Legendary is a first person shooter with a strong concept but a weak execution. The mystic Pandora’s Box at the center of the plot unleashes hellish versions of mythological creatures like werewolves and griffons– a cool idea, but there’s not a decent game to back it up. I feel that Legendary’s horrendous one-track level design deserves much of the blame.

Much of the game’s feeling of chaos is conveyed through scripted scenes that take place just as you happen to walk by. Your character, a professional thief named Deckard, seems to be the videogame version of William H. Macy’s The Cooler, as everyone he encounters is immediately struck by horrible luck. Don’t get too attached to any of the random, nameless police officers and soldiers that you’ll meet along the course of the game. You’ll never hear more than a few seconds of pointless banter before they’re dragged away screaming by some random monster.

These scripted sequences were amazing back in the days of Half Life 1, but the game ignores completely the wide-open locations, compelling characters, and feelings of immersion created by later Half Life games. Even the pacing is screwy—you start out Legendary in a scene of utter chaos, with people screaming continually for the next few hours. Later, a few slower moments in the underground segments (mostly sewers and subways) provide the give-and-take of quality FPS games, but instead of gradually building suspense, the early parts of the game come across with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

One of the few successful sequences, a scene that actually builds over time, starts with you trying to turn a crank to open a doorway in a sewer, only to watch as mischievous nymphs steal the crank and place it in a cramped compartment below. When you go back for the crank, the nymphs seal the doors around you and start up a giant fan that sucks you into it unless you shoot out some planks around it. This was one rare moment that captured my interest—the rest of the sewer crawl was forgettable.

A quality videogame, especially the best first person shooters, thrive on an increasing expectation of tension and payoff, but the rushed pace of Legendary leaves no room for suspense. An objective marker that pops up when you press the L3 button always points you to the next door or shootable environmental “puzzle”, which limits the frustration and aimless wandering but also cuts any feeling of exploration out of the game.

The lazy, straightforward design of this game is a shame, because the visuals are generally attractive, with some exceptions. The monsters are well animated, but the human characters act choppy. Also, all the CG cutscenes are of PS2/Xbox quality, which is well below what we’ve come to expect from the current generation.

While this game may sound like a relentless bore, there were brief moments when I enjoyed myself, so maybe Legendary is best designed for a slow weekend. This is not a game you’ll replay more than once, so it’s not worth adding to your collection, but shooting the heads off of werewolves and absorbing their energy to charge strange machines is a passable distraction.

You can even cut straight to this core gameplay in the multiplayer mode, but good luck trying to find anyone else to play against online. With so many far superior games coming out this season, Legendary doesn’t even come close to worth your money—unless you have your Blockbuster card handy and everything else has already been checked out.

It’s Blizzard’s World, we just live in it. To kick-off their millions-strong graduation to the hard stuff (level 70 and up), Blizzard is holding midnight release parties Nov 13 in Austin, New York, Anaheim, and San Francisco, featuring developers who will sign your game, plus extra copies of the Lich King Collector’s Edition.

International events will also be held in Seoul, Mexico City, Paris, London, Berlin, Madrid, Taipei, Stockholm, and Amsterdam. Whew, sounds like a party!

Azeroth now has 11 million subscribers, which is more than the populations of Portugal, Belgium, or Hungary. That’s also more than Finland and Norway combined! Check out this page to make up your own fun facts about the World of Warcraft juggernaut. If Azeroth gets any bigger, the George Bush will have to invade it to keep the country safe from Horde terrorism.

Below is the list of official launch event locations in the United States:

Best Buy
529 5th Ave.
New York, NY 10017
Phone : (212) 808-0309

Fry’s Electronics
3370 E. La Palma Ave.
Anaheim, CA 92806
Phone: (714) 688-3000

GameStop
151 Powell Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
Phone: (415) 362-7601

GameStop
10000 Research Blvd.
Austin, TX 78755
Phone: (512) 346-6437

If you want more specific details on the upcoming launch events for Lich King, check out this page on Blizzard’s website, and check back with Ripten for launch-day coverage.

Source: Blizzard.com

It’s an “Epic” article worthy of its subject. On the following page, we’ve placed a few choice examples of New Yorker’s hoity-toity descriptions of the life of Cliff Bleszinski, a designer known by nearly every Xbox owner.

On Cliffy B’s Lamborghini:

Bleszinski suggested that we go to a local diner. He professes an aversion to mornings, and to Monday mornings especially, but he seemed dauntingly alert. “This car’s like a wakeup call,” he said. “By the time I get to work, my heart’s pumping and I’m ready to crank.” Before we were even out of the parking lot, we were traveling at forty-five miles an hour. At a stoplight, Bleszinski exchanged waves with the driver of an adjacent red Ferrari—another Epic employee. When we hit a hundred miles per hour on a highway entrance ramp, Bleszinski announced, “Never got one ticket!” On the highway, he slowed to seventy-five. “One of my jobs in life,” Bleszinski said, cutting over to an exit, “is to make this look a little cooler.” By “this,” he meant his job.

Nice to know those sixty-dollar game markups are going directly to Epic’s hotrod fund.

On the surreal Super Mario Bros. experience:

Issued in 1985, Super Mario Brothers was a game of summer-vacation-consuming scope and unprecedented inventiveness. It was among the first video games to suggest that it might contain a world. It was also hallucinogenically strange. Why did mushrooms make Mario grow larger? Why did flowers give Mario the ability to spit fire? Why did bashing Mario’s head against bricks sometimes produce coins? And why was Mario’s enemy, Bowser, a saurian, spiky-shelled turtle?

Keep in mind, the average New Yorker reader is 108 years old and still thinks Nintendo makes playing cards.

