Latest Gaming and MMORPG Updates |
- Shuhei Yoshida Gives a Quick Last Guardian Update
- Unity-powered games are coming to a TV near you soon
- Rusty Hearts (KR)
- Castlevania Chronicles: We’ve Been Killing Dracula for 25 Years
- Can Twisted Metal Succeed Without DLC?
- Age of Wulin (CN)
| Shuhei Yoshida Gives a Quick Last Guardian Update Posted: 10 Feb 2012 07:36 AM PST After more than six years in development, the recent news of director Fumito Ueda finishing work on the game as a contractor instead of an employee, and the lack of any substantial public updates in almost three years, it’s hard not to worry a little about The Last Guardian. I don’t want to, and it’s still near the top of my most anticipated games list (I put it at #2 for the year), but to a certain degree it’s unavoidable. So when I spoke with Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida at the DICE conference in Las Vegas yesterday, I asked him for an update on the situation. 1UP: Can you give us any update on The Last Guardian? Have you seen it recently? SY: Oh yeah, yeah. I’ve been seeing it. 1UP: Is it still healthy and good? SY: Well you know, there was a rumor that Fumito Ueda left the company or something like that. 1UP: That was confirmed, right? SY: Well it’s confirmed in terms of the status of his relation to the company — he was an employee, and now he’s working on a contract basis. You know, we discussed an arrangement so he could focus on the creative side. But his work and his presence on that team never changed, so it was just more a contractual rearrangement, and that was taken [by many] as “he left.” 1UP: Does he still work in the office? SY: Absolutely. Absolutely. He comes in every day, and he’s probably one of the people who works the longest hours. The project has been making progress, but slow progress. So that’s tough, but we haven’t changed any focus. It’s still a really important project and a vision we want to see realized, and Fumito’s vision is really causing a very difficult challenge for the developers, so there’s some scrapping and rebuilding — iteration in the process. That’s why [it's taking so long]. 1UP: So back to your earlier comment, did he become a contractor so he could work on the creative side rather than the business side? SY: It’s a personal matter, so I can’t really say. 1UP: Do you think he’ll continue to work with Sony after The Last Guardian is finished? SY: If this project goes well — you know, fingers crossed — we’ve worked with him for a long time so yeah I certainly hope we can maintain a relationship. Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Unity-powered games are coming to a TV near you soon Posted: 10 Feb 2012 07:36 AM PST The deal, taking place under the guiding hand of Unity's Union Business Unit, is currently in the early stages, but is part of a 'strategic collaboration to create mass-market demand for games on Smart TVs'. It seems LG wants to take change of all your entertainment needs in the coming year by turning your TV into an all-in-one multimedia system. Unity's game credits in 2011 certainly showcases the power of their browser plug-in technology and development tools, which can conjure high-end 3D graphics on next-to-no hardware. "The television technology LG is introducing this year is very impressive and offers an incredible opportunity for the developers under the Union umbrella to reach a new market," said David Helgason, CEO of Unity Technologies. "Our goal with Union is to create new avenues of distribution for developers using Unity, and LG smart TVs are creating a massive and new gaming audience." The new HDTVs are expected to come complete with a gyroscopic motion controller, called the Magic Motion Remote, and a video processor capable of powering Unity's gaming technology platform. It sounds like a very exciting development, but let's just hope there's enough USB ports for a good old-fashioned keyboard and mouse… Keep an eye on Unity's website for more details. Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Posted: 10 Feb 2012 01:34 AM PST
Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Castlevania Chronicles: We’ve Been Killing Dracula for 25 Years Posted: 10 Feb 2012 01:27 AM PST Twenty-five years ago, on September 26, 1986, Konami launched a brand new game in Japan that would go on to become one of the longest continuously running franchises in the medium’s history. Akumajou Dracula — roughly translating to “Demon Castle Dracula,” which became “Castlevania” in the West in accordance with Konami’s weird obsession with pun-laden localization in the ’80s — was actually two different games on two different platforms. The better-known of the two was a straight-up action platformer for Famicom Disk System, the rewritable NES add-on released only in Japan. On the MSX computer, on the other hand, Akumajou Dracula featured the same general play mechanics and aesthetics as its FDS counterpart but wrapped them in a more labyrinthine format, compensating for the MSX’s lack of smooth video scrolling by turning