Game Info

Social Ties

gamers — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 15:21:51 +0000

Can tens of millions of people around the world be wrong? Is calculating the growth time of a turnip fun? Are farm simulators and virtual gang wars real games? Who said hours of virtual ploughing, planting, and harvesting aren’t worthwhile?

By now it seems that social games are not just a passing trend. Given the term “social gaming” didn’t even exist until three years ago, it’s hard to believe these games can now make millions in their first month on the market. The overnight success of Facebook applications like FarmVille, Mafia Wars, and Restaurant City has brought with it a spate of social game developers keen to capitalize on the public’s newfound love of virtual interaction. According to these developers, social games are neither a trend nor a concrete form of interactive entertainment–they are a catalyst for something deeper and much less volatile: a new genre of inherently social video games. The question of whether social games are here to stay has already been answered; the new question is will the social boom change the way we play video games? Could shooting bad guys in post-apocalyptic wastelands be one day replaced by milking cattle on a farm? Will big-name game publishers swap consoles and PCs for Facebook and other social media platforms?

In this GameSpot feature we take a look behind the scenes of social games and talk to the developers and publishers of some of the most popular social games on the market. We also look at the appeal of social games, the intricacies behind their successful business model, the size and scope of the market, and the role social networks play in providing a home-ground for these titles. Finally, we talk to game publishers to find out what plans the global video game industry has for integrating, acquiring and learning from the success of social games and those who make them.

The social gaming market

What turns social games into overnight sensations? What fuels millions of people to get out of bed every morning and plough their virtual farms? Social games allow users to develop a virtual identity–be it as a farmer, a mafia leader, a restaurant owner and so on–and expand on this identity through other user interaction; this keeps users coming back to interact not just with the game itself but also with other users within it. As more and more users sign up, the phenomenon becomes viral. Suddenly, everyone’s a constant gardener.

A March 2010 report by European investment bank GP Bullhound titled Social Gaming: The Fastest Growing Segment of The Games Market found that the global social gaming sector made $1 billion in revenue in 2009, representing two percent of the $50 billion global games market. This number is expected to rise to $3 billion by 2012. The key players in this rapidly rising industry are social game developers like Zynga, Playfish, Crowdstar, and PopCap, whose games have become viral sensations on Facebook. Titles like FarmVille, Mafia Wars, Café World, PetVille, Pet Society, and Restaurant City are consistent record-breakers, reeling in more and more users each day. Zynga is currently the dominant force in the social games sector, with over 66.4 million active daily users and 42 social games available on Facebook (FarmVille alone boasts more than 30 million daily active users). Trailing Zynga are Playfish/EA, with 10.3 million active daily users and 30 Facebook games, and Crowdstar, with 9.4 million active daily users and 12 Facebook games respectively.

The proverbial cash cow–the farm puns will end soon, promise–is fed through micro-transactions: a free-to-play business model that relies on users paying small amounts of money for virtual goods and in-game items. Social games also use other forms of revenues such as advertising and subscription models; however, according to the GP Bullhound report, micro-transactions account for approximately 80 to 90 percent of revenue for social game developers. The more popular social games can generate between $2,000 to $5,000 in revenue per day. For example, in 2009, Zynga made around $150 million in revenue from its Facebook applications.

The decline of MySpace has led to Facebook becoming the dominant platform for social gaming, with some 400 million active users expected to grow to 800 million in the next few years. Dedicated social gaming platforms are also popular, with sites like Club Penguin in the children’s category and Gaia Online and Hi5 in the teen space growing rapidly in the past three years. According to a recent study by the Information Services Group in conjunction with PopCap Games, the average social gamer is a 43-year-old female. The study surveyed 1,200 respondents from the US and UK, and showed that more than 24 percent of internet users said they play social games while 68 percent of US players said they played daily for an average of half an hour or more.

With such money to be made it’s not surprising that social gaming has attracted the interest of video game publishers looking to enter into–and undoubtedly capitalize on–the social boom. The idea is simple: social games cost significantly less time and money to develop than console and PC games, and present a much lower risk to developers who are working on new intellectual property. Where a AAA title can cost anywhere up to $100 million to develop, an average social game costs between $100,000 to $200,000 and can be ready to go in less than six months. Like most video game market analysts, GP Bullhound expects that in the next few years more and more publishers will look into spending an increasing amount of development time and money on making games for lower-cost platforms like the iPhone and social networks like Facebook.