From the mini-review of Gears of War contained in the profile:

The story line and the narrative dilemmas of Gears are not very sophisticated. What is sophisticated about Gears is its mood. The world in which the action takes place is a kind of destroyed utopia; its architecture, weapons, and characters are chunky and oversized but, somehow, never cartoonish. Most video-game worlds, however well conceived, are essenceless. Gears felt dirty and inhabited, and everything from the mechanics of its gameplay to its elliptical backstory was forcefully conceived, giving it an experiential depth rare in the genre.

Hey, New Yorker! 2006 called, they want their review back.

On the design of Epic’s offices:

If one were to commission a very bright and unusually tasteful adolescent to design his ideal workplace, Epic’s headquarters would probably be the result. Its many blacks, grays, and corrugated-metal surfaces might best be labelled Bachelor Futurist, even though, by now, most of Epic’s male employees wear wedding rings. The office furnishings come in three styles: Neo-Living Room (easy-rocking, lever-activated recliners), Casual Satanist (black leather couches), and Romper Room Gothic (beanbag chairs). The aroma of lingering adolescence carries over into the mementos, knickknacks, and emblems that Epic’s employees use to decorate their offices. Tim Sweeney, with the earnestness of a teen-age boy, has a prominent Ferrari flag hanging in his office—though Sweeney, unlike most teen-age boys, actually owns a Ferrari. Chris Perna, the art director of Gears 2, displays on one of the shelves in his office a foot-high silver-cast Darth Vader Pez dispenser. Bleszinski’s office resembles a toy-store yard sale. These are boyish affectations, certainly, but boyishness is the realm in which these men seek inspiration, not a code by which they live.

This is an extremely polite way of calling the entire Epic staff “man-children”.

And finally, a look at Gears 2 through a developer discussion on balancing weapons:

Discussion at Epic is collegial and to the point; modern game design is too complex and collaborative for any individual to feel proprietary about his own ideas. At one meeting I attended, a disagreement about weaponry was swiftly resolved. “There’s no direct counter to the flamethrower,” Ray Davis, the game’s lead programmer, pointed out, with exasperation. A colleague, who had obviously heard this before, sighed. “I don’t know. I think it’s a superweapon,” he said. Then someone else observed that the boomshot, another devastatingly fatal weapon, had no direct counter, either, and Davis recognized with a grin that his argument had been destroyed. Bleszinski took the opportunity to raise a singular annoyance of the boomshot, familiar to anyone with experience of the multiplayer version of Gears: the impossibility of knowing whether someone you are charging toward happens to be carrying it. “The boomshot needs something to warn you your opponent’s got it,” Bleszinski said. He suggested adding small glowing lights around its four barrels, which everyone agreed was a fine solution. Davis, who works most directly with the programmers and was therefore most familiar with what remained janky, brought up the “inconsistent, unfun lethality” of a certain kind of grenade. This segued into Gears 2’s inclusion of ink grenades, which create a highly damaging toxic cloud—the proper gameplay use of which no one, so far, had been able to decide.

Wow! Reading this sure feels like a step above Game Informer, doesn’t it? We hope this isn’t the last of New Yorker’s in-depth dissertations on gaming culture and business. Can we expect the same fancy treatment for Fallout 3, Resistance 2, or Shaun White Snowboarding?

It’s doubtful, but if you want to read only the finest in gaming journalism on a regular basis, bookmark Ripten and check us daily (if not hourly). Unlike the New Yorker, we’re always on the gaming beat.

Source: New Yorker

When we previewed SARB a month ago, it was clear that we had seen something special. At the time I said “it might be one of the best downloadable titles on the PSN,” and having spent the last week playing it continually I can stand by that statement with pride. It’s a thrill to find a game that is so much fun initially, while still leaving plenty of room for sequels and expansion packs.

The story of Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars is one of love, loss, explosions, and nitro boosts. It’s about the love between a car and the indoor soccer arenas it zooms around in, and the agony of losing a match during sudden death overtime. But mainly it’s about the infinite possibilities of a physics engine as capable as Havok, combined with the sharp graphics of Unreal Engine 3, all balled up into a developer’s strange and fantastic concept of turbo-engine soccer.

Despite the simple geometry and highly contained levels, SARB is a gorgeous game with a fast framerate, even in eight-player online matches. Little visual touches, like the flurries of sand or grass that kick up when you roll over the field, suggest an inordinate amount of detail for such a basic game. The soccer ball looks huge and imposing, and it lights up parts of the arena, making it stand out even when eight different cars are zipping around in front of you.

The cars themselves don’t vary much in the way they control, and their main difference is in style. From monster trucks and race cars to Model Ts and scarabs, the cars are light in personality when you select them from the menus, but in the arenas, these cars come to life. This is not a combat game like Twisted Metal, yet the amazing jumps and spins that you can easily perform to knock the ball into the goal give a new definition to “car combat”. Instead of shooting missiles, this is vehicular kung-fu.

The 13 single player tournaments against bots and 20 minigames might have been enough content for the price tag, but the multiplayer bouts are what blast this game off into the winner’s circle of PSN downloadable titles. SARB is a game that rewards skill and practice—precision timing at fast speeds is a difficult challenge, and you can be sure that some online opponents are serious about winning.

SARB is a great concept at its core, and can only be boosted by expanding on that concept. More arenas, vehicles, and multiplayer options are a must for the expansion packs. Gameplay tweaks from the minigames would be a blast to play in multiplayer—in particular the time warping slow-down ball, although it would be a challenge to make that work correctly with multiple players. The goalie minigames would also be a lot of fun to play competitively, if one player could control the cannons that fire the balls towards the goal.

