One of the most vital ingredients to all forms of life finally gets its own game.
Part of PAX is about showcasing the smaller titles that normally go unnoticed. At Nintendo's booth, there was Kirby's Epic Yarn and Donkey Kong Country Returns, but what was new was a relatively simple-looking yet mesmerizing game where the star of the game was water, called Fluidity. Now we're pretty sure that as the game progresses the puzzles and mechanics will get much more difficult, but from our experience the controls are easy to grasp the gameplay is quite fun. If you've ever spent way too much time playing with those paperweights that had water and colored oil droplets in them, then this game is for you.
Who's Making It: It looks like this is one of Nintendo's WiiWare offerings and no date or price has been confirmed.
What It Looks Like: Fluidity is set in a colorful 2D storybook-like world, which makes sense given that you are going through multiple chapters in a magical book called Aquaticus. At first glance, it does look like a Pixel Junk game, with its clean art style and physics-based gameplay.
What You Do: Your goal is to swoosh your way around tunnels to clean out this world while collecting rainbow droplets. There are more than 80 to find in the game across its four chapters. The short demo that we played had us bring a fish back to its fishbowl before we were granted the magical droplet. As you collect the rainbow droplets, you'll unlock more areas to clean and puzzle pieces are scattered throughout to unlock secrets.
How It Plays: The controls are incredibly simple as water doesn't have too many abilities. You hold it horizontally and tilt it left and right to move the entire world, similar to LocoRoco. As you flow through gates, you can interact with switches by pushing the 2 button. By giving the remote a quick shake, the water can bounce around to collect items. There are hazards to avoid, which will drain your water supply, but it looked like there were water globules to collect so that we could replenish ourselves. Timing is also important when crossing moving platforms, and while we're not quite sure what would happen if we split up the liquid in multiple chambers, we were sure that we don't want to lose any of it.
What They Say: Nintendo's Fluidity combines an amazing physics engine that realistically models flowing water with innovative puzzle game play.
What We Say: We're eager to see more of the game, because Nintendo has also stated that you can use all three forms of water, including its ice and cloud form. It will be interesting to see how tricky the puzzles can get, so we'll be sure to keep an eye out for more information as soon as it becomes available.
We went hands-on with the latest We Sing title, which pulls together the biggest songs of Robbie Williams' 20-year career.
We Sing has become quite a success for Nordic Games, and after two games, it has established itself as the de facto karaoke series for the Wii. The latest version will be based solely around one artist, Robbie Williams, who is celebrating 20 years in the music business this year. We managed to play the game for the first time at Gamescom, taking a break from the hubbub of the show for a blissful duet of "Something Stupid."
"We had quite a bit of involvement from Robbie," the developer told us during our visit. It's clear to see from the game itself that the ex-ex-Take That member has personally dedicated time to the project--he welcomes you to the game, runs you through the game's menu system, and even comments on your performances. It also has that air of authenticity, thanks to a wealth of unlockable content, such as images and live performances of his famous Knebworth gigs. There will also be something "very, very, very special in the game for Robbie Williams fans" to unlock, although the developer wouldn't be drawn on what.
The game itself will include 25 songs from the man's back catalogue, with all but two of them boasting the original music videos, while the others feature live performances from the Royal Albert Hall. The famous duets with Kylie and Nicole Kidman are also included, as are more recent ones with The Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant. There will also be medleys of songs from the same genres, such as love songs, rock songs, and upbeat songs. They'll all be unlocked from the off, so you can jump right in and play the nine game modes, including versus, pass the mic, and no lyrics, across the entire catalogue. And, of course, the game will also be playable by up to four players.
As well as the competitive modes, there will be a singing tuition mode, with 30 lessons teaching the basics of technical singing. We saw them in action--starting out as simple hold-the-note exercises and going to full-on do-re-mi at the hardest difficulty. The game will be coming out in October exclusively on the Nintendo Wii, and beyond Robbie Williams, the developer is looking at other artists it can work with. We hope to bring you more on the game in the run up to release.
We play God and teach our followers a thing or two about messing with the creator.
As God, life is incredibly complicated. Not only do you have to care for an entire race of people, but they sometimes decide to simply stop believing in you. Or worse, they decide to build a tower to heaven in an attempt to destroy you and steal your godly powers. This is the sticky situation you’re in when you take on the role of God in Artefacts Studio’s Gods vs. Humans, a WiiWare strategy game with a cute look and some creative gameplay mechanics.
The game is played on a 2D plane, but with 3D characters. Each level contains a tall cutaway tower made up of a number of different floors. Inside each floor are humans, all helping to build the tower in some way in an attempt to reach heaven. If they reach you, it’s game over. Your job is to stop them by using your godly powers. However, your power relies entirely on the faith of your people, so if you decide to make them all spontaneously combust to stop the tower being built, chances are they aren’t going to like you very much.
This makes using your powers a fine balancing act between trying to destroy the tower and keeping the faith of your followers. While you have a set of offensive powers such as fire and lightning, others can be used to better the mood of the humans, such as creating an attractive-looking lady human to walk around the tower. You also have an ultimate power, which not only causes a lot of damage, but also creates a colourful light show that restores the humans’ faith. Not all humans in the tower behave the same way, and there are multiple unit types that you must deal with. Some are evil priests who take faith away from you, while others are slave drivers, encouraging the smaller workers to build faster.