What this will inevitably lead to is a significant consolidation in both the global and social games markets. Key players emerging within the social game sphere will slowly do away with smaller developers, while game publishers will take EA’s lead and look to acquire social developers or begin making their own titles.

The Last Word: May 24-28

gamers — Fri, 28 May 2010 15:16:09 +0000

Last week of May sees Video Game History Month draw to a close, reviews for ModNation Racers, Blur, Alpha Protocol, and UFC 2010, and early looks at Killzone 3 and Call of Duty: Black Ops.

The march to the 2010 Electronic Entertainment Expo continued at a fevered pace this week with almost no signs of letting up. GameSpot’s review team wrapped up a monster May with looks at Blur, ModNation Racers, Ultimate Fighting Championship 2010, and one of the first big games of June, next week’s Alpha Protocol.

Video Game History Month wound down with looks at The Legend of Zelda, the original GameBoy, the coolest (and lamest) Collector’s Editions of the past, Shigeru Miyamoto, and in a nod to next month’s big show, E3. Speaking of E3, the previews team put up some pre-show looks at a handful of anticipated titles, including Killzone 3, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and Crackdown 2.

Assassin’s Creed II Review

gamers — Sun, 09 May 2010 17:12:28 +0000

Assassin’s Creed II is what you’d want an action sequel to be: bigger, better, and more beautiful.

The Good

Huge, beautifully realized world to explore
Ezio is a terrific new character
Tombs put a spotlight on the excellent and enjoyable platforming
A greater variety of missions, weapons, and stealth techniques than in the original
Incredible production values.

The Bad

Some additions are a little contrived
A few gameplay and visual quirks.

“Nothing is true; everything is permitted.” We learned this adage in the original Assassin’s Creed, and Assassin’s Creed II carries on the tradition beautifully, inspiring you to rethink the conspiracy at the heart of the series–and to reconsider what you should expect from a sequel. The franchise’s second console outing is an impressive piece of work. Developer Ubisoft Montreal has addressed almost all of Assassin’s Creed’s flaws by filling its follow-up with fresh and enjoyable mission types and layering on new and mostly excellent features, while still retaining the joy of movement and atmospheric wonder that characterized the original. These enhancements range from the subtle (you can swim now) to the game-changing (there’s an economy), but aside from a few small missteps, every tweak makes for a more enjoyable, more engaging adventure. The cohesive story and a terrific new character will draw you in, and you aren’t apt to forget the memorable and explosive ending that will have you eager for the third installment.

Like in the first game, Assassin’s Creed II occurs across two timelines: a modern-day chronology starring bartender Desmond Miles, and another featuring one of Desmond’s ancestors. When you start the game, you’ll catch up with Desmond right where the original left him, though as fans of the original can guess, the Abstergo labs are no longer a safe haven. You’ll spend a bit of time with Desmond during the course of the game, though the shoes you most frequently fill are those of Ezio Auditore da Firenze, the charmingly impetuous son of a 15th-century Italian banker. Ezio is an instantly likable firebrand, as passionate about family and honor as he is about wine and women. When you first meet him, Ezio is living a carefree life and has not yet donned his assassin’s robe, nor is he familiar with the creed. However, Ezio’s devil-may-care freedom is soon cut short by murder and betrayal instigated by the assassins’ greatest threat: the Templars.

Assassin’s Creed’s Altair was an interesting character, but only for the stealthy order he represented, not because you ever got to know the man under the white hood. Ezio is far more appealing, for he’s not just quick with a secret blade, but he’s a fully realized protagonist. He isn’t at the mercy of the plot, but rather, the narrative evolves from his need to uncover the truth behind his sorrows. It’s the personal nature of the narrative that makes Assassin’s Creed II’s story more compelling than its predecessor’s. The few modern-day segments featuring Desmond pack a lot more punch this time around as well, and the conspiracies driving that story arc become a lot clearer and, as a result, more provocative. While the original ended on a vague and unsatisfying note, the latest chapter’s climax is downright electrifying.