The bonus replay features, while impressive, don’t appeal to me personally. I’d rather play the matches repeatedly instead of spending hours editing together a highlight reel, but the camera options should encourage Youtube machinima for die-hard fanatics. This is a game that you’ll want to see the highlights of—the crazy possibilities of these lively competitions practically demand it.

Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars lives up to its name. It’s highly original and incredibly fun—exactly what the best downloadable games should be. We can’t wait to see what else Psyonix will do with this concept.

In a move that’s well beyond any lame Second Life appearances, the Obama campaign has bought ad space in Paradise City. EA confirmed the ad buy to website Gigaom today– check out their statement after the jump.

EA told Gigaom:

“I can confirm that the Obama campaign has paid for in-game advertising in Burnout,” Holly Rockwood, director of corporate communications at Electronic Arts, the game’s publisher, told me via email, noting that EA regularly allows ad placements in their online games. “Like most television, radio and print outlets, we accept advertising from credible political candidates,” she continued. “Like political spots on the television networks, these ads do not reflect the political policies of EA or the opinions of its development teams.”

However, the McCain-Palin ticket has been getting some in-game publicity of their own. Recent (unofficial) appearances by the GOP VP Candidate have popped up in games as diverse as Bayonetta, Rock Band 2, and Tomb Raider.

We’re also looking forward to Wednesday’s final debate, when the candidates will fight a duel in a lush outdoor garden. A preview of this can be found below.

Source: Gigaom

Playing a recent demo of Mirror’s Edge, I had been trying to shave a few extra seconds off of my time trial run, and after all the obvious routes were exploited, I passed along the controller. I watched mouth agape as, instead of directing Faith to run up the stairs like a normal person, the journalist next to me sent her careening off a nearby wall and up over the guardrail, all ninja-like. Is this an example of practice-makes-perfect, or a new kind of exploit?

Mirror’s Edge has a unique hook—it’s a game featuring the platforming of Assassin’s Creed meshed with the first person perplexity of Portal. This stylistic choice does have some pitfalls, though: The first person view does make distances hard to judge, and the animations that you desperately want to see all occur off-screen.

Although it takes some time to get used to the unusual controls, which use L2 for sliding and L1 for leaping plus the X button for grabbing onto handholds, they’re not your biggest hurdle. Instead, the trick is figuring out the limitations of your moves without actually seeing your character interact in the world.

To wall jump, for example, you can run up to a wall, hit L1, and then hit the R1 button to spin around to see the other side. While third-person games like Prince of Persia and Splinter Cell show your character interacting with their environment, here all you have to go on is a bouncy, jarring perspective.

This leads us to the astonishing shortcuts I discovered in Time Trial mode. I never would have guessed that you could circumvent those stairs by wall-jumping up and over the guardrail. Since Time Trial is all about repetition and speed, it’s easy to miss those not-so-obvious routes.

Time Trial mode is also missing the combat and cutscenes of the main game, but from what we saw it is otherwise the exact same level design. However, you do get to see a red silhouette “ghost” racing just ahead of you, suggesting the ideal routes and helping you plot out a course. Since this is the only way you’ll actually get to see your character in action from an outside perspective, it’s a pretty weak substitution for an actual player character model.

The single “wow” moment from the demo of Mirror’s Edge comes at the end, when you make a huge leap and grab onto a helicopter, as it pans around giving you a view of your reflection in a skyscraper’s windows. Other than that, though, it was a whole lot of misjudged leaps and clanging over catwalks. The demo will be available soon enough, and if you preorder the game you can demo the time trial mode as well, but so far we’re not very impressed with the gimmicks in this first-person platformer.

A stunning new batch of RE5 screens confirm what we’ve known for a few months now: that Resident Evil 5 is shaping up to be a much nicer-looking version of Resident Evil 4. A few of these screens also show off the co-op dynamics, with Sheva seeking help and assistance after grappling with some vicious zombies.

These new screens show off the look of the game, but we’re still waiting for confirmation of RE5’s gameplay variations. The on-rails vehicle scenes in RE4 were among my favorites, so hopefully we won’t have to wait long for a glimpse of the other action setpieces in RE5. A gallery of all the new screens can be found on the next page.

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Peggle Nights is so addictive, it could be considered mainline gaming at its purest. It’s a game you can replay endlessly to squeeze out a good 20-30 hours of content— not bad for a “budget” title. Even though my preferred method of playing the game is to idly focus on the dozens of challenges while watching TV or listening to music, that doesn’t mean Peggle Nights qualifies as just half a game. It simply means I can’t stop playing it long enough to do anything else.

For the uninitiated, Peggle is a hybrid of Pachinko and Pinball. Wild yet completely accurate ball physics are the crux of the gameplay—after shooting out a bouncy metal ball from the top of the screen, you have to ricochet off of as many pegs as possible on the way down. Like in pinball, the pegs you hit act like bumpers to give you a high score and bonuses, and there’s even a powerup that gives you flippers at the bottom of the screen.

You’ll also find a moving bucket at the bottom of the screen for collecting your errant balls. While at first you’ll only make some lucky catches, later on you can actually time your shots to perfectly land in the bucket. This is just one way that Peggle rewards experience the longer you play—more balls means more chances to clear all the pegs, and you’ll earn a sweet bonus to boot.

This absurdly original gameplay mechanic would be a hit even if it were just in black and white, but Peggle Nights explodes with color. Like in the original Peggle, each level has a theme based on the charming animal creatures who lend you their special powers—Tula the Flower bursts multiple orange (level-clearing) pegs, while Renfield the Jack-O-Lantern gives you a spooky ball that passes through the bottom of the stage and reappears at the top.