Each floor of the tower has four pillars holding it up. Once a floor is destroyed, the others above it fall to the ones below, damaging them. This means that destroying towers further up creates more damage, and you can destroy multiple towers at once with the right strategy. There are around 60 tower-busting levels to play through, as well as 16 different types of gods to play as. Each represents a mythology, with different powers, followers, and environments. Our demo contained six of the gods; Amaterasu represents Japanese mythology, Osiris is Egyptian, Jupiter is Greco-Roman, and Oden is Norse.
Visually, God vs. Humans looks good, with a cartoony art style and vibrant colours. The humans are all animated well, with amusing animations and an incredibly cute look. Players wishing to take on the role of God can do so later this year on the Nintendo Wii. Look out for more coverage on GameSpot soon.
We don the gloves and take to the goals with a look at the new features in EA’s FIFA 11.
Ask any aspiring young footballer what he wants to be when he grows up, and you’re likely to get a similar sort of answer wherever you go: strikers. Everyone wants the glory of being the one to put the ball into the back of the net, but few want the pressure or responsibility of defending their own goal.
The team at EA must have heard differently, because at Gamescom 2010 the publisher announced that the upcoming version of FIFA 11 will add the ability to play full 11-players-per-side football online, as well as offline goalie management. Of course, no one wants to be standing around for 90 minutes waiting for their time to shine, and rather than be stuck watching everyone else have all the fun, players who pull on the gloves will be given a few new tools to keep things fresh and interesting.
The first is a real-time set of shot indicators, showing the optimal recommended standing position for your keeper, and a guide to the incoming trajectory of shots. While initially it may sound like a cheat sheet to easy mode, offensive players still have the ability to chip and curl the ball past the keeper, and there’s no indication of power until the ball leaves the attacker’s boot. Players steer the keeper around using the left stick like any other player, while keeping the ball out can be done with the right stick, or with a single button press in simplified mode.
The other new tool is called Call to Arms. It's a raised isometric view of the field when your side has the ball and is going on an offensive rampage. As the keeper, you will be able to call for players to pass and set up plays with single button presses superimposed over the players on and off the ball. It’s a nifty way to give the guy down the opposite end of the field a hand in the glory of scoring.
For the really adventurous, or the cocky, there’s even the option to play your keeper as part of the rest of the pack, leaving the box to run the ball yourself. It’s a risky move, because if you concede the ball, the opposition AI is smart enough to take a shot, even from its own half if they spy a chance at an unguarded net.
FIFA 10 promised an improved level of physicality to play, and while it managed to deliver as players jostled for possession, FIFA 11 takes it a step further with the chance to barge and hold players even if they don’t have the ball. A little bit of nudge in backplay may provide you with just the window you need to make a clean break from the player marking you.
FIFA 11 also adds learning AI to its laundry list of new features. Want some real competition from the CPU? Teach it your trick moves by recording samples of your brilliance on the pitch. and have the game analyse the performance for use in a future match. A new video tool also allows players to view, adjust, and edit their own highlights packages, saving them to the console’s hard drive for showing someone who missed out on seeing your performance live, or rubbing it in the face of your deflated opposition.
The World Cup may be over for another four years, but plenty of people are still running a temperature with football fever. The raft of new features being built on the solid foundation of last year's game has us itching to pull on the studs and hit the grass when the game is released in late September this year.
Bond ventures into the jungle in our latest look at the reimagining of the N64 classic.
In our latest look at the reimagining of Goldeneye 007, which originally appeared on the Nintendo 64 and was developed by Rare, we join James Bond in the jungle level--about 75 percent or so through the game. Fans of the original should remember this particular area as the one with the turrets that were often very difficult to see due in large part to the fogged-in draw distance. We can happily confirm that it’s no longer an issue, but the jungle level on the whole seems to serve as a perfect example of Activision’s approach with this game and its goal to enhance and refine the Goldeneye experience that fans know and love.
How that translates into gameplay is pretty simple--this new Bond (played by Daniel Craig, who replaced Goldeneye’s original Bond played by Pierce Brosnan) is capable of performing more kinds of actions. For starters, he’s certainly more capable of stealth: he’s able to sneak up on enemies and perform special melee holds that enable him to take out enemies quickly and quietly. Even further adding to his stealth capabilities is Bond’s smartphone, which lets him hack the infamous enemy machine-gun turrets, which then causes them to track and fire upon enemy soldiers instead. It’s a far more elegant way to get through the level than by running and gunning, but if you happen to do just that, be warned--doing so causes even more enemies to spawn in via helicopter. But it’s worth noting that you’ll still have a very brief moment to take out enemies after they detect you but before they spawn any reinforcements.
Needless to say, the level also feels a bit more open. The original version of the jungle was a pretty confined space, forcing you to go down a very limited path. But this iteration of the jungle gives more freedom, granting more choices and more routes, which in turn opens up more opportunities for varying strategy. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see the conclusion of this particular level with the appearance of its boss, Onatopp, but she’s there.