Ezio isn’t Assassin’s Creed II’s only headliner. The Italy he inhabits is a character in and of itself, filled with visual and sonic details that infuse the world with life and elegance. The cities you explore–Florence, Venice, and more–are larger and more detailed than the environs of the first game. Citizens go about their daily lives, and they look authentic doing so. Merchants sweep the street in front of their shops; small groups stroll along, making conversation with each other; and courtesans smirk and cajole as you pass by. These folks aren’t cookie-cutter character models. They are dressed differently enough from each other and are animated so expressively that it’s as if the population would go about its business with or without your presence. More impressive are the cityscapes themselves as they unfold in front of you, inviting you to take in their splendor. This is an incredibly good-looking game: the lighting is sumptuous, the draw distance is vast, and textures are crisp. The PlayStation 3 version does suffer from some frame rate jitters, more frequent texture fade-in, and lesser color saturation. Both versions are still attractive, however, and apart from a few small flaws, you rarely get the feeling that visual compromises were made to make the game’s open world run smoothly.

Assassin’s Creed II’s sense of place and time isn’t due just to its visuals, however. Its high-quality sound design is equally responsible, delivering a busy-sounding Florence while still allowing the little quips of citizens commenting on your acrobatics to shine through. There’s a good variety of such dialogue now, so you won’t tire of repeated lines, and because the citizen rescues of the original Assassin’s Creed have been excised, you won’t hear the monotonous whines of complaining peasants. Two aspects of the sound design are particularly noteworthy: the music and the voice acting. The game’s splendid orchestral score is subtle and soothing when it needs to be, never intruding on the exploration and never manipulating your emotions with inappropriate musical melodrama. The simple but effective cello and double bass motif you hear when climbing to a perch and synchronizing your map is the perfect example of this smart melodic restraint. As for the voice acting, it is uniformly excellent. Not only is Ezio voiced with charm and energy, but the surrounding cast is mostly superb–though one particular line delivered by Ezio’s uncle Mario might make you cringe.

The greatest beauty of Assassin’s Creed II’s exquisitely detailed environments is that you can run and jump across the rooftops with ease and climb the tallest towers to get a bird’s-eye view of the game’s glorious vistas. You control Ezio much as you did Altair, though movement feels a bit tighter and even more fluid than before. The game strikes an excellent middle ground between responding to player input and automating actions like leaping from one surface to the next, so it’s simple to leap about the city smoothly without worrying that you’re going to plummet to your death on the next hop. You’ll still encounter a few awkward moments here and there: simply walking off a ledge onto a rooftop a few feet below can still be bit clumsy, for example. But these moments are few, and in fact, you’ll pull off some awesome-looking moves without even trying. One of the many wonders of Assassin’s Creed II is that the cities look so natural that they don’t seem as if they were created for you to jump around in. Yet you might leap onto a wooden outcropping and find yourself skipping across a series of them, swinging and jumping with fluidity and style. Not only are there more opportunities for organic platforming sequences like these than in the original, but there are entire closed environments called tombs tailored to this kind of jumping.

Tombs are more intricate levels in which you must retrieve an important artifact (and if you collect all of them, you are in for a special treat). Some of them are platforming puzzles of the best kind, in which you must figure out how to get from your starting point to the destination, in the manner of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Ezio can’t run on walls like the Persian prince, but he’s incredibly agile nonetheless, and swinging and hopping about rafters and chandeliers within the tombs is great fun. A few tombs throw some additional challenges at you, such as a time limit in which to reach your goal. The best tombs, however, are those in which you pursue an enemy but run into obstacles that force you to give chase using an alternate route. The chases are excellent, and they require quick reactions, but not so quick as to be unreasonable. Flawlessly keeping up with your target without breaking your momentum is one of Assassin’s Creed II’s greatest thrills, and as long as you are paying close attention, you can pull it off on the first attempt.

The climbing and jumping wouldn’t be as rewarding if Ezio weren’t so graceful, but he is one of the best-animated characters yet seen in a game. You’ll admire his footwork early in the game in particular, when his assassin’s garb does not veil the incredible animations of his legs and feet. When Ezio climbs, his hands are grabbing something and his feet are resting on something. Except on rare occasions, you won’t see him pulling himself up using an invisible handle or stepping on a nonexistent ledge. It’s a small touch, but it goes a long way toward making these acrobatics look believable. Ezio seems even more nimble than Altair; his legs move inward and cross a bit differently during a climb, and moves connect even more slickly. The only imperfection you are likely to notice is the lack of a transition animation when you bend to loot a body or treasure chest (more on this to come).