You’ll have to play through the adventure mode to unlock all the characters and their powers (which are the same as the original Peggle), but there’s one new character and power at the very end. Her ability is very useful, but I’d love to see even more new cast members and powerups next time around.

Although the fact that there’s only one new character is a bit of a letdown, Peggle Nights takes you further into the minds of the existing characters than you might have cared to go. Each stage portrays a character’s dream state—Tula the Flower, for example, wants to be a world traveler instead of being rooted to the ground, so her stages take you to Peggle versions of the Great Wall of China and Mount Rushmore.

This charm is contagious. You can’t help but feel happy to play and replay these colorful, detailed, and imaginative stages. It certainly doesn’t hurt that you will feel a compelling urge to win a trophy for fulfilling every minor objective. Peggle Nights adds new “ace score” ribbons for earning a certain number of points, which nicely complements the 100% completion awards that stretched out the length of the first game.

Which brings me back to my initial point. I play Peggle Nights constantly now. Since half of the game is spent watching the points roll in while your “balls drop”, Peggle feels casual enough to be put on as background while I partake in other passive forms of entertainment. At the same time, I know that Peggle actually complex beyond reasoning. The first Peggle was nearly perfect, and this sequel just tucks in a little bit more of what was brilliant about it.

If you think soccer is pretty boring, would some flying monster trucks help spice things up? This upcoming Unreal Engine 3-powered downloadable PS3 title from Psynoix makes 4 on 4 arena soccer a little more tolerable with dune buggies, nitro boosts, and some ridiculous explosions.

These battle cars may appear tiny at first glance, but that’s only because the soccer ball they have to guide through the goal is outrageously huge. The basic game mode is a 5 minute versus, with a maximum or four players on each side, but there’s also some single player training modes that you can complete to unlock more cars.

But don’t go in expecting a lot of car combat– everything in this game seems to bounce around like crazy, and to destroy your opponents you’ll have to ram into them at full speed, which is easier said than done. You’ll respawn constantly, deathmatch-style, and the only way to really win is to go after the giant soccer ball and push it into the goal.

Each goal, by the way, results in a catastrophic explosion and slow-mo replay. Why? Because it looks cool, that’s why.

The “acrobatic” part of this ludicrously-titled game comes from your car’s ability to dodge left and right in midair, performing barrel rolls as if they were jet planes. You can also angle your vehicle upwards and boost, resulting in some very cool Iron Man-style takeoffs.

A few of the bonus rounds will encourage you to master this ability, like one where you have to launch yourself into spheres that are suspended high above the ground. Another tactic you can use is to speed up the curved walls of the arena onto the ceiling, but using the jump boost is much more satisfying.

We played some split-screen deathmatch, although with only 1/4 of the screen it was very difficult to keep track of the ball. Fortunately, there’s a handy lock-on camera that keeps the ball in front of you, and you can turn this on or off with the triangle button.

8 player play looks pretty great too, and if nobody scores in five minutes the game goes to a sudden death round, where one goal is all you need to win. Needless to say, these showdowns can be very dramatic and intense.

When SARB launches this fall, it might be one of the best downloadable titles on the PSN. It doesn’t have the same multi-vehicle appeal of a game like Warhawk, but the simple focus on rocket-powered sports is highly stimulating. Plus, it’s got lots of training minigames that help you build up your skills in the arena, and a very robust replay editor that lets you focus on the best moments in a match and upload them directly to Youtube from your PS3. The name may be silly, but the game itself looks like serious fun.

Warner Brothers announced today they have reacquired the rights to use the F.E.A.R. brand name in their sequel, Project Origin. Now known as F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, the sequel to the 2005 FPS was originally titled Project Origin, after a dispute over the naming rights with former owner Activision-Blizzard.

FEAR wasn’t one of my favorite shooters. While reviews raved about the advanced AI, I felt the whole bullet-time thing was already overdone. Plus, the environments didn’t vary much between dark office hallways and dark warehouse corridors. F.E.A.R. is probably best known for its shocking pop-up ghouls, but if the weapons and combat are improved in the sequel, this might be a decent run and gun shooter.

F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin comes out February 10, 2009, just in time for Halloween Valentine’s Day.

We may have no idea what real aliens might look like, but some of us have a better idea than others. In a planetarium presentation that touched on Yoda, Alf, E.T. and xenomorphs, Spore creator Will Wright and extraterrestrial expert Frank Drake discussed their backgrounds, both personal and professional, and why Spore is the game that will inspire a generation of space cadets.

At the soon-to-be-opened California Academy of Sciences, set in the center of Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, EA held a black tie and feathers/spikes/wings soiree to celebrate the launch of Spore.

Will Wright’s speech, for the most part, focused on his own background and inspiration for making Spore, which is a story we’ve heard a bit about already (see David Jaffe’s recent video blog about how good intentions don’t guarantee a good game). Frank Drake’s talk was more impressive, if only because he doesn’t seem to care much about videogames, but was somehow convinced to whip up his own creature in Spore.

Drake’s creation, based on what he considers to be the most successful aspects of homo sapien combined with a few of his own ideas, is a tall, green, two mouthed, three eyed, four armed monster called “super sapien”. Like us, it can stand on two feet, keeping its head up high and away from danger. Unlike us, it has chlorophyll in its skin, a third eye in the back of its head, some extra limbs (for bringing in the groceries), and a second mouth directly over the stomach to avoid death by choking.