We closed out our demo with a little hands-on time with one of Goldeneye’s multiplayer modes--a simple round of deathmatch. While playing as Oddjob, we made every effort to connect with one of his special hats that he can throw from a distance, but we were ultimately unsuccessful due to a bit of a learning curve with that particular weapon. Otherwise, the controls feel pretty nice with the classic controller, and we had no trouble immediately racking up the kills by using Goldeneye’s weapons. Additionally, the new Goldeneye will have more than just the numerous multiplayer modes found in its predecessor. There will also be special objective-based multiplayer modes, such as the Goldeneye mode, where players have to race to get to the EMP weapon that blasts the opposing base.
Overall, there’s a surprising amount of new content on display in Goldeneye 007 for the Wii. The majority of the game has been rebuilt (and parts of the script have been rewritten with the aid of the original writer of the film) to incorporate new features and new tactics. But there are still plenty of throwbacks to the original, including the difficulty settings that feature different objectives for each map. One of these settings even lets you play in classic 007 mode with the old-style health and armor indicators. We’ll have more on Goldeneye 007 before its November release.
SmackDown vs. Raw 2011 adds Universe, Better Hell in a Cell, and a New Physics Engine.
Last weekend, GameSpot descended three stories under downtown Los Angeles to get a glimpse of WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2011. As we sat and listened to the presentation by THQ, a Rey Mysterio mask complete with cross and double tears, presumably for all the foes he submitted, sat propped in front of us just begging to be given away on Today on the Spot.
The presentation started with the reveal of the full title of the game, SmackDown vs. Raw 2011: "This is your moment." The 2011 version of SmackDown will focus more on the notorious life of a wrestler, including a free roaming backstage area in which to train, form alliances, and pick fights.
In the ring itself, SmackDown features a more extensive object interaction system and a more robust physics engine. During the demonstration, we saw superstars pick up various ladders, mallets, chairs, and even the ringside steps to throw, bash, or toss at one another. When a superstar or object collided, they appropriately transferred their momentum; in other words, tables smashed into bits and chairs skidded across the ring. In one clip, a wrestler leapt off a ladder and slammed another wrestler through a set of stacked tables all the way to the ring floor. The most creative use of object interaction we witnessed was the ability to lay ladders down on the ropes and use them as launching pads for aerial attacks. The game features the ability to flick one of the analog sticks toward an object while grappling an opponent for easy object interaction. We had the opportunity to get in a couple of rounds with the X360, PS3 and Wii versions. We found the Wii controls to be the most responsive and were slamming wrestlers through tables in no time.
The next addition to SmackDown is the expansion of the Hell in a Cell cage to encompass a much larger area. The expansion allows for weapons to be used outside the ring, as well as cage-specific slams and finishing moves in which superstars are thrown through the sides or top of the cage.
For new modes, there is the addition of WWE Universe in which the game automatically generates an events calendar for players and dynamically adjusts the fight ticket and venue based on in-game performance and story decisions. The Universe main menu includes a ticker displaying upcoming matches and rankings with red down arrows and green up arrows denoting a players current standing. The ultimate goal of Universe is to win enough matches to set up pay-per-view title fights and increase a wrestler's standing.
All of Universe is customizable and allows players to change matches on their calendar and set up teams manually. It also allows players to choose villains and heroes or allies and enemies. Allies will help during gameplay by interceding in matches on your behalf, while villains will do the opposite. In Universe, player actions also affect end match cutscenes, which are generated in engine based on alliances and enemies. Ultimately, Universe is essentially exhibition and career mode tied together.
The new story mode in 2011 is called Road to WrestleMania. This new mode involves an extensive free-roaming backstage area that affects the narrative as much as events in the ring. Players can visit a variety of locations including locker rooms, the manager's office, and a training room that can be used to boost stats. While walking around, players will encounter a living wrestling world; in the demonstration, a player wandered into a room where Randy Orton was cutting a promo and another room where The Miz was getting shaken down for sushi coupons by Hornswaggle. While backstage, players can navigate using a cell phone, which is also used to receive calls to make allies and enemies. Speaking of enemies, while backstage fights can break out at any time, we witnessed a number of brawls, including some car crashes. There was one in which a superstar smashed the front window of a car with a sledge hammer and pulled a wrestler through the broken window. A player's decision to fight or not to fight backstage affects alliances and enemies in the ring. Special features in Road to WrestleMania include an unlockable Bill and Ted-style time machine that can be used to go back in the story and relive or change a narrative's history.
After the story features were shown, the demonstration moved into a new character creator. The design process has been streamlined with more prebuilt options. Outfits can be saved as templates, so a character can change out of his or her space helmet, Dracula cape, shower towel, or monster feet and into a suit before heading backstage for the post-match interview. We saw a wide variety of options, such as gorilla suits, death metal red beards, and sombreros. Each item had customizable textures and colors. Characters generated in the creation tool can be imported into all modes.
The presentation came to a close with Create a Finisher mode. Up until 2010, SmackDown added front and top rope finishers; this year, the game includes strings of up to 10 animations for finishing moves from the corner position. There are 500-plus combos; for example, we witnessed a punch midsection-code breaker-moonsault slam. For each move, players can control a number of parameters, including speed, rotation, and range. Some move favorites included the huevos rancheros and the Manhattan project. Last year, there were 30 moves; this year, there are 130.
