General gaming

General gaming

Skyward Sword: The Director/Producer Postmortem

Posted: 22 Nov 2011 06:56 AM PST

It seems fair to say that The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is a success for Nintendo, what with the largely positive reviews it's been getting (including the requisite 40/40 from Famitsu). Following up on last week's interview with Shigeru Miyamoto, the Japanese magazine sat down with Skyward Sword producer Eiji Aonuma and director Hidemaro Fujibayashi to discuss the game in further detail -- here are some of the highlights:

- Plotwise, Skyward Sword is a prequel to Ocarina of Time, telling the story of the origin of the Master Sword. This came about despite the fact that the game's Wii MotionPlus support came along long after plot details were finalized. "It's funny," Aonuma said, "but Fi, the sword-spirit who appears in this game, was something we finished up before we decided this would be a Zelda that used Wii MotionPlus. We already had her as a sword spirit beforehand, and during our announcement at the 2009 E3 show, her design was modeled after the Master Sword. At the time, though, you used her in a completely different way gamewise than you do now. The MotionPlus swordplay was something that was completed later on, and as a result the game's story and action gameplay came to both focus more on the Master Sword. It wound up coming together pretty well."

Akira Yamaoka, Goichi Suda on Grasshopper's Leap to Social Games

Posted: 22 Nov 2011 05:30 AM PST

Grasshopper Manufacture, the Japanese developer responsible for offbeat titles like Shadows of the Damned and the upcoming Lollipop Chainsaw, is looking to get into social and smartphone games in a more serious way, something that president Goichi Suda touched on a bit during the Tokyo Game Show two months ago. In this week's issue of Japan's Famitsu magazine, the company revealed a bit more about their plans -- including the launch of a new social-exclusive studio.

Grasshopper Universe, a joint venture between Suda's company and Japanese social-game distribution giant DeNA, is part of GHM's effort to adapt itself better for the mobile marketplace. "We released Frog Minutes [above] for the iPhone and iPod Touch on March 30 of this year and we were proceeding along with plans for other smartphone titles when DeNA opened up talks with us," Grasshopper's Akira Yamaoka told Famitsu. "We're originally a console game company, and the experience we use to make games and come up with ideas is very different from the way companies specializing in social games handle things. We figured that we could come up with things that are more fun if we worked together."

Bayonetta Designer Providing Soul Calibur V Costumes

Posted: 21 Nov 2011 05:34 PM PST

Soul Calibur V

Just before this year's Tokyo Game Show, Namco announced that in addition to their internal Project Soul development team, three external developers were helping create Soul Calibur V -- CyberConnect2 on the story, and Creative Intelligence Arts/Forcewick Sound Design on the audio. And now they're adding one more to that list, with Bayonetta character designer Mari Shimazaki contributing costumes. Namco calls her a "guest costume designer," keeping the terminology they use for "guest characters" like Ezio in SCV.

Shimazaki told me via email she originally met SCV's art director at a party, mentioned she was looking forward to the game, and then when she became a freelancer, found herself called in for a meeting. She has three designs in the game -- the primary costume for new character Leixia, and the alternate costumes for Tira and Ivy.

Review: Minecraft Officially Releases, Apparently -- And is a Great Game After All

Posted: 21 Nov 2011 05:30 PM PST

Minecraft, one might have noticed, is kind of a big deal. If you're the sort of person who reads about videogames on the Internet, which seems like a safe assumption, it would have taken a directed force of will to avoid hearing about it by now. So you probably already know that it's a sandbox style game that takes place in a procedurally generated world made up of one-meter blocks that can be mined and crafted to create everything from a simple sod house to a scale replica of the starship Enterprise. Or an automated pooping butt. Or a gigantic mechanical player piano. Or a scale recreation of most of Middle Earth. Or... yeah, the sense of awe at the outrageous feats of engineering players have cobbled together is only eclipsed by the sales of the game itself and the subculture that has sprouted up around it.