Drake’s a brilliant astronomer and theoretician who came up with the famous Drake Equation, and watching him play with Spore’s creature creator was amusing. He seemed genuinely convinced that Spore will influence a generation of kids to the wonders of science, but part of his argument was that modern science fiction doesn’t inspire kids, and that videogames that are not scientifically-based are not helping kids to become more creative.

While games like Spore, The Sims, and Sim City should be lauded for touching on aspects of science, sociology, and urban planning, other games offer academic value as well. I’ve learned a lot about tactics from playing Starcraft, history from Civilization, and the importance of the second amendment from Resident Evil 4. A lot of games have some scientific or historical basis, and even those that don’t (the dumb, fun, summer blockbusters of games) at least encourage creativity in the forms of art design, writing, and direction.

After the talk, we had a preview of the Academy’s stunning planetarium, which was hypnotic. Our “tour” of the universe included the solar system, Milky Way galaxy, and our nearby cluster of galaxies, all the way out to the Cosmic Background Radiation, or as it’s known in the scientific community, “God’s stinky fart”.

Spore, the next step in mankind’s quest for knowledge, comes out on Sunday.

Miscellaneous observations:

Private aside to the person with the digital camera and bright red flashbulb: When we’re all trying to enjoy the planetarium, STOP TAKING FLASH PHOTOGRAPHS EVERY TEN SECONDS, you inconsiderate asshat.

Also, some attendees were fascinated by the food, which is actually the exact wrong thing to focus on when you’re supposed to be evaluating videogames.

But hey, look, miniburgers! That was a cow once, right? Cows are animals, we eat them, it’s part of the great circle of life. It all ties together. Delicious food. Buy Spore.

Think of electioneering as a real-time strategy game. You make your moves at the same time as your opponent, and in the end whoever has the most points (votes) wins. While politicos may scratch their heads at the pick of relatively inexperienced Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as McCain’s running mate, gamers will know that there is no better ally on your side than a bear-hunting, gun-toting babe in a fur-lined parka.

A reader on political blogger Andrew Sullivan’s site wrote:

It would be a big mistake to dismiss Palin’s pop-cultural appeal. It’s clear she was chosen solely to game the system, and the Republicans OWN that play. I’m sure they expect her to be a lure for the female (not feminist) vote, and they already have a lock on the over 60 white males.

In addition, I predict a bonus unintended consequence for McCain among middle class/educated/post-college/pre-adult white males. A demographic label that follows many into their late 30s and currently trends for Obama. Basically the gamers/Gen-Xers/Seth Rogen/Will Farrell crowd. The GOP has already rolled out video of Palin in snugly tailored fatigues, combat boots and tight t-shirt brandishing a weapon at a meet-n-greet with the Alaska National Guard in Kuwait. I’m sure they’re scrambling to find more. “Sarah Palin as Laura Croft” will leave these guys drooling like zombies.

Personally, I would have gone with Sonic the Hedgehog. He could probably help fund the campaign with his treasure trove of gold rings.

Source: Andrew Sullivan

Gametrailers blogger LifeRPG has been doing some serious thinking about what would make online consoles just a little bit better, and some of these actually seem like they might work. Read on for the full list of most wanted features.

Here’s a rundown of the six suggested features:

1) Be able to watch a friend play, from your screen
To make myself clearer, let’s take an example: JUSTIN.TV
You play, recording yourself with your webcam and broadcasting your gameplay to the entire world. Anybody coming on your channel will be able to see you play. So basically, what i am saying here is a concept pretty much similar. When online on PSN/XBL , it would be great to have a feature that lets you connect to your friend’s game and watch him play….In other terms, i would be a ‘Spectator’.

2) Take in-game videos screenshots, and being able to host them online directly from the PSN/XBL
The PSN lets you (although still very limited) upload in-game footage directly to YouTube. Well, that’s good for a start isn’t it, but i mean….YouTube? No. Just no. SCE / Microsoft need to set up a private video sharing website, in which all content would not only be in HD, but also uploaded directly from our consoles.

3) Cross Platform Online Play
Take a multi-platform game, COD4 for example. Imagine a feature that would allow PSN gamers to play against XBL gamers. This sure sound ridiculously impossible, doesn’t it? But let’s think bigger..See this example: how about a multi-platform game developed by SCE themselves? A MMO for example, that would be out on PS3 and PC..maybe that would work.

4) Stuck in a game? Meet the Virtual Walkthrough!
Let’s admit it folks, we’ve all got stuck in games..and still do. One of the game i most used a walkthrough was Zelda: Twilight Princess. I can vaguely remember the number of pages i printed off the GAMEFAQ walkthrough, but it certainly was above 30. Aren’t you fed up with that? Moving to your PC to look for the solution ; Making sure you always have papers and cartridge ready, cause if you don’t you’d have to constantly come-and-go from console to PC ; Reading the walkthrough while playing..well believe me i am. I believe it is time we have a Virtual Walkthrough. In other terms, an in-game walkthrough that would help us in our ’stuck’ situations, and lead us to the solution.

5) Not an online feature, but a feature in general..a really important one: Game Cutscenes accessible anytime
Am i the only one who wishes i could re-watch all cutscenes from the games i play? I’m sure i’m not. I believe this is a game developer decision, and not a console manufacturer’s, but whoever it is they must hear us: We want to watch all cutscenes from the games we’ve completed ANYTIME. Whether it’s on the Disc itself (unlocked after completing the game maybe), or an option to have them all transfered to our HDD, we want it!

6) Organized Clan Management System
Clans Clans Clans..Numerous clans exist for nearly every online game available today. A great feature would be the integration of an Organized Clan Management System. The use of such a system would basically let console users to not only group the clan members, but actually manage the entire clan overall: Have a motto, a logo, statistics, …etc
In other terms, Clan Identification. That would be a great idea, eventually for future ‘clan leagues’.