Lost Planet 2 Review

gamers — Sun, 09 May 2010 16:31:00 +0000

This sci-fi sequel seems like it should have everything you need in a shooter, but a shocking number of design missteps suck out much of the fun.

The Good

Fantastic production values
Loads of gameplay variety
A ton of online content
Competitive play can be good fun.

The Bad

Abysmal friendly and enemy AI
Awful mission design
Relies too much on taking control away from the player
All sorts of small, deadly flaws.

Feature-for-feature, Lost Planet 2 should be an improvement over the original. It sports four-player online co-op, a robust multiplayer mode complete with unlockable goodies, and impressive visual design with lots of variety and artistic flair. Yet amazingly, this third-person sci-fi shooter represents a major step backward for one important reason: It isn’t much fun. Not only did developer Capcom not address the problems of the original, but it exacerbated them. Fundamental design flaws inhabit almost every gameplay mechanism. Awful mission design leaves you wondering how to proceed; abysmal AI makes playing on your own an exercise in masochism; and an overreliance on knockback attacks and other bizarre design choices are sure to inspire worldwide epidemics of controller-throwing rage. Not even replacing your three useless AI companions with real-life buddies alleviates all of the pain because the frustrations are woven into the very fabric of the experience. Entertaining multiplayer modes and some enjoyable, larger-than-life battles against looming insectoids lift Lost Planet 2 out of the abyss, though even those aspects aren’t without their problems. This is a beautiful game you desperately want to like, yet it goes out of its way to punish you for it.

At least the sequel offers up a lot more variety than its predecessor. You’ll sprint through a number of diverse locations, and fantastic visuals really bring the planet of E.D.N. III to life. Some frigid areas hark back to the original, including the prologue, which features great Lost Planet standbys: giant mechs known as vital suits (or VSs), enormous aliens called akrid with glowing orange spots (hint: shoot them!), and snow flying everywhere. In other levels, red light bathes industrial corridors, lightning flashes brightly above a turbulent sea, and cyclones sweep across the desert plains. There is a ton of eye candy to take in, and plenty of attempts to vary the pace. Over the course of the game, you will rush through the desert on a roaring speeder; defy gravity in the blackness of space; and bring down a giant akrid from the inside. Jungle shootouts, battles on conveyor belts, and a boss fight in a sandy ghost town–conceptually, the game’s got all the elements of a full-featured, varied, and beautiful shooter.

Unfortunately, Lost Planet 2′s scattershot mission design squanders the goodwill the early hours generate. Early levels take just a few minutes to complete, too often coming to an end just as things appear to be picking up. Later levels are brought down by abysmal signposting and other botched basics. One late-game chapter takes place within a towering tube in which you activate data posts located at various levels. But unlike in most games, Lost Planet 2′s minimap doesn’t indicate whether an objective is above or below you. (This is but one of the game’s countless “Game Design 101″ failures.) You might wander aimlessly, searching for those posts or the terminal you must reach to end the mission, simply due to the game’s communication failures. A late boss fight is just an endlessly boring march through one linear corridor after another, composed mainly of firing at pulsing orange pustules, rather than the larger-than-life encounter you’d hope for at such a climactic moment.

But if there’s one mission destined to be remembered as one of the worst shooter levels of all time, it’s certainly one involving two speeding trains. The first two-thirds are mind-numbingly frustrating, particularly if you tackle the campaign on your own. A couple of enormous rocket turrets pummel you, easily knocking you off the train and wasting precious respawns, all while your AI companions run in place, stuck against doors that don’t open. Many of Lost Planet 2′s levels are designed to kill you should you get knocked out of them, which is a bizarre design choice considering the frequency with which you get knocked back, and the force with which it happens. But what makes this level worth special mention is its staggeringly awful final third. A giant worm akrid attacks the speeding locomotive, a diagram of the train you’ve never seen before appears on the screen, and you’re told–absolutely nothing.

As it turns out, you need to do several things in this sequence: load ammo into the giant weapon up top, extinguish fires that erupt down below, use side turrets to whittle away at that akrid, and so on. But you’re left to figure all this out on your own. Once you do, the tasks are at least manageable if you have co-op buddies along for the ride. If you’re on your own, you get absolutely no help from the putrid AI, which might help load the giant cannon but will otherwise wander about as if dumbfounded by the whole scenario. They don’t activate the extinguishers, man the turrets, or do anything else the mission desperately requires. And should you fail, you start the entire lengthy chapter from the beginning.