SmackDown vs. Raw will be released on October 26, and purchased copies will come with downloadable content that includes WWE Chris Masters, a Rey Mysterio day of the dead costume, and a smokin' outfit for Kelly Kelly.
We inspect THQ's newly unveiled graphics tablet Wii peripheral.
THQ is prepping its uDraw GameTablet, a graphics tablet Wii peripheral, for a "holiday 2010" release in North America and an early 2011 launch elsewhere. We were shown a near-final prototype of the device: a white, 9-by-7 inch pad that is an inch and a half deep into which the Wii controller (minus MotionPlus add-on) slots in on the left side. On the right is the blue-bordered drawing area, rather smaller than the full area of the tablet (6-by-4 inches) but allowing one-to-one correlation, we're told, between the movement of the stylus and what appears onscreen. The stylus handles well, though this isn't the pinpoint accuracy of a professional graphics tablet--it's got a chunkier, toylike feel and gives results accordingly.
The tablet is wireless, drawing power from the Wii Remote's batteries. THQ says this reduces the life of the batteries in a controller from about 17 to about 15 hours. The chunky white stylus, tethered to the tablet, has two buttons and a pressure-sensitive nib that enables the thickness of a pen stroke to be varied, for instance, though the stylus can also be operated by holding it close to, rather than directly on, the surface of the drawing area. The Wii Remote's buttons are accessible in front and behind the tablet, leaving them free for use in games compatible with the device.
The uDraw GameTablet will come bundled with uDraw Studio, a feature-rich painting package. It has options to choose colour, brush (or charcoal, chalk, and so on), medium (canvas, paper, and the like), and environment, such as studio or sidewalk, along with opacity and type of brush fadeout effect. There are filtering effects such as blur and solarize, as well as a drawing rewind/replay mode. The environment of choice determines the music you'll draw along to, and zooming out reveals your canvas stood against, say, a backdrop of an artist's studio. Images created with the uDraw tablet can be exported onto an SD card for sharing elsewhere.
The games available at launch for the uDraw tablet will be Mattel-licensed Pictionary, playable in a classic or board game-like challenge mode, as well as Pictionary Mania. Dood's Big Adventure, a side-scrolling 2.5D platformer whose titular hero's skin can be customised via drawing on the tablet, will also be available. Background items and decals can be similarly customised. The action itself makes various uses of the tablet as a controller. Trampolines can be drawn beneath the player character to bounce him higher, and the tablet can be tilted to roll him around in a bubble, reminiscent of the iPhone/iPad's Super Monkey Ball. THQ intends to roll out further uDraw-compatible packages and games every three months or so.
There's no word on the all-important pricing yet, but the basic bundle of the GameTablet and Studio paint package will be out before Christmas in North America, along with the Pictionary and Dood's Big Adventure launch titles.
Team up with a buddy in the first Ghost Recon game built specifically for the Nintendo Wii.
The Nintendo Wii may have intuitive and accessible point-and-click controls, making it fairly straightforward when it comes to shooting things onscreen, but there just haven't been that many hardcore shooters for the system. Next Level Games hopes to bridge the gap between more casual players on the system and shooter fans by bringing Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon to the Wii. We met with game director Mike Inglehart, who talked to us about the game and how the focus was to keep it as intense as any other shooter out there but with accessible controls and cooperative play, so that a wider range of players can get into it without the added hand-eye coordination to tackle the same challenges together.
The actual shooting isn't necessarily the hardest part of a shooter so much as being able to handle your character's movement and the camera at the same time. Ghost Recon solves this by letting you point and click to where you want to go next. You can choose to run and slide for cover or walk and fire at the same time, leaving you vulnerable to enemy fire. It functions almost like a rail shooter, but instead of just firing and letting the computer handle the rest, you need make some strategic choices to survive. Inglehart said that the dexterity involved in controlling a camera is steep, so this is a way to keep the difficulty level at a more appropriate level while retaining the same intensity of a shooter.
Even if you don't have a friend to play with you on the couch, you'll be accompanied by an AI player (there's no online play). But to fully experience cooperative play, it's better to have someone who can coordinate with you and he or she can always drop in or out at any time. Inglehart talked about how players would be facing the same challenges, and that working together, you might be able to spot something the other person may miss. You'll also play differently based on your weapon type, so your roles may change before every mission. If you decide to take on a more tactical role as a sniper, you'll want to have your buddy provide you with cover so you're not left vulnerable.
The campaign story mode is broken down into 12 levels with more than 30 missions that will last roughly eight hours. The story is unique to the Wii game and is written by the same writer as Ghost Recon: Future Soldier for the other platforms. It's parallel to the story in Future Soldier, but here, you play as two soldiers who get drafted into the ghost and must go through Moscow to face an ultranationalist regime. We didn't get anymore details beyond that, but it was enough to get us started and into the campaign.
An Arcade mode is also included if you want to take on specific levels and shoot enemies for points. It's for those with a competitive drive because you'll be able to upload your score to the Wi-Fi leaderboards. There are three difficulty settings for Ghost Recon, which will affect your amount of health. A feature called "focus moments" let you slow down the action for a bit, but your reticle can continue to move at normal speed. You can't use this all the time, but it does provide a bit of relief if you're swarmed.