Our own writer John Kershaw had this to say about these ideas:

Points 1 and 3 are just technically hard to do. You can already kinda do point 2 in Halo, but because of the server costs, it wouldn’t happen over the two networks, it’s a game-by-game thing. Point 4 has nothing to do with XBLA or PSN, same with 5. Point 6 is called a forum.

Use the comments below to let us know: What do you think of these proposed features? Would you use any of them?

Source: LifeRPG’s Gametrailers blog

Did you think Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness was going to run away with the award for longest game title of the year? Well, there’s a new challenge to that ignoble throne.

I have a lot of fun just saying the title of this game: Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars. Now after watching the trailer, it seems like playing soccer with RC cars will be a lot of fun as well. Check it out on the next page.

Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars will be a PS3 downloadable title, hitting the PSN this fall.

My DS has been a lot of places, but this time I took it to the Moon. No, not that lifeless gray hunk of rock in the night sky— this is Renegade Kid’s Moon, a first person shooter using the same engine from last year’s spooky FPS Dementium.

One concern I had when I saw Moon’s trailer recently was that the same bland color palette would be used throughout. Dementium had this problem—everything was muddied with black fog and similar looking environments, but at least Moon offers some variety when it comes to the color scheme.

In the first underground environment we explored, the walls were like pulsating rainbows of sci-fi sick. The greens and purples from Halo are spattered throughout, giving each area an individual look but with a weak, grainy quality. The visuals unfortunately contain a lack of detail that reminds me of early 3D PC games like Descent, where pixilated sprites could make your eyes bug out like Arnold in Total Recall.

But hey, at least the thing moves fast. You use the stylus to look around and aim your weapons, like in Dementium, and the action moves at a quick clip. After a brief introduction, where the research station on the Moon is decimated by aliens as soon as you arrive, you can pick up an assault rifle with unlimited ammo and start hunting droids.

As you crawl the subterranean corridors, you’ll occasionally be pestered by floating orbs like the kind that Luke Skywalker sharpened his lightsaber skills on in the original Star Wars. They’re fast and relentless, and shooting back is pretty fun if you like a bit of target practice. Moving, shooting, and holding the DS in Moon can be a bit tricky, which is a complaint that Josh had with Dementium in his review. Hopefully there will be other, more natural-feeling control schemes in the final product.

Some of the story elements, beyond the first five minutes, were absent in the build we played. A few glowing computer terminals offered some placeholder cues like “politics”, but it’s uncertain if the storyline will be highly compelling. At this stage, the introduction felt more like a Doom throwback—some terrible stuff happened, and it’s an excuse to pour in a lot of angry robots and aliens.

We didn’t fight any aliens in the first few levels—just some pissed-off droids and one spidery-looking miniboss. I did enjoy finding a friendly droid that you can control and use to bypass certain locked doors, and this is the type of variety that might make Moon worth playing all the way through. Hopefully these shifts in gameplay will be made early and often. Once you find the friendly droid, you can go into new areas and even fight enemies from a foot-high vantage point, which is actually dramatic.

At this stage, Moon doesn’t really seem like it’s going too far beyond what Dementium accomplished. It’s a speedy FPS, and there’s nothing wrong with a few five-minute bursts of target practice, but don’t expect an in-depth storyline or groundbreaking level design. We wish that a portable sci-fi FPS could make us feel like we’re playing an artifact from the future, but for now certain aspects of Moon still seem to be lagging behind the times.

When Madagascar was in theaters, way back in 2005, I suspect that the main thing all the kids in the audience took away from it was the hideously annoying “We like to move it, move it” ditty that sticks in your head like a piece of shrapnel. The song’s prominence in the trailer to the sequel confirms that this is, in fact, one of the most insidious examples of psychological song warfare ever perpetrated on our nation’s youth.

But that’s neither here nor there. All I’m saying is, even money, there will probably be some sort of Dance Dance Revolution minigame set to that tune in this game. I’m not sure what else will be in the game, but from the look of these screenshots, it’s all over the place. Life-sized chessboards with gaping chasms? Zebras playing soccer? Penguins in jeeps? It’s a madhouse!

Check out the new screens on the next page.

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa comes out this fall, on nearly every system imaginable.

A year ago we previewed and reviewed Dementium: The Ward, a dark and spooky FPS for the DS that ended up being, well, not so great.

Developer Renegade Kid is giving it another shot this year with The Moon, which looks like it not only grafts a sci-fi raygun onto the action, but also lets you get behind the wheel of a Moon Buggy. Sweet!

Let’s just hope they expand the color scheme– Dementium relied a bit too much on black fog, and from the trailer we expect there to be lots of shades of gray. Check out that trailer, right after you click on “read more”.

Moon is expected to come out on November 18, 2058– I mean, 2008.

Source: Pocketgamer

If you’re a big fan of playing with dolls– ahem, sorry, “action figures”– then you’d probably love to litter your workspace with these Halo 3 figures from Todd McFarlane’s workshop. Some of the more interesting toys from the upcoming series 3, due out in September, are shown below, including the famous Hayabusa armor. The series 1 and 2 figures are available now, but they might be a little hard to find.

A sniper rifle wielding Master Chief. Damn campers!

A human victim of the Flood.

For more information on where to buy these figures, check out this page on the McFarlane Toys website.

Giving stoners sufficient entertainment isn’t too hard—just throw some lava lamp visuals on the screen and set appropriate mood music churning away in the background. It’s much more difficult for the temporarily impaired to actually play a game that requires precise timing and coordination, so PixelJunk Eden may not be best choice if you’re too fucked up to concentrate.