Unfortunately, Lost Planet 2 is loaded with even more baffling design choices that often make it anything but enjoyable. The game doesn’t play by any consistent set of rules. Sometimes, falling into water means instant death, yet some chapters take place exclusively underwater. You get a grapple hook to pull you to higher ground, yet there’s no rhyme or reason to what surfaces you can grapple to. Furthermore, the game goes out of its way to wrest control away from you. Tumbling akrid knock you back and send you flying–as do rockets, and shotguns, and big balls of goo that do incredible amounts of splash damage. Some akrid attacks freeze you in place and force you to wiggle an analog stick. It takes a long time for animations to finish, so you might find yourself in an inescapable knockback loop that’s impossible to recover from. Yet while you can’t interrupt a long knockback animation in progress, your humanoid foes can interrupt anything you do simply by shooting at you. Forget throwing a grenade or healing yourself while being shot at: a single bullet will interrupt the action. This is far from standard practice in shooters, and for very good reason: it isn’t fun. Yet almost all of Lost Planet 2′s challenge comes from the incredible cheapness that results from all of these factors. It certainly doesn’t come from your brain-dead enemies, which are so dumb they might stand there and stare at you from 10 feet away, yet never take a shot.

Lost Planet 2 Review

gamers — Fri, 07 May 2010 16:39:12 +0000

This sci-fi sequel seems like it should have everything you need in a shooter, but a shocking number of design missteps suck out much of the fun.

The Good

Fantastic production values
Loads of gameplay variety
A ton of online content
Competitive play can be good fun.

The Bad

Abysmal friendly and enemy AI
Awful mission design
Relies too much on taking control away from the player
All sorts of small, deadly flaws.

Dragon Age: Origins Darkspawn Chronicles Q&A

gamers — Sat, 01 May 2010 16:36:56 +0000

BioWare fills us in on what it’s like to play as the darkspawn in the latest Dragon Age DLC.

BioWare continues to support Dragon Age: Origins with its latest downloadable content, Darkspawn Chronicles–scheduled for release on Xbox Live and PC on May 18. A PS3 release date has yet to be announced. We chatted with Rob Bartel, lead designer on the Darkspawn Chronicles, to learn more about this new content and what it will be like to take a walk on the dark side of the Dragon Age universe.

GameSpot: We’ll admit it–this new DLC certainly took us by surprise. We’d be more inclined to believe you guys were hard at work on a spin-off story about Sandal the dwarven weapon enchanter. How did you come upon the idea to turn around and give players the ability to play as the same reviled enemies that they spent the entire game hunting down?

Rob Bartel: The Dragon Age franchise is complex and multifaceted, and there are a lot of different stories out there that we can tell. We thought that putting the player into the role of a hurlock vanguard and showing the city’s capture and fall from that perspective was an interesting thread that players would want to experience.

GS: Perhaps the greatest strength Origins had going for it was a deeply involving story and well-developed characters. How do you do storytelling when your central cast of characters includes the likes of genlocks and ogres?

RB: We’re definitely positioning Darkspawn Chronicles as a powerful visceral experience rather than as a moving coming-of-age story about an ogre and his pet blight wolf. The lives of the darkspawn are brutish, cruel, and short, but that’s part of what makes them compelling. The archdemon has put you in charge of capturing the city of Denerim and eliminating the threat posed by the Grey Wardens. As a fan of the Dragon Age story, you can’t help but feel powerful as your ogre tears through the defenders’ barricades. When your emissary sets fire to the great tree in the elven alienage, you can’t help but understand the emotional impact that that would have had on that community. When you come to the archdemon’s aid in the final hour and drive your blade through the heart of the Warden King, you can’t help but realize that you have turned history on its head. So, while there isn’t a lot of dialogue and talking heads, the Darkspawn Chronicles is a story of loss and of absence–what would the world have become if your hero had died in the joining?

GS: What are the biggest gameplay differences that players will discover while playing as a darkspawn as opposed to a Grey Warden or elf or what have you?

RB: The biggest difference lies in how the party is formed and dissolved. As a hurlock vanguard, you have the ability to recruit thralls–fellow darkspawn–to your cause at any time. If you spot a powerful emissary casting spells off in the distance, you simply select him and bring him into your party and start issuing commands. It’s all very fluid. While he’s under your command, you’ll begin earning his respect and fear, which will make him braver and more powerful in combat. And then, when he’s outlived his usefulness, you simply target him again and a vanguard will walk up and decapitate him in cold blood, clearing up a spot in the party for someone new.