This was a hands-off demo, but the controls seemed simple enough. Icons onscreen will indicate where you can run to, and you point and fire with the B button to take out opponents. Some motion control is involved, mainly to run and ride, as well as reload, but you can also point offscreen to reload. We were told that there were 11 enemy classes that you'll eventually come across, like engineers that spawn small drones to come after you.
The areas we were shown were fairly nondescript, consisting of large gray buildings and trucks to find cover behind. It feels like a Ghost Recon game, though, with enemies swarming in from up ahead and choppers in the sky, but it is a lot more forgiving in terms of your health because there will be med packs strewn about to give you a boost. We'll have more details on Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon as soon as it becomes available. The game is currently set to ship in November of this year.
These adorable blocky-headed characters take to the skies in the latest entry in the MySims series.
MySims has made quite an impression on the Nintendo Wii and has now made the leap forward to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. This series has taken what people love most about sims (customization) and placed the wide-eyed, goofy characters into a setting that is suitable for a younger audience. Previous games have focused on exploration and gathering clues and items, and MySims Skyheroes continues that trend, but what has changed is that it is now a full-fledged action game. You'll be responsible for piloting your own customizable plane, doing barrel rolls, and firing at other MySims in the skies. We went to visit EA in Redwood Shores to see how this new entry into the series is shaping up.
The MySims games have always looked good on the Wii, but now on the Xbox 360, the game is much more vibrant. With all the action happening onscreen, it is also much more hectic than what you may have been used to. In the single-player campaign, you play as a pilot who has crash-landed on an island and lost his memory. Luckily, you're picked up by fellow pilots, and you learn that these people are part of a rebel group that is waging a war against the evil Morcubus (the nefarious villain in all MySims games). Morcubus is trying to take over the skies to prevent anyone else from flying, so you and your band of merry men are trying to recruit others to join your cause and fight back. Through 42 missions in 12 different environments, you'll soar through the areas collecting power-ups and trying to complete the mission with the best score possible. The game is also set up so that you can't really fail, but you will be rewarded for better performance. There are plenty of things to unlock, such as upgradable parts for your plane. Depending on your playing style, you can add parts that extend the range of picking up power-ups, upgrade your machine gun, or boost those power-ups. Part of the fun is experimenting, and there looks to be plenty of pieces and paint to make sure that your plane is the most unique one out there.
Familiar MySims characters will also return, like DJ Candy and Buddy, but EA has also thrown in some special guests, like Isaac Clark from Dead Space, Morrigan from Dragon Age, Tyson Rios and Elliot Salem from Army of 2, Commander Shepard from Mass Effect, and many others that you'll encounter through the game. Since your MySim will be sitting in a plane for the majority of the game, you are limited to customizing the head gear and facial features. Don't worry, though--there's a wide assortment of fun hats to choose from, so there's plenty of room to experiment.
In Quick Play mode, there are two styles of play: dogfighting and racing. There is split-screen multiplayer so you can play with a friend on the same console and face up to eight other AI opponents on the Xbox 360 and PS3. On the Wii, the maximum number of players is six. If you're on your own, you can go online and play cooperatively or against other players. EA wanted the game to be cross-generational, so parents can team up with their kids to play cooperatively. For those looking for a challenge, there are three difficulty settings to choose from. In these dogfighting or racing arenas, you'll have plenty of power-ups to pick up to try to wreak as much havoc as possible. Portable boost pads, radar jammers, and giant laser attachments are just some of the things you can pick up and use temporarily.
MySims Skyheroes looks to bridge that gap between kid-friendly games and action games that require a bit more coordination. Skyheroes is very forgiving, since it comes with autolocking and there's no damage taken when you plow straight into a volcano. It does give younger players a chance to do fancy maneuvers and shoot down other planes in a fun environment. Look for MySims Skyheroes when it is released on September 28.
We go back through time with these zany rabbids to meddle with some of history's key moments.
These neurotic misshapen rabbits are back at it again, this time returning to the familiar minigame compilation formula after a break with Rabbids Go Home, which was a platforming adventure released last year. Raving Rabbids: Travel in Time once again stars these screaming rabbids, but they've now taken over a museum and can use a time washing machine to go back in time to change history. At a Ubisoft press event, we explored the rabbids' museum hub world and checked out a couple of wacky minigames on display.
Before launching into the minigames, we walked around the red carpeted museum that acts as a hub for jumping into various minigame types. More than 25 minigames are included, and they are divided into categories such as cooperative games, flying games, and games that use the Wii MotionPlus. Up to four players can run around this area, chained together with a roll of toilet paper so that no one can run off alone. There is a staging area in the museum where you'll see a display of silhouettes of recognizable historical figures. By shaking the remote and banging your head against one of the silhouetted panels, you'll steal the silhouette's outfit. There are more than 30 different costumes to choose from, ranging from Spartan wear, to an Egyptian headdress, to a cowboy getup. This feature is obviously there to add a little flavor to your otherwise naked rabbid.