In the fine tradition of trippy games like Rez, Lumines, and fl0w, Eden has a soothing aesthetic, with gorgeous fine-line drawings of leaves, roots, and shoots that spring out of every point on the map. Your sticky little figure can leap between blades of grass like an aphid, or suspend himself from the environment on delicate strands of silk, like a spider.

Although you can’t actually fire out your grappling line, which would have drastically altered the gameplay, all you need to do is stand sturdily on any piece of terrain to plot your next jump. Later in the game, when solid ground becomes scarce and environmental traps like continually shifting gravity take over the simple mechanics, Eden becomes a truly devious challenge that should sober up any serious player.

With ten gardens total, there is enough variety in the locations to choose from, but ultimately you are urged to replay each garden five times to collect each “spectra” and unlock new areas. Having to replay the same sections so often was a bit irritating (something we didn’t know about when we played the game at E3), but it may not be such a problem for those suffering from short-term memory loss.

A comparison that comes to mind for me is Super Mario Bros— if after beating level 1-1, you had to replay 1-1 to play level 1-2, and then repeat 1-1 and 1-2 to play 1-3, and so on, then you would essentially be going down the same forced replayability road as Eden.

Sure, the Eden gardens are much more open than a typical platformer’s level. But in replaying a level five times, you’re forced to collect each spectra multiple times. This, plus the repetitive background tunes make certain sections of Pixeljunk Eden feel like a drag.

Still, the uniqueness of the game and surprising depth of its swing-and-release gameplay make this title worth checking out. I don’t know that it would rank as high as the classic stoner games Rez and Lumines, but it’s quite a bit more fun than fl0w. If you’re in that kind of mood for a game, and don’t mind grinding through the same levels multiple times, PixelJunk Eden is a very relaxing way to pass a few slow weekends.

What does this score mean? Check out our review scoring breakdown.

Also, check out our interview with Dylan Cuthbert from Q Games.

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Gamecock gets faulted a lot for their outlandish publicity stunts, but after receiving a fresh new batch of screenshots from the unstoppable publisher we’re actually rather impressed by the scope and variety of their upcoming games.

Look at these screens– you have a downloadable Pirates vs Ninjas Dodgeball game (with Zombies and Aliens, too!), a first person shooter called Legendary with crazy werewolves and griffins, and a trippy Wii platformer called Mushroom Men. Hardly a bald space marine in sight!

So here is your credit where credit is due, Gamecock– thanks for the original ideas. Some of these haven’t proven to be entirely successful in the past, like Fury and Dementium, but we really can’t fault them for trying.

Somewhere in this pack of new games there’s bound to be something for everyone. Check out the screens in the gallery below and let us know what you think. Platforms and release dates are as follows:

Pirates vs Ninja Dodgeball, XBLA, available Sept 3.

Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars, Wii, available Nov 11.

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Now here’s a heck of a scoop, provided it’s for real. Xbox 360 Fanboy has what may be the first glimpse at the character customization options for the 360’s avatars, which will be part of the upcoming Fall update.

It appears to be a much richer suite of tools than the Nintendo Wiis, but to be honest, this still doesn’t make me too excited for this Wii wannabe. Also, is it me, or does that extended ring finger on the right side look like it’s flipping us off?

Source: Xbox 360 Fanboy

If you’re anything like me, you probably have stacks of games that are taking up precious space in your home, blocking the view of your twelve foot shrine to the goddess of destruction, Kali. OK, maybe your place doesn’t look exactly like mine (my interior decorator was Mola Ram from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) but you could still probably use the extra space.

Well, throw those old games in a sacrificial lava pit, because Vigster is the latest website to offer a virtual showcase for your favorite games, plus links to reviews and other information.

Vigster wants to be the “IMDB for Games”, a sort of social networking/ information database crossover. As you can see from the image above, classic games such as Battlefield 2, British Airports, and Awaiting Cover are all represented on the virtual shelf. Awaiting Cover would be an awesome name for a cover-based shooter, wouldn’t it?

The site is still brand new, so it’s lacking a lot of information. But feel free to get on there, start making some friends, and show off your collection without giving up an inch of real space.

Source: Mashable

Those guys from Epic aren’t the only famous people to appear in a fan-made fighting game matchup this week. Darren Gladstone, formerly of Games for Windows Magazine and now of PC World Magazine, created a custom battle of change vs experience in Soul Calibur 4. Check out the video after the jump.

This is pretty much exactly how I hope the televised debates turn out– lots of kicks and punches to the face. Although I can’t say the character models in this video really look much like the candidates, it does make a certain kind of sense that Obama uses the fast nunchucks of community organizing to fight the mighty war hammer of McCain’s Republican agenda.

Source: PC World

This week at Quake Con, id Software unveiled their new Wolfenstein shooter for the PC, PS3, and 360, simply titled “Wolfenstein”. We have the first released screenshots and trailer, for your Nazi-smiting pleasure, after the jump.

First up is the revelatory trailer. This thing has so many swastikas in the first half that I thought it might be a colorized version of Triumph of the Will. Fortunately, we get to watch a ton of bad guys get zapped into cinders by a new gun in the second half.

So now do you think you’ve got room for just one more World War 2 shooter? My personal belief is that you can always improve the genre, and adding a big freaking laser gun is definitely an improvement.

Wolfenstein also seems to have something called the “reality shroud”, which appears to be a version of the light/dark world mechanic seen in other games (Zelda comes to mind). You can check out the particle cannon and reality shroud, plus some of the more conventional WW2 shooting, in the gallery screens below.