GS: And within the group of darkspawn, how do the different species distinguish themselves from one another? How does an ogre play differently from a shriek besides just being a whole lot more massive?

RB: Ogres are so much fun. There’s nothing like picking up Morrigan, or Alistair, in the ogre’s big blue fist during the final battle, shaking her around, and then punching the proverbial snot out of her. You have access to all the same abilities that they’ve used against you as enemies in the original game. Shrieks sneak and overwhelm; ogres hurl rocks and pound the ground to knock everyone down. Blight wolves howl. Emissaries cast their fireballs. Hurlocks and genlocks man the front lines or fire arrows from afar. Everyone has their tactical role. On top of that, we’ve also added in some puzzle elements to some of the levels where you need to recruit specific types of darkspawn and use their special abilities to meet a particular objective. So yes, there’s plenty to distinguish the different types of thralls you can recruit into your party.

GS: This is a return to the smaller-sized DLC that we saw initially before you released the heftier Awakening. Roughly how much content should players expect to find, and should we expect to see any carryover–items, story choices, and so on–from this pack to the main story?

RB: The Darkspawn Chronicles is set in an alternate history where the player hero died in the joining ceremony, never becoming a Grey Warden and never saving the world from the blight. As such, it doesn’t make sense to carry over characters and story choices to and from the original game. That said, there are achievements and trophies to unlock, and one of those, once unlocked, will spawn a new sword called Blightblood into your character’s inventory in Dragon Age: Origins and Awakening.

GS: Is this alternate-history perspective something that we can expect to see from future BioWare DLC, or is this something that the team regards as more of a fun experiment?

RB: Right now everything’s a fun experiment. We’re trying a lot of different approaches to downloadable content and getting a lot of experience and insight into what our fans like, what sort of price points they feel comfortable with, what our development costs are, how to leverage downloadable content across different platforms, languages, and regions. It’s a little bit of number-crunching, a little bit of magic, and a lot of gut feel. If our fans demonstrate particular support for one type of content over another, however, we’ll obviously do our best to provide more of that sort of content in the future.

Green Day: Rock Band Hands-On

gamers — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 16:35:57 +0000

Not exactly punk, not exactly pop: Green Day is coming to Rock Band.

We hit the stage with Billie Joe, Mike, and Tre in our hands-on look at the latest Rock Band game starring the seminal East Bay pop-punk band.

Bust out the low-slung bass and the thick black eyeliner, because Harmonix’s next rhythm game–Green Day: Rock Band–is due for release in just a couple of months. The game, which follows the career of the seminal East Bay pop-punk band, is the latest band-centric release from Harmonix and the first disc-based release from the music game behemoth since 2009′s The Beatles: Rock Band. Stepping into the shoes of Billie Joe, Mike, and Tre proved to be a fun experience, as we found out when Harmonix dropped by earlier today with a work-in-progress build of the game.

Though the game will feature 47 tracks from the band’s entire career, the linchpins of the Green Day Rock Band game are three of its most famous albums: American Idiot (2004), 21st Century Breakdown (2009), and 1994′s Dookie, which, according to project lead Chris Foster, was by far the most requested Green Day album to appear in the Rock Band series. Those three albums will appear in their entirety in the game, as well as a number of hits and deep cuts from the rest of Green Day’s discography.

So far, six tracks from 21st Century Breakdown have already been released as DLC for Rock Band. The remaining 12 tracks will be on the Green Day: Rock Band disc, and if you’ve downloaded any of the six DLC tracks, they will be automatically imported into your game along with new venue visuals, full vocal harmonies, and mo-cap performances. Players will be able to export the tunes from Green Day: Rock Band for use in other Rock Band games but will need to pay a fee ($10) to do so.

American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown loom particularly large in Green Day’s history and in the game: both are concept albums of sorts, with a central narrative, and both are meant to be listened to from start to finish. Along with Dookie, Harmonix felt the two albums deserved their own showcases and, as a result, built the game’s three separate venues around each album. Songs from American Idiot take place in Milton Keynes’ National Bowl, the site of the band’s concert film Bullet in a Bible. Songs from last year’s 21st Century Breakdown (as well as the other songs in the game) will take place in Oakland’s Fox Theatre. Finally, a more intimate fictional locale, known as The Warehouse, is used to showcase Dookie.