The first minigame we played involved time-traveling back to 1929 when the market crashed. Through a short, animated cutscene, the rabbids can change history as though there had never been a crash, and depending on how you complete the minigame that follows the cutscene, you'll see the real ending (which is the historically accurate one) or the silly rabbid version. This is a cooperative minigame where you're tethered to your partner with toilet paper and must work together to collect boxes around the level and dump them off at the counter. You can shake the remote to sabotage the other team and steal their boxes, or try to coordinate the best you can with your partner to get as many points as possible. You can't jump in this level, but you can climb onto your partner's head, which lets you grab the harder-to-reach boxes as well as get to higher platforms. It's frantic and crazy, but it's what the rabbids are known for. The build we played was still early, so we encountered quite a few bugs and glitches, which sometimes made it difficult to see where we were going.
What is new in Travel in Time is that you can now play online with up to four people. There's a matchmaking system that will help set up a game for you, so you don't have to go through the hassle of grabbing everyone's friend code (but you still can if you want to play with friends only).
The other minigame that we played took us back in time to where Leonardo da Vinci was trying to capture the famous Mona Lisa on canvass. In the rabbids version, they manage to get her to crack a smile, at the expense of tearing up the famous painter's room. The minigame that ensued involved flying through what we assume are the streets of Italy, racing against the other rabbids to get to the finish line. As in other arcade racers, we could pick up objects to hinder our opponents as well as fly through hoops for bursts of speed.
These lovable creatures don't exactly have the best table manners, so there is a burp button assigned to the D pad. By pressing down, you can have these guys burp on command, but an even better use for the button is to get them to sing. In another area of the museum, you can have your rabbids line up in a row and "sing" along to pieces like "Blue Danube." The demo room was noisy, so it was difficult to hear how we sounded, but we can't imagine we sounded very good. Colored bars in different columns flowed downward onscreen, and we had to tilt the remote and nunchuk to move a small cursor around to catch the bars while holding down on the D pad to sing.
Even though it doesn't come as a surprise that the rabbids have gone back to the minigame formula, we were secretly hoping that it would be another adventure game that took place in exotic places and time periods throughout history. It looks as though Raving Rabbids: Travel in Time will be providing much entertainment for you and some friends in your living room, or online, when it ships exclusively for the Wii on November 9.
We get a look at new enemies and environments in Nintendo and Team Ninja's new entry in the Metroid series.
Metroid: Other M is the latest entry in Nintendo's fan-favorite series starring the first lady of alien blasting, Samus Aran. The game has garnered much attention from fans since its revelation at last year's Electronic Entertainment Expo, thanks to the fresh approach being taken in its development. Other M marks a departure from the first-person shooter structure used for the last few entries in the series on the GameCube and Wii; it features a new developer, Tecmo's Team Ninja; and its storyline appears to touch on the repercussions of events that happened at the end of Super Metroid. We've been excited to see how the whole package comes together, after getting glimpses at the game over the past few months. We recently stopped by Nintendo's offices to spend some time with an updated version of the game and got to try our hand at some new sections that left us wanting more
The section of the game we played was set in the first sector of the mysterious Bottle Ship that Samus is investigating. The massive spacecraft appears to be one part zoo and one part ark, housing a menagerie of space critters, big and small, in a variety of unique environments tailored to their needs. At the start of our demo, Samus is looking for clues and getting some direction from her former commanding officer, Adam Malkovich, who has moved up to be the commanding officer of the Galactic Federation. The gist of things is that something went wrong on the Bottle Ship and Samus is tasked with finding out what happened. This translates into "explore the ship and look for clues," which is perfect for a Metroid game.
Our run through the Bottle Ship was fairly linear, although we passed several areas we couldn't access because we didn't have the proper gear, but it was clear we'd be revisiting locations. The enemy types ran the gamut from small flyers that could be dodged, to massive creatures that had to be actively avoided and smacked down. There were even some cloaked foes that required some coaxing to pull out of hiding so they could be blasted. In addition to the standard enemies, we found a few Venus flytrap-style foes that required us to shift to morph ball form and lay some mines to escape.
Some enemies and transitions to new areas were introduced by cinematics of varying length. Some of the cinematics featured Samus' internal monologue on the situation and moved the story along, while others showed off some of the wildlife on the ship that doesn't seem to be on a mission to murder you. That said, we're pretty convinced a seemingly adorable fluffball with chicken legs that popped up in a cinematic is going to wind up being something horrible later on.
But, as anyone who has played a Metroid game can tell you, enemies are only part of the challenge you'll face. The environment is, in a lot of ways, one big enemy to take on as well. We faced a number of different puzzles that blocked our way and required us to switch to morph ball form, use missiles, or look for hidden paths to get where we needed to go. Along the way we found hidden items and other surprises that gave the impression that there is going to be a whole lot of stuff to be found by inquisitive players. For example, in one area we discovered the Accel Charge upgrade, which increases how quickly Samus can charge her weapons. While this all sounds fairly standard, one of the later puzzles set in an elevator shaft showed a whole other level of challenge. The timed puzzle requires you to pay attention to your surroundings and make use of them in order to avoid death. The catch is that you have only a very short period of time to figure it out. If you succeed, you're rewarded by a classic action-movie moment where the hero just narrowly avoids something horrible. If you fail, things go badly. Very badly.