its castle stages into self-contained mazes. Castlevania was a different kind of game than players were accustomed to, especially on Famicom. Unlike so many of the other platformers that had followed in the wake of Super Mario Bros.’ success (Mario having launched on Famicom almost a year to the day before Akumajou Dracula), Konami’s game was slow-paced, methodical, and possessed a fairly realistic ambiance. The hero, Simon Belmondo (Belmont in the West), was proportioned like an actual human adult. Japanese games of the era tended to warp the proportions of characters to give their faces more real estate and allow for cute, visually expressive designs. Simon had a tiny four-pixel face with no details, his characterization instead coming through his determined gait and unique method of attack. The Vampire Killer whip was an uncommon choice for any video game protagonist outside of Indiana Jones, striking a middle-range balance between fists and guns. The game’s unconventional look, pacing, and weaponry set it apart from its peers. The names “Akumajou Dracula” and “Castlevania” both reflect the fact that the action is set within a very specific location, and Dracula’s castle has always been at the heart of every game. Even when Simon ranged further afield in the sequel, exploring the furthest extents of the Transylvanian forests of Romania, the adventure ultimately led back to a final showdown in the ruins of the castle. This, too, was a distinctive facet of the original game, especially the Famicom version: Castlevania felt like an actual place, with logical architecture — there were no magically floating platforms here, and pits were merely gaps between remnants of flooring held aloft by crumbling columns and arches — and a consistent structure that matched the inter-level map that charted Simon’s progress through the game’s six stages. Castlevania was a much shorter game than Super Mario Bros., Metroid, or Adventure Island, but it traded quantity for detail. Its visuals were abstract, but they left the impression of rotting tapestries and murky shadows beneath mossy stone outcroppings. The visuals were bright and garish as only a system with a 52-color palette can offer, but the combinations of hues gave the suggestion of night and decay, even when you were looking at neon pinks and oranges. And the music! The music was amazing. If Metroid had demonstrated the NES’s potential to create aural atmospheres with four-channel sound, Castlevania proved that you could use those same audio capabilities to melt people’s faces with brisk, ominous, layered melodies. The Castlevania series has some of the most remixed and remade tunes ever, and that legacy was in place from the beginning. VIdeo game cover bands continue to perform melodies like “Wicked Child” and “Heart of Fire,” and any Castlevania without a new take on “Vampire Killer” barely deserves the title. Despite its strong start, the Castlevania series had its rocky moments from the beginning. The game was soon reimagined for arcades in the form of Haunted Castle. The best thing you can say about Haunted Castle is that it includes great renditions of classic tracks like “Bloody Tears”; otherwise, it was a clumsy exercise in anti-fun. The first Castlevania sequel, Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest, expanded on the MSX version of the game by sending Simon across the sprawling Romanian countryside in a non-linear quest that was frequently confusing by design. NPCs gave deliberately misleading hints and outright lied at times, and the solutions to many objectives were utterly unintuitive. As so often happened with NES series, the uneven second chapter was made up for by a superior third entry that returned to the nuts-and-bolts of the first game while expanding on them in brilliant new ways. Set hundreds of years before Simon’s quests, Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse told the tale of ancestral Belmont Trevor (tragically known as Ralph in Japan). Trevor’s adventure advanced in the level-by-level format of the first Castlevania, but it offered branching paths through the game and the opportunity to team up with one of three companions, including man-handed lady wizard Sypha Belnades and Dracula’s eternal teenage rebel of a son, Alucard. Konami never quite seemed to know what to do with the series after the end of the NES era. While the first three games all featured a similar visual style and identical play control and mechanics, few sequels carried over those specific elements. The truest sequels, in a sense, were the Game Boy games; of those, however, only the second — Belmont’s Revenge — holds up to the test of time. Super Castlevania IV brought the series into the 16-bit realm early in the Super NES days. While it’s brilliant in its own right, Castlevania IV also feels radically different than any other Castlevania game, offering eight-directional whipping, grappling, and a swirling, muted, improvisational jazz soundtrack. Perhaps the truest sequel to the NES games was actually the Genesis game, Bloodlines, which plays like an 8-bit platformer loaded with delectably over-the-top 16-bit visual effects. Unfortunately, Bloodlines has gone into history as the forgotten Castlevania: The only chapter of the series designed specifically for a Sega platform (and thus overlooked by most of its fans, who grew up playing Nintendo systems), and the only pre-3D game that has yet to put in an appearance on Virtual Console. Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Can Twisted Metal Succeed Without DLC? Posted: 09 Feb 2012 07:33 PM PST Six years after the industry drove horse armor jokes into the ground, the concept of a major title without downloadable content sounds absurd (unless you’re talking about a Nintendo game.) DLC gives publishers the chance to make a little more cash, and extends the life and sales of existing games — thus limiting the damage used game sales can inflict on the bottom line. Combine those incentives with a population of gamers eagerly buying post-release content, and it’s hard to find a reason for a publisher or developer not to push DLC, but that’s exactly what Eat Sleep Play (ESP) and Sony are doing with the new Twisted Metal. In an interview with Game Informer, Twisted Metal designer David Jaffe explained:
Jaffe raises a valid point. No one can guarantee the future success of Twisted Metal, and making DLC for a poorly performing game amounts little more than throwing away money. It may very well be within both the developer’s and publisher’s best interests to take a more cautious approach, but that leads to its own set of problems. Game makers can’t create new content overnight, and one of the main purposes of DLC is to ensure that those new copies of Twisted Metal stay in consumer hands and away from the used games shelf at the nearest GameStop. If Twisted Metal does perform well, will the new DLC arrive in time to prevent owners from selling it back? If Sony is actually taking a wait and see approach, the company should have prepared a small amount of easily produced content (think skins, cosmetic changes and the like) to tide players over until ESP could produce a more significant package. ESP will continue to work on non-content related updates for the game until the end of March, and in another interview with Joystiq, Jaffe mentioned that the team’s work on the planned day one patch, but all that work falls under a pre-existing game ‘maintenance contract.’ Will Sony simply let the game lie fallow afterward? It’s likely that such a plan makes sense from a business standpoint — Sony’s hedging bets that Twisted Metal won’t perform to a level that makes additional content profitable — but it also serves as a signal to potential buyers indicating that post-release support for the game may be short lived. I’d be wary of investing in any multiplayer title that won’t receive regular updates. When every other game on the market uses new content to keep the player base engaged and active, how do I know that I’ll even be able find a Twisted Metal match online three months after its release? While players technically take this risk when buying any online game, the promise of future DLC helps assuage those doubts. It seems, however, that I’m in the minority. We discussed the idea of a major title with no DLC in the office and even asked for the thoughts of 1UP readers on Facebook, and most seem excited about it. “Twisted Metal was the greatest game ever, and it didn’t need [DLC]. It just means the developer is making the game right the first time, unlike 99% of games out now who release DLC right when the game comes out.” said one poster. Some felt that the advent of post-release content contributed to an overall decline In the size of games, “The problem is modern multiplayer games don’t ship with enough content *cough Battlefield 3* and that content is shipped as DLC.” While a few posters took up my position, the vast majority seemed almost relieved. Purchasing expensively priced downloadable expansions can drain the wallet. Not to mention that players shouldn’t have to pay extra money to experience content that should have been on the game’s disc, like Final Fantasy XIII-2 which looks like it may follow in the footsteps of the 2009 Prince of Persia or Alan Wake and will end its story in a downloadable chapter. Sony may very well send Twisted Metal off to languish after its release, but that prospect seems to excite, rather than discourage fans. Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Posted: 09 Feb 2012 01:26 PM PST
Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
By hook and by crook, I managed to find my way of getting this package delivered here. The key has been used and activated, but I am not really sure which region I belong to even though I chose Asia Pacific, as overseas players will be randomly drafted into either of the 7 regions. But with that said, I am still on course for the 2nd Closed Beta phase ^___^ Stay tuned for real, actual high definition videos soon!
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