In addition to single- and multiplayer quick play, you’ll be able to play in the game’s career mode. The game’s roster of songs is organized via set lists that feature a similar learning curve to what you’ve come to expect in games like this–some of the sets are even organized thematically. There will also be challenges to play through, similar to those found in The Beatles: Rock Band. Challenges include things like playing a certain number of songs and earning a cumulative star total at the end, or playing one of the complete albums from start to finish (along with a similar star total). Beating challenges will unlock new content, such as archived band photos, video interviews, and rare

Harmonix producers told us that the difficulty of the challenges in Green Day: Rock Band have been toned down from those found in The Beatles: Rock Band, if only that the star totals you need to earn are slightly lessened. The game makes use of the two- and three-part harmonies that were first found in the Beatles game, including for Green Day DLC songs you import into the game. The band’s chunky rhythms and poppy tunes make for a fun experience on any of the instruments and even singing–highlights from our time with the game included the mid-tempo melody of “When I Come Around” and the frenetic anthem “East Jesus Nowhere.” That’s just a sliver of Green Day’s huge songbook too, which bodes well for Green Day fans looking to experience at least a tiny bit of what it’s like to be one of the 21st century’s biggest bands. Green Day: Rock Band is due for release on June 8.

Patchwork Heroes Hands-On

gamers — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 16:48:48 +0000

We take to the skies in a patchwork airship to check out this new strategic action game.

Patchwork Heroes is a new PlayStation Portable game hitting the PlayStation Network with almost no fanfare. Developed by Sony Computer Entertainment Japan and Acquire, the game forms part of the Creator Audition Mash-Up Project, which is aimed at finding people in Japan to create innovative games for the PSP and PlayStation 3. Pre-Sony, Patchwork Heroes director Yuki Ikeda worked on special designs and models for amusement parks, as well as live theatres, which was a job that serves as a fitting explanation for this unique spin on the Taito classic Qix.

Director Yuki Ikeda wanted to create an action game around the concept of cutting paper with scissors. The game opens with a man who introduces you to a town under attack, and it is your job to slice and dice airships until they are destroyed. Carrying this heavy burden, we headed for the tutorial to equip ourselves with all the necessary tools of destruction.

The mechanics of Patchwork Heroes are best likened to the art class minigame from Bully: Scholarship Edition, which was also based on the arcade classic Qix. The aim is simple: remove large portions of the attacking airships until they are completely destroyed and no longer a threat to your town. By holding down the circle button and moving from one edge of a ship to another, you can remove segments of an airship to reduce the overall mass to zero percent. Once the onscreen mass indicator reaches zero, the airship explodes and comes crashing down. A simple graphical display of the distance from the town keeps you informed of the airship’s progress and allows you to adjust your strategy accordingly.

To temper destruction with strategy, you are also required to free trapped comrades who can be used to plant bombs before parachuting away safely. Enemies come in the form of ladybird-like bugs with various behaviour types; some simply patrol a set path while others will either rush you or activate a self-destruct timer when you enter their vicinity. Sawing enemies off gives you mojo, which grants you a significant boost in cutting speed for a short period of time and also allows you to saw through reinforced parts of the ship. Defence mechanisms, such as rocket launchers and repair machines, are also a constant danger to you. Barrages of missiles test your reflexes by forcing you to dodge incoming attacks and strategically remove pieces to reduce attack pressure. If you come into contact with any of these, one of your three comrades is sacrificed. Then once your comrades are no more, you take the damage directly and die.

Items scattered around the airships modify bomb properties or movement speed. Cunning item placement forces you to venture into dangerous territory to collect an item to maximise overall destruction efficiency. Although it can be tempting to just remove portions of enemy-infested territory and sacrifice items, the various bomb types can pay huge dividends when it comes to dealing with ship-repairing robots or reinforced sections of the airship. The sidewing, which extends the blast horizontally; the extender, which creates a vertical blast; and the fourway, which creates a cross-shaped explosion, significantly reduce the time it to takes to destroy ships and nullify the effects of the pesky damage-fixing robots.

