.
Each year, the Game Developers Conference‘s crowning event is the Game Developers Choice Awards, one of the most prestigious ceremonies in gaming. Hosted once again by the comically gifted head of Double Fine Productions, Tim Schafer, the evening wasted no time in getting started, awarding the Best Audio trophy to Red Dead Redemption.
Moving on to Best Game Design, Red Dead Redemption rode off with the trophy, putting another notch in developer Rockstar San Diego’s belt. Minecraft got another trophy for Best Downloadable Game, as well as the Innovation Award, leaving game co-creator Markus Persson virtually speechless.
Best Visual Arts went to Playdead’s Xbox Live game Limbo, which was also the subject of one of the night’s various skits by nerd-comedy troupe Mega64. Best Handheld Game was won by ZeptoLab’s Cut the Rope.
GDC 2011: Creative director behind EA’s 2010 multiplatform hoops game explains how the team decided what was kept and what was tossed for a new console take on the hit arcade franchise.
Who was there: EA Sports creative director Trey Smith was on hand for a presentation titled “Bringing back the ‘BOOMSHAKALAKA!’”
What they talked about: Smith opened his talk by explaining the origin of the new NBA Jam, which wasn’t an NBA Jam at all. At first, Smith was told to make a Wii basketball game for kids where the only thing players had to worry about was dribbling the ball virtually with the Wii Remote. The game became Bounce, which was an original intellectual property that was essentially inspired by NBA Jam. When they nabbed the NBA Jam license, Smith said the team partied like rock stars that night.
However, they woke up the next day and realized the enormity of the task ahead of them. In 1993, the original NBA Jam brought in billion in arcades, Smith said. That’s more than three times the highest grossing film of the year, Jurassic Park.
To start with, Smith said the team invoked “The Sequel Rule of Thirds.” One-third of the game had to be the same as before, to “take players back to their Happy Place.” The next third of the game had to be improved over the original. Enhance the recipe, but don’t change it so much that the audience doesn’t like the taste anymore. The final third had to be all new, taking the franchise places it had never been before. But above all, Smith emphasized the need to be true to the source material.
As for what to keep the same to appeal to the hardcore fanbase, Smith pointed to the arcade-style features of the original NBA Jam. It had to have over-the-top dunks, Big Head mode, players catching on fire, backboard shattering dunks, and a strong multiplayer component. (He remembered it being a vary rare sight to have just one person at the old four-player Jam arcade cabinets.) Finally, there was the amped-up play-by-play announcer yelling “BOOMSHAKALAKA!”
That announcer, Chicago actor Tim Kitzrow, wound up being part of the one-third of the game Smith said was kept the same. Mark Turmell was another returning face from the original NBA Jam development team. Turmell, who Smith described as “the godfather of arcade sports,” was enlisted to work on the NBA Jam revamp a few months after development began.
We take our first look at Piranha Bytes’ sequel to Risen and the spiritual successor to the Gothic series.
If there’s a better reason to attend the 2011 Game Developer Conference than the opportunity to take a first look at Gothic developer Piranha Bytes’ role-playing sequel Risen 2: Dark Waters, we don’t want to hear it. This sequel takes the high-fantasy world of Risen, which took place on a besieged island, and will become a full-on, full-fledged, full-featured, full-monty pirate role-playing game, where you play not only as Piranha Bytes’ established “Hero” character, but also as a seafaring adventurer in a fantastic age of sail.
Risen 2 takes place some in-game years after the events in the first game. Specifically, the Hero has vanquished the threat of the powerful titan monster that threatened his island home after first defeating the evil inquisitor and claiming the villain’s magical eyepatch–an artifact that let the Hero identify the titan for what it was–a malevolent creature disguised as a natural disaster. Unfortunately, bigger problems are afoot–other titans are awakening near other islands in the area, and worse yet, hideous sea monsters have emerged from the deep, completely disrupting trade routes and generally causing the few survivors who exist in the world to be very, very grumpy.
And as it turns out, the Hero is the grumpiest of all. In a first for a Piranha Bytes game, the Hero does not suffer from amnesia and does remember his hard-fought battles and narrow escapes perfectly well, thank you very much. However, his cool reception by an unappreciative populace has made him bitter and frustrated, though he still seeks to save the world by finding some means to rescue the other islands from their impending doom.
Autumn Games have announced they are working with game developer Reverge Labs to develop Skullgirls, a new fast-paced 2D fighting game that puts players in control of fierce female warriors in an extraordinary Dark Deco world. The team is led by renowned fighting game champion Mike “Mike Z” Zaimont and artist Alex Ahad, whose work has appeared in many publications, including Scott Pilgrim and Lava Punch.
Using advanced graphical technology never before achieved in a game of its type, Skullgirls is currently in development for a 2011 release on Xbox 360 and PS3.
Atlus localizing Japanese horror adventure game for release on Xbox 360, PS3 this summer.
Last month, the heavily hyped Marvel vs. Capcom 3 launched in Japan but found itself a distant second place on the weekly sales charts to a title largely unfamiliar to gamers in the West. Atlus is giving those gamers a chance to familiarize themselves with it, as today the publisher announced a summer North American release for Catherine on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
A horror adventure game, Catherine has players navigating tricky relationship waters as Vincent. When the commitment-phobic protagonist’s girlfriend Katherine starts talking about taking their relationship to the next level, Vincent finds himself straying. While out drinking with friends, he meets a flirty bombshell named Catherine, whom–after a series of events he can’t quite recall–he wakes up next to the following morning.
In addition to helping Vincent make decisions to extricate himself from the situation, players will be called on to fight off the physical manifestations of his fears and guilt as he sleeps. Atlus will also include local competitive and cooperative multiplayer modes, complete with leaderboard support.
Although the game is an original property, Catherine is a collaboration between a number of notable creators. Katsura Hashino, director of Persona 3 and 4, is serving as producer on Catherine, with help from that series’ character artist Shigenori Soejima and composer Shoji Meguro. Going beyond the world of games, Japanese animation shop Studio4˚C (Tekkonkinkreet, Halo Legends) also lent its talents to the project.
Tecmo Koei teases reveal of blood-spattered sequel at upcoming convention; game to ship sometime in 2012; first trailer inside.
Last year at the Tokyo Game Show, Tecmo Koei unveiled Ninja Gaiden III, the upcoming installment in the ultraviolent–and ultradifficult–action series. Little was revealed about the game, other than it would once again feature protagonist Ryu Hayabusa engaged in the bloody combat the franchise is known for.
Today, Tecmo Koei released the first teaser trailer for the game, which also teased the title’s brutal nature. Running around 37 seconds, the clip shows Ryu Hayabusa repeatedly slashing and stabbing someone–from the victim’s point of view. The clip then shows the titular ninja, covered in blood, leaning back to take off his famed mask–and then cuts to the Japanese character for the number three. The words “unmask” and “E3 2011″ then appear before the trailer ends.
The accompanying press release–which never mentions Ninja Gaiden III by name–promises that the “new title” will see release sometime in 2012. Development is underway at Team Ninja under the leadership of the studio’s leader, Yosuke Hayashi. Hayashi took over the shop after former head Tomonobu Itagaki left the company following Ninja Gaiden II’s release in 2008.
“The game is set to introduce this franchise to a broader audience while at the same time retaining the legendary challenge that has drawn hardcore gamers to the series for years,” Tecmo Koei said in a statement. The company promised that a playable demo of the game would be on hand for the press at E3.
