General gaming |
- TGS: Capcom Really Likes Spending Money on Dragon's Dogma
- Review: You Can Play Gears of War 3 for 100+ Hours (If You Liked the Last Two)
- TGS: Project Draco Looks a Lot like "Panzer Dragoon Kinect"
- TGS: Final Fantasy Type-0 is Dark, Ambitious, Promising
- TGS: Theatrhythm Final Fantasy is Cute, Fun, in Need of a Little Polish
- TGS: Kingdom Hearts 3D Brings The World Ends With You Into the Family
- TGS: 3DS Frankenstick Hands-On and Photos
- TGS: A Tentative Look at Square Enix's U.S. Line-up
- Super Mario 3D Land Marries Nostalgia With Cool 3D Effects
- Review: Radiant Silvergun on XBLA Will Satisfy Your 13-Year Curiosity
| TGS: Capcom Really Likes Spending Money on Dragon's Dogma Posted: 15 Sep 2011 07:41 AM PDT You may recall that Capcom developers have spoken a few times about Dragon's Dogma -- their upcoming medieval-'em-up with climbable creatures and a high-end Monster Hunter feel -- being a pretty expensive game to develop. There was the time they said that the team working on it is the biggest within Capcom, at around 150 members. And the time they said games like this "cost a ton of money" and that's why we don't see more of them from Japanese developers. Sites like Kotaku have even mentioned rumors that this is Capcom's most expensive game to date. |
| Review: You Can Play Gears of War 3 for 100+ Hours (If You Liked the Last Two) Posted: 15 Sep 2011 12:01 AM PDT Gears of War 3 is an amazing game, jam packed with things to do. It's designed from the top down to ensure that you never stop playing it. Most players will start out with the campaign. Which delivers an amazing (but expected) number of set pieces, and badass moments. The best way to experience said moments is to play Gears with three of your friends in co-op mode on one of the higher difficulty levels (normal is seriously a joke.) You can play in standard or arcade mode, which awards points and offers you a multiplier for killing enemies without you or an ally going down and needing to be revived. When you can't get four friends together, it might be worth running through the campaign alone to see the game's story -- which is much improved over the previous two iterations. |
| TGS: Project Draco Looks a Lot like "Panzer Dragoon Kinect" Posted: 14 Sep 2011 11:54 PM PDT In meeting rooms at this year's Tokyo Game Show, Microsoft is showing off Project Draco, the game everyone at 1UP made fun of Matt for liking last year but will now turn around and be in love with. Matt and Scooter just saw it, and both wanted to force their opinions on you. Matt: I'm just glad it's here, first off, since we haven't seen or heard anything about the game in the past year. First impression is it's super colorful, with some interesting virtual pet features, three-player online co-op, and controls that are really similar to Child of Eden's. The whole interface brings back Child of Eden memories, actually, from the right hand lock-on attacks to the left hand more powerful attacks, to throwing both hands in the air for bombs. But the developers tell us there will be a lot more variety for those kinds of things though different dragons, upgrades, etc. |
| TGS: Final Fantasy Type-0 is Dark, Ambitious, Promising Posted: 14 Sep 2011 10:59 PM PDT Final Fantasy Type-0 has lived a troubled life. Originally announced as Final Fantasy Agito XIII more than five years ago, the title has experienced a change of both platforms (from mobile phones to PSP) and game style (from card-based RPG to Monster Hunter-alike). Normally, that sort of history spells trouble. But Type-0 -- still a distant cousin of FFXIII as part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis sub-series -- hardly looks like a development hell trainwreck. On the contrary, Type-0 has the potential to be Square Enix's finest work on PSP... and possibly one of the best PSP titles to date, period. The Type-0 TGS demo features different content than the one released on Japan's PSN a few months back. It offers a few different scenarios; I picked the one that simulates a multiplayer session with AI-controlled companions. The game feels a lot like recent Parasite Eve sequel The 3rd Birthday (hardly surprising, given its common creative heritage); but where The 3rd Birthday felt like a limited shooter, Type-0 feels more like a proper action RPG. Players can swap between any of three characters with the press of a button, and each fighter has a very different feel. The demo mixes up gender stereotypes by including a heavy-mace-user (a scrawny girl in a skirted school uniform) and a bow-wielder (a more solidly built male). |
| TGS: Theatrhythm Final Fantasy is Cute, Fun, in Need of a Little Polish Posted: 14 Sep 2011 10:36 PM PDT Square Enix hasn't announced Theatrhythm Final Fantasy for U.S. release yet, but I hope it makes its way west. It's a stiff challenge for musically challenged people like me, but the adorable visuals and great music combine to make it a fantastic audio-visual experience. That being said, Theatrhythm -- or at least the version on display at Tokyo Game Show -- isn't quite ready for prime time. The problem, unfortunately, is that it's a just a bit unpolished. That's to be expected from demos, and I'm happy to give the game the benefit of a doubt. But the things that I love about it also create some minor issues that make it feel a little sloppy and unfinished. Again, demo. I get it. Let's start with the music. Theatrhythm is a Final Fantasy music game, and it uses the original game soundtracks. That means when you play tracks from the original Final Fantasy, you're hearing NES chip tunes. When you play "One Winged Angel," you're hearing Final Fantasy's VII's compressed samples and cold PCM. That's cool. The problem, however, is that those tracks were meant to loop, so they don't have a natural conclusion. And rather than fading down where they would on an original soundtrack compilation, they just fade after an arbitrary amount of time. So that NES theme loops several times, while "One Winged Angel" doesn't even complete a single cycle. Much as I love the authentic, original renditions of the music, the game would probably work better with arranged versions that end properly and embellish some of the more simplistic older tunes with added variety and improvisation. |