As we've mentioned in our previous looks at the game, the action in Other M has seen some changes and marries some of the elements from the previous first-person games with old-school 2D gameplay. Our play time let us dive a bit deeper into how it all works together, and we have to say that almost everything feels right. The platforming and shooting feel good, thanks to tight controls and new mechanics that keep things fun. Samus' standard moves work like a charm and, as always, can be enhanced by finding new abilities and upgrades. The ability to "concentrate" and refill your missiles and one health bar is an interesting addition to the mix. We're fans of Samus' new dodge, the overblast attacks, and the lethal strike moves on downed enemies. Anyone who has played a Team Ninja game should be right at home with these new additions to the arsenal, because they most definitely have a ninja, albeit a space ninja, feel to them.
The first-person mechanics in the game, while much improved since the last time we played, because of tighter transitions and controls, still break up the flow of action. While we like how smooth the transition between first- and third-person is, from what we've played so far, it still doesn't flow with the action as well as we would like. Hopefully we'll have a better feel for it once we can log more time in the game.
From the look of things so far, Metroid: Other M is shaping up to offer an engaging experience that is set to cover all the bases for fans. The Bottle Ship is an imaginative setting that provides a good variety of environments for you to explore. This particular demo showed off a good range of locales and gameplay that left us eager to dive deeper into the game. Metroid: Other M is slated to ship August 31 for the Nintendo Wii. Look for more on the game in the coming weeks.
Ubisoft is giving Wii owners their very own version of Shaun White. At least, the video game version of him.
While generally a publisher known for releasing action games bearing the Tom Clancy name and platformers with slightly eccentric mascots, Ubisoft dove into extreme sports in 2008 with the release of Shaun White Snowboarding. This year, Ubi is back at it with the upcoming four-wheeled follow-up Shaun White Skateboarding. Back in May, we had a look at the PlayStation 3 version of Shaun White's foray into warm-weather board sports, but last week Ubisoft gave us a chance to see what's going on with the (mostly) different Wii version.
Who's Making It: Shaun White Skateboarding for the Wii is being developed at Ubisoft Montreal by the same team responsible for the Wii version of Shaun White Snowboarding. In an interesting turnaround from how cross-platform games usually fare, the Wii version of that game was actually reviewed quite a bit better than its PS3 and Xbox 360 counterparts.
What It Looks Like: Shaun White Skateboarding sports cartoonish visuals and caricaturized skaters. If you played the Wii version of the Snowboarding game, you'll have a good idea of what to expect. In fact, many of that game's central characters have been carried over into the story in this game.
What You Do: Your main goal in Shaun White Skateboarding is to bring color to a world gone gray. The mayor of the city in which the game is set has enacted some imposing new laws that have effectively robbed the place of all its life and color, represented by an initially dull and dreary color palette. As you move from neighborhood to neighborhood completing challenges and skating obstacles, you'll restore color to the world.
How It Plays: We played with the standard Wii Remote and Nunchuk control setup, which is a simple system where you press a button to kick for speed and flick the remote in various directions to do tricks with the board. For example, flicking straight up results in an ollie, while flicking up and twisting slightly to the side will do a kick flip. The development team at Ubi has purposely implemented simple, forgiving controls, where bails are infrequent and don't keep you off your board for long. (For the full rundown of how the game plays, see the embedded video above.)
Final Thoughts: Shaun White Skateboarding looks like a straightforward skating game that isn't trying to reinvent the genre. The controls work well, and the environments seem to offer a good amount of diversity (we played in a waterfront plaza and also raced down a giant drainage ditch). You can look forward to seeing the game arrive later this year.
Neversoft is going big with the next career mode, and we have a look at how it's coming together.
The next Guitar Hero game, due out in two months, bears the subtitle "Warriors of Rock." It's a name that doesn't suggest a whole lot on the surface. This is, after all, the series that let you play as barrel-chested rock titans like Lars Umlaut and Axel Steel since practically the beginning. If those guys aren't warriors of their chosen craft, we haven't the foggiest idea who would fit that description. But if you dig a little deeper, you'll find meaning behind the name. Warriors of Rock is the first game in the series to play host to a narrative-heavy storyline, which developer Neversoft is calling Quest mode. It's a Gene Simmons-narrated journey that revels in hard-rock aesthetics, mixing eccentric characters with thunderous venues while often weaving the music you play into the storyline. This new feature was the focus of our most recent hands-on demo with the game, after previously catching a look at Warriors of Rock just before the Electronic Entertainment Expo.
The story in Quest mode is, at its heart, a simple tale between good and evil. Only, evil is a giant robot and good is an axe-wielding demigod that embodies the purest essence of rock and roll. Oh, and it's a battle that's fought everywhere, including CBGB, fictional megavenues, and flowing lava pits. OK, so maybe it's not that simple after all. At any rate, along the way, you'll recruit Guitar Hero's various recurring characters, like the aforementioned Lars and Axel, who all have their own backstory and transformational abilities that play into the storyline. They can all change into a slightly insane, beastly alter ego that affects the gameplay with various modifiers (like a minimum multiplier threshold) to make unlocking stars to progress the story that much easier. In short: Quest mode is Neversoft taking that hard-rock edge that it has embraced slightly more with each passing game and just completely running wild with it.