Wolfenstein

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Nintendo has claimed that they now rule seven seas, working with law enforcement agencies in a number of countries to squash piracy in the form of the R4 memory card. The R4 card allows for unofficial programs to be played on the Nintendo DS, including emulators and pirated games.

According to Nintendo, they’ve now seized 30,000 copyright-infringing piracy devices. Now that’s a lot of booty! Check out the full statement from Nintendo after the jump.

Nintendo told Gamesindustry.biz:

“Nintendo takes a global approach to piracy and has pursued the illegal game copying devices in 11 countries this past year,” said the company in a statement.

“Nintendo has worked with enforcement officials in Belgium, China, Denmark, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Korea, Netherlands, Spain, UK, and the US, seizing close to 30,000 infringing game copying products, as well as taking actions against those distributors and manufacturers.”

“Nintendo and software manufacturers are suffering tremendous loss caused by the import and distribution of such devices. Nintendo and software manufacturers have determined that the spread of such devices in the market would hinder sound growth and development of the entire computer game industry and will therefore continue to take strict legal measures against any game copying devices that operate like the R4.”

It will be interesting to see the way that game companies continue to deal with the threat of internet piracy. Sony, for example, has repeatedly upgraded the PSP with new firmware to try to thwart the homebrew scene.

The Big 3 console manufacturers don’t seem to have the same pull as the RIAA quite yet, but expect lawmakers to be lobbied even more heavily in lots of countries as the gaming industry grows and pirated games become more readily available.

Source: gamesindustry.biz

From the “perpetual next-gen” department comes this totally expected tidbit. The old news: Nintendo’s working on a follow-up to the Wii. The new news: Confirmation comes directly from President “It print money!” Iwata.

Iwata told Forbes magazine, “We are always preparing for the next hardware. We are under development. But the hardware is a kind of box that consumers reluctantly buy in order to play our games.”

A successor to the Wii is clearly inevitable, but the question is when and to what degree this new console will change Nintendo’s winning format. Will they buckle to demand for HD output, or integrate better online play? Will we see incremental steps towards better motion control, like the Wii MotionPlus? Or maybe something more radical, like the awesome head tracking demo we saw a few months ago?

Rest assured, Microsoft and Sony are already working on their next consoles as well. But Nintendo seems to be confident in setting the standard for casual gamers, expanding the marketplace while they irritate long-time, dedicated gamers.

So what do you think will be included in Wii 2? A new Brain Age that actually scans your brain? Holographic Pokemon? Wii Music packed in with a Showbiz Pizza Band? Who can predict what Nintendo has planned next?

Source: CVG

Nothing says hardcore hip-hop like the Nintendo DS (snicker!) but Ignition Entertainment is now serving up a web demo of their upcoming Breakdancing game for the DS, Red Bull BC One. It plays like Elite Beat Agents, only instead of tapping in time to the music, you’re playing connect-the-dots against the clock.

From this demo, it seems like the music is the best part of the game– the dots on the bottom screen aren’t terribly exciting, and it’s impossible to focus on the dancing on the top screen while you’re playing.

Before you go running back to your “conventional” Nintendo games, why not give this oddball a quick try? Just be sure to use Internet Explorer and download the 3d plugin. If you’re into the hippity-hop or whatever the damn kids are doing these days, you might actually enjoy it.

Source: Red Bull BC One website

The astonishingly popular PS2 and PS3 quiz show game, Buzz!, will have a room in the upcoming Home interface on the PS3. According to a blog by one of the designers of the Buzz! Home space (which he calls the Buzz: Road Show), players will be able to stand on various colored lights to submit their answers, and up to 64 people will be able to play at a time.

In the article, Cumron Ashtiani, the designer, shows some early concept art and talks about his feelings on the Home creative process:

The Avatars are part of the Home system and so not customisable for their surroundings. I think stylistically the characters for Home could have done with a bit more exaggeration and style. There were several technical limitations with he tools at that time in that we couldn’t have animated objects, no characters other than the Home avatars or lights and so movement could only be provided with shader based UV scrolling.

Check out his blog for some really amazing looking artwork. Of all the things I’ve heard and read about Home so far, this might be the most interesting– and I’m not even a big fan of Buzz. Somehow to me this just seems to be Sony taking Microsoft’s idea of letting your avatars compete in “1 vs. 100″ and just running numerous laps around it.

Straight out of San Diego comes the latest comic-book animation and videogame news: Telltale Games, who have made two seasons of Sam and Max episodic games and are working on the Homestar Runner Wiiware game, have announced they’ll be creating a series of games based on Wallace and Gromit.

Wallace and Gromit are a British man-and-best-friend team that have held a number of odd jobs across their short films, including window washers, sheep shearers, and astronauts. Telltale CEO Dan Connors told the Associated Press that they’ll stay true to the short films and 2005 movie, but no word yet on whether these will be action-based or adventure-based games.

W&G is a beloved series by many, so hopefully Telltale Games will be careful to keep fans on board by carefully matching the series’ humor, wit, and art style. As soon as we have the first concrete info on this intriguing new game, we’ll be sure to let you know.

Gamecock Media Group are the crazy guys responsible for publishing a number of console and handheld games, ranging from the frightening and political to the frustrating and psychedelic.

While many of these games can be considered a mixed bag—often a good idea followed up with a flawed execution—you can judge Gamecock’s new games Legendary and Velvet Assassin for yourself on day one, as digital downloads through Gametap.

The nice thing about Gametap is that it’s a subscription based service with a free trial period, so you can always give it a shot and cancel before having to pay anything. Think of it as a free game rental—plus they’ve got some vintage classics (like Fallout!) that you’re not going to find on store shelves anymore.