| TGS: Kingdom Hearts 3D Brings The World Ends With You Into the Family Posted: 14 Sep 2011 10:11 PM PDT I won't lie: I'm not much of a Kingdom Hearts fan. I like the concept enough in the abstract -- Disney meets Final Fantasy? Bizarrely hilarious! -- but the story and play have always left me cold. I'm warming up the the series thanks to the strength of some of its better portable iterations, though. While the series wasn't much to speak of on GBA or DS, Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep on PSP was much better than it had any right to be, and its upcoming 3DS version, Dream Drop Distance, builds further on Sleep's refinements. It also features Neku Sakuraba from The World Ends With You, which does a lot to win me over. Neku appears as a guest character in Sora's side of the TGS demo -- though not a playable guest. Both Neku and his rival/friend/frienemy Riku team up with captured dream-monsters this time around rather than fighting alongside licensed characters. Neku's role is more that of the Disney-world guests from previous games. He shows up, reveals that he's caught in a "game," leaving him 43 minutes to win or die. Naturally, he asks Sora to be his partner but ultimately decides the tousle-haired protagonist is "a weird guy" and takes off. Sora follows, riding rails in pursuit of Neku, but quickly encounters a boss battle set in a cul-de-sac of Traverse Town. |
| TGS: 3DS Frankenstick Hands-On and Photos Posted: 14 Sep 2011 08:14 PM PDT I didn't have much time with the unit, and it wasn't running any software, so these are early impressions, but the main two things that jumped out at me are that it feels as big as it looks in pictures, and it's very light -- it seems almost hollow, which makes sense given that there's probably not a lot of tech packed into the base. I've heard people compare it to the Game Gear, and I don't think that's accurate -- it's much more ergonomic and comfortable to hold, though it does have some of the bulk of Sega's machine. I can't see anyone carrying this around in their pocket, for instance -- the width would make that nearly impossible. |
| TGS: A Tentative Look at Square Enix's U.S. Line-up Posted: 14 Sep 2011 07:30 PM PDT With its strong stable of Eidos games like Tomb Raider, Thief IV, and Hitman, Square Enix's U.S. line-up relies almost entirely on western-developed titles; at the moment, Final Fantasy XIII-2 is the company's only Japan-developed title confirmed for U.S. release. Nothing has changed, exactly, but the existence of a special Tokyo Game Show break-out room for American press hints at possible candidates for localization. Besides FFXIII-2, the American press room included demo kiosks for Final Fantasy Type-0 (formerly Final Fantasy Agito XIII), Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance (a 3DS title that brings Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame and Neku from The World Ends With You into the Kingdom Hearts universe), 3DS music game Theatrhythm Final Fantasy, and Army Corps of Hell (a new Vita game best described as "heavy metal Pikmin"). Square representatives were careful to stress that none of these games besides XIII-2 have been announced for American localization, but the fact that they were specifically highlighted for U.S. writers suggests they're at least under consideration -- a heartening sign for Type-0 in particular, as it's an excellent-looking title that seemed likely to fall victim to the stagnant American PSP market. |
| Super Mario 3D Land Marries Nostalgia With Cool 3D Effects Posted: 14 Sep 2011 04:49 PM PDT Our own Jeremy Parish wrote about Super Mario 3D Land and how it feels like every Mario game rolled into one back at E3; but unfortunately he's off in Japan right now for Tokyo Game Show 2011. And so the call was made to the 1UP bullpen, sending me off to cover a private demo for Nintendo's first 3DS Mario title. Representatives from the Japanese company let me play through World 1 - 2, 1 - 3, 1 - 4, and the first castle stage to get a glimpse at the game's delightful nostalgic touches. It's safe to assume that the first stages of any Mario game are a cakewalk, and although level 1 - 2 was no exception, it wisely borrows familiar inspirations from the original Super Mario Bros. The first stage I play begins in the familiar blue brick-lined depths of the Mushroom Kingdom, and plays to your nostalgia with stage music that's a variation of the SMB underground theme. |
| Review: Radiant Silvergun on XBLA Will Satisfy Your 13-Year Curiosity Posted: 14 Sep 2011 03:45 PM PDT It's funny what a mix of good and bad timing can do for a game. Take Radiant Silvergun, for instance: originally an arcade game and then a relatively limited Japanese Saturn release in 1998, the game became a favorite among the ultra-hardcore, import-happy crowd... assuming they could get the game. Due to its short life on the shelf and the general fervor over its developer Treasure, Silvergun quickly gained triple-digit price tags. Some would suggest that not playing Radiant Silvergun doesn't make you a real gamer. Well, it's not that good, but now it's back and better and easier to get than ever. Radiant Silvergun is definitely a shooter from 1998. It requires a different kind of skill than today's arcade shoot-em-ups, where the number one strategy is knowing when to tip-toe between curtains of bullets. Here, enemies are typically small and everywhere, bosses and midbosses are frequent, and they all have tricky patterns that can throw you off if you don't learn them or don't kill the boss before they get really tricky. On top of that, the game has an orthodox emphasis on weaponry. You have three basic attack types -- vulcan, homing, or spread -- that can be combined to make different combinations, like a vulcan cannon that fires from both ends of the ship, or a homing laser that goes for any enemy in your radius. Oh, and a "radiant sword" that you can swing around or use it to absorb certain pink bullets and charge up a super slash. In this version, you can map the combinations to any button you want, but the tower of button icons on the side of the screen when playing can still look a little intimidating. Nevertheless, it's a feast of firepower. |
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