Almost two years ago Minecraft went from a weird indie project with a cult following to a million-seller that's still earning nearly $200,000 a day in sales, and that was before the game was officially released. This game that one guy slapped together has now become the nucleus of a massive fandom -- one that just enjoyed its first major convention in Vegas over this past weekend. Hell, some guy made an entire concept album about the game's iconic suicide-bombing creepers. This last Halloween you may have even encountered your first Minecraft costumes in the wild, and when you open your door to see a kid wearing a hand-painted cardboard box creeper mask making that blood curdling "SSSSSsss" sound, there's really nothing to do other than dump the entire candy bowl into their bag while kicking yourself for not being Notch -- who is one can only assume is spending his days swimming like a tophat-wearing duck in an Olympic sized swimming pool filled with Euros.

Fortune Street is Truly a Game for Our Troubled Times

Posted: 21 Nov 2011 05:25 PM PST

I was pleasantly surprised when I sampled Nintendo's upcoming Wii party game Fortune Street last month at New York Comic-Con. Despite being a multiplayer title starring Mario and other game mascots in a virtual board game setting, Fortune Street is the furthest thing from Mario Party you could imagine. The few minigames it contains are generally automated affairs that play themselves in a few short seconds: no button-mashing or stick-twirling required. Rather, Fortune Street has far more in common with Hasbro's Monopoly than with the usual minigame collections that have shown up as multiplayer releases over the past decade.

What I didn't realize based on my NYCC hands-on is that it's even deeper than that. Fortune Street is playable in both standard and simplified modes, and at public events Nintendo has been demoing it in the latter mode. With the training wheels taken off, Fortune Street is kind of ridiculous. Like a real "grown-ups" board game such as Risk or Monopoly, a single match can take hours. I recently played a demo with other members of the gaming press -- including IGN's Audrey Drake -- and two hours wasn't enough for us to complete a game. And that wasn't even on one of the more complex boards!

What Metal Gear Solid 5 Could (and Should) Be

Posted: 21 Nov 2011 04:28 PM PST

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What Metal Gear Solid 5 Could (and Should) Be

1UP editors ponder the future of Hideo Kojima's mega-series.

By: 1UP Staff November 21, 2011

  • Jeremy Parish, Editor-in Chief

    Jeremy Parish, Editor-in Chief

    You know what I'd like to see for Metal Gear Solid 5? Nothing. Don't get me wrong; I've been following -- and a fan of -- the Metal Gear games since before the original game came out for NES. I love me some Metal Gear. But at this point, and MGS4 will back me up on this, the series just has too much baggage. Why not just start over with a clean slate and a new series and let Kojima and his folks work their magic without having to worry about an insanely convoluted backstory that was never meant to be concluded? Oh, right... money.

    Fine. If Kojima has to go ahead with a fifth chapter, I only see two ways for it to work. One, jump way far into the future and leave behind the legacy cast. Maybe make the game about Olga's kid Sunny, all grown up into an idiot savant secret agent who sings about eggs while she snaps necks, but leave everyone else behind. Alternately, let's take the series way into the past and focus on The Boss (aka The Joy) and her work with Cobra Unit in World War II. Or, hell, stop the flirting and cockteasing and just let Metal Gear make out with Assassin's Creed already. Find some way to combine the two series' ridiculous story lines into one. (Suggestion: The Apple is nanomachines!)

    Whatever the case, Metal Gear Solid 5 shouldn't be about the Snakes. Not Solid Snake, not Liquid Snake, not Naked Snake, and definitely not Solidus. Their story is done. The Patriots' story is done. Here's an idea, though: Why not get back to basics and make a Metal Gear that's about, you know, Metal Gear? The series' big deal used to be the mad threat represented by a compact, self-contained nuclear delivery system. Before the AIs named after dead presidents and social manipulation and impossible continuity, Metal Gear was about a simple deadly threat. I'd love to see that kind of clarity of purpose in the series again.