The gameplay in Patchwork Heroes carries the same refreshing simplicity as previous PSP games Echoshift and LocoRoco. Much like these games, Patchwork Heroes features a strikingly unique visual style. The Patchwork aesthetic was, in fact, inspired by the works of Russian filmmaker Yuriy Borisovich Norshteyn and goes a long way in creating a personality. The environments, vehicles, and characters are all made up of fabrics, giving the characters an endearing quality and the environments a lo-fi charm. Patchwork Heroes is available now for the PSP and can be downloaded from the PlayStation Network for £6.29, €7.99, or $9.99.

Kid Adventures: Sky Captain First Impressions

gamers — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:16:02 +0000

We take to the skies and water-bomb forest fires in our first look at this kid-friendly flight game.

Kid Adventures: Sky Captain is a Wii game aimed at fulfilling the flight fantasies of younger gamers by putting them in the cockpit of a series of planes and tasking them with a variety of airborne missions. We donned the aviator goggles and jumped in the cockpit in this hands-on from GDC 2010.

Who’s Making The Game: Aussie developer Torus Games is the captain on this title. The company has a long history of making kid-friendly games, including Zoo Hospital for the DS and the Wii, and Scooby Doo! First Frights.

What The Game Looks Like: Kid Adventures: Sky Captain sees you flying around three different zones, each one sporting its own unique look and features. The first world you’ll be in is essentially a large island surrounded by smaller islands. It’s lush, green, and laced with roads, tunnels, and railway tracks. The second area, which you’ll need to unlock, is prehistoric-themed, with a large volcano as its centerpiece. The third is set amid floating landmasses in the sky, reminiscent of the gravity-defying mountains in Avatar. Each area looks bright and colorful, if a little plain.

What There Is To Do: Apart from just flying around and enjoying the scenery, each of the three areas is littered with different missions you can undertake, with 40 different mission types to be found in the game. Missions range from simple checkpoint races where you have to fly your plane through a series of hoops, to shooting down midair targets, to taking aerial photographs of key landmarks. Successfully completing missions earns you experience points, which you can use to unlock new planes (and skins for your new rides).

How The Game Is Played: You fly by holding the Wii Remote on its side and tilting it to go up or down, left or right. The 1 and 2 buttons are used for braking and accelerating, respectively, while holding down the trigger and tilting the remote will see you perform tricks like barrel rolls. Your plane is also equipped with a water cannon and a camera, and you can switch between these by holding down on the remote’s D pad.

What They Say: “The game includes 40 exhilarating missions from sky racing, stunt flying, target shooting, and treasure hunting. Players will also have the option of inviting a friend to the cockpit and playing cooperatively in any of the missions or head-to-head in multiplayer mode and can unlock several flying machines, including a jet plane and UFO.”

What We Say: Kid Adventures: Sky Captain is reminiscent of the Wii Sports Resort minigame that allowed you to fly around Wuhu Island, although with more purpose thanks to the many varied missions on offer. Controls were simple to learn, and we can see this being popular with young children when it comes out on the Wii on June 15 this year.

God of War III golden

gamers — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:57:35 +0000

Kratos’ fate is sealed as Sony Santa Monica’s latest PlayStation 3-exclusive finishes development in time for March 16 release date.

It has been three years since Kratos last waged war with the gods on consoles, and the ghost of Sparta is finally ready to defy (and potentially decapitate) deities once more. Sony has confirmed that God of War III has gone gold and will be in stores in time for its announced March 16 release date.

The game will be available in both a $59.99 standard edition and a $99.99 God of War III Ultimate Edition. In addition to the game and decorative Pandora’s box packaging, players of the Ultimate Edition will receive an art book as well as access to downloadable content and in-game bonuses. Gamers will also get a feature-length retrospective on the franchise, the trilogy soundtrack, and a selection of heavy metal tracks inspired by God of War.

Those unsure about a purchase can also check out the E3 2009 demo for the game, which is now available to download for all PlayStation Network users. The demo has previously been made available to gamers who purchased a Blu-ray copy of the sci-fi hit District 9, or last year’s God of War Collection for PS3.

God of War III marks the conclusion of Kratos’ current story arc to bring about the fall of Olympus. As in previous installments, the visceral gameplay sees Kratos dismembering, decapitating, eviscerating, mutilating, and otherwise doing grievous bodily harm to a variety of mythological beasts. For this installment, gameplay will emphasize fighting on monolithic Titans and mounting enemies, as well as gaining new weapons and additional attacks.