  • Bob Mackey, Features Admiral

    Bob Mackey, Features Admiral

    If you'd like to see the direction the Metal Gear Solid series should go, look no further than Peace Walker; though the game's admittedly built with on-the-go play in mind, it managed to shake off most of the baggage that clung to the series for so long. Simplified controls, a dialed-back story, a nearly bottomless toy box full of weapons and gadgets, and several multi-layered RPG systems built for endless tinkering -- all of these elements brought Metal Gear far above the fan-pandering torture that nearly sunk Solid 4. Given that MGS4 tied up every loose end (and turned Solid Snake into a human Hot Pocket), the series has an unprecedented amount of breathing room; and since the Metal Gear timeline stretches across 50 years, Kojima and his team now have the ability to dip in and out of this history at their leisure. So why shouldn't they?

    So, where could Metal Gear Solid go with its fifth official installment? Honestly, it'd be fantastic to see remakes of the original two Metal Gears, even if Kojima repurposed a great deal of these games' content for the original Solid. But instead of putting the spotlight on Snake, why can't the Metal Gear team instead show us the story of Outer Heaven through the eyes of Big Boss himself? It'd be the perfect send-off to a character they've been progressively developing since Metal Gear Solid 3, not to mention a fine opportunity for Metal Gear fans to experience a plotline currently trapped behind a thick mesh of outdated mechanics and primitive storytelling.

  • Ryan Winterhalter, Associate Games Editor

Watch Zelda: Skyward Sword in Full HD

Posted: 21 Nov 2011 04:06 PM PST

Watch Zelda: Skyward Sword in full HD

We push Zelda to the limit.

By: 1UP Staff
November 21, 2011

Earlier this year, we brought you a look at classic Wii and GameCube games rendered in HD thanks to the Dolphin emulator, which has the ability to change the internal resolution of games on both platforms. The software doesn't just upscale games like the PS3 does to PS1 titles, it changes the graphical fidelity of the game itself.

This time around we wanted to see what The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword could have looked like on better hardware. There are two videos presented below, and on the following pages we have our screenshot gallery. The difference is striking, though perhaps not as much so as Wind Waker or other classic GameCube titles.

Max Payne 3 Special Edition Only Available Until January 15

Posted: 21 Nov 2011 02:43 PM PST

Max Payne 3 special edition

Max Payne 3 will at long last be out next year, and coming with it is a Special Edition that devoted fans of the series can drop some extra cash on.

The biggest component of it is a TriForce-created, 10-inch statue of Max Payne with his pistols drawn. Joining that are a pair of art prints showing Max's vices -- pills and bullets, namely. You also get a bullet keychain, the soundtrack for the game, and some in-game content in the form of two DLC packs.

Kojima Doesn't Have Much to Reveal About MGS5 Right Now

Posted: 21 Nov 2011 01:50 PM PST

Metal Gear Solid 4

Although it was teased that Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima would soon share details on both Metal Gear Solid Rising and Metal Gear Solid 5, it turns out he doesn't actually have a great deal to share, at least when it comes to the latter subject.

Ahead of its upcoming issue, the Official PlayStation Magazine U.K. has published some quotes from Kojima online, and it largely sounds like the sort of thing we've become used to hearing from him in recent years.

How Japan's Earthquake Changed its Developers

Posted: 21 Nov 2011 12:18 PM PST

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How Japan's Earthquake Changed its Developers

By: Matt Leone November 21, 2011

On March 11th, Japan experienced the biggest known natural disaster in the country's history as a 9.0 magnitude earthquake hit off the coast of Tohoku, leading to subsequent tsunami waves, aftershocks, and nuclear power plant explosions.

In the days following, Namco's Kazuhiro Harada remembers looking at the data collected from Tekken arcade cabinets linked across Japan, and seeing clusters of locations flatline. In some cases, the buildings housing these machines lost electricity; in others, they fell apart. Back at Namco's office, his team experienced frequent blackouts, regularly shut off equipment due to power conservation efforts, discovered that their arcade cabinet manufacturing factory collapsed, and saw fellow employees question whether they wanted to continue making "fun" entertainment products.

Posted by Shri Krishna

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