One of the more interesting aspects of Quest mode is the way that the plot and the music frequently intersect. We got to experience some of that firsthand with the Rush sequence in Warriors of Rock. Rush is a band known for highly conceptual prog-rock where the instrumentation is every bit as elaborate as the lyrical imagery. There's a whole chapter of the Quest mode dedicated to one of the band's more abstract songs, the 20-minute opus "2112" from the album of the same name. This seven-part song takes players through multiple venues on a story that runs fairly close to the main narrative in Warriors of Rock: The player has to enter a cavern and obtain a magical guitar to further progress the story; a task completed, naturally, by successfully completing the song.
Doing so is no easy feat considering the shifting, at-times unpredictable nature of "2112." But though it is a genuine challenge, it's far from impossible. Fortunately, you also have breaks between the 20-minute song's seven parts. We saw one that felt like a serene dream sequence, with a camera panning through the clouds while lead singer Geddy Lee read from the liner notes. It was an interesting contrast to the intense musicianship of the song, as well as the testosterone-fueled heavy-rock imagery with which the rest of the game surrounds itself. Oddly enough, when we first walked up to the game and saw this cloud sequence out of context, we thought for a moment that it might have been Gene Simmons--who narrates the rest of the game--reading poetry in an inexplicably high-pitched voice. Fortunately, someone from Activision was there to let us know what was actually happening onscreen. But the fact that our mind was able to jump to such a bizarre conclusion gives you an idea of just how out-there Quest mode is in comparison to previous Guitar Hero career modes.
We'll be honest: We were skeptical about Quest mode when we first had a look back at E3, but it seems like Neversoft might have made the right decision in going completely wild with those gritty aesthetics and hard-rock tropes that people have come to associate with the franchise. It really looks like a lot of ridiculous fun was had here. If nothing else, building a fleshed-out story mode with all those crazy sights and sounds should at least add a fun bit of spectacle to a game that's grown quite familiar throughout the years. We should see how it all comes together when Warriors of Rock arrives on September 28.
Golden gun in hand, we take another trip down multiplayer memory lane.
While the status of the next James Bond movie remains thoroughly up in the air amid talk of an indefinite hiatus, the world of video games is another story entirely. Activision is working on not one but two James Bond titles for release this year. One of these is a name that you ought to be very familiar with whether you know anything about the upcoming game or not. That game, of course, is Goldeneye 007 for the Wii. Developed by Eurocom, this first-person shooter is described by Activision as a "reimagining" of the Nintendo 64 classic. We got our first look last month at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, and with Comic-Con 2010 bringing the world's entertainment industry to San Diego, we recently had a chance to see a brief update to the multiplayer component.
Like its 1997 predecessor, Goldeneye 007 will feature a robust multiplayer mode that can be played either via local split-screen or--in an obvious departure from the original--online using this newfangled "Internet" business. A familiar cast of playable characters will reprise their roles from the first game, including both Oddjob (whose height has been tweaked somewhat to make him more of a target to gunfire) and Jaws. And aside from updated graphics, the general look and feel of the game seem pretty faithful to the original, along with the familiar blood running down the screen when you die and post-match accolades telling you how you did after the match.
Where the game seems to depart the most from its predecessor is in the control scheme. Whereas the appearance and feature set are quite inspired by the first game, the way you move around seems to take most of its cues from modern shooters. You can sprint, vault over objects, and even stare down the red dot sight of your AK-47 for extra accuracy. You'll also find dedicated melee and grenade buttons, allowing you to do a lot of things within a very small window of time. There appears to be a lot more depth to the controls, which seems like a given considering you're no longer confined to a Nintendo 64 controller.
Our hands-on time was spent playing Golden Gun on a new map called Station. Golden Gun, a classic shooter mode if there ever was one, is an obvious holdover from the Nintendo 64 game. But playing it on this new map made for quite a different experience. The density and variety of the construction site setting was a big departure from the relatively empty, plain geometry that the original game's maps were composed of due to the technology of the day. It seems like you can be surprised more easily by people vaulting over objects or popping out from behind a stack of scattered plywood with all the stray objects lying around. In short: the experience was more frenetic than we recall.
Overall, the experience played like a hybrid of new and old. It brought back warm, fuzzy memories of the first Goldeneye and brought up questions about whether this one can maintain that same magic given all the time that has passed in the interim. It definitely seems like there's room for a great split-screen shooter for when you've got a bunch of friends over, but it seems like you'd need to spend a lot more time with the game to see whether that's just the nostalgia talking. We're eager to find out as we get closer to Goldeneye's November release.
We re-enlist with the High Altitude Warfare eXperimental squadron in this air combat sequel--now with takeoffs and landings.
Tom Clancy's HAWX 2 puts you back in the cockpit of various modern or cutting-edge fighter planes, though this time the aerial combat is split across US, Russian, and British campaigns. The story isn't a direct continuation of the first game's mercenaries-versus-US plot, but it has "much more depth," according to narrative director Edward Douglas, thanks to its multiple international perspectives. Though the plot isn't laid bare in our demo, we gather it involves mounting insurgent activity in the Middle East and Russia. As the game begins, a nuclear missile has disappeared from a Russian military base, and in the tutorial mission Contact (described in our first look at the game), an insurgent convoy launches an attack on a US air base in a desert at the edge of the conflict.
The most obvious difference from the first game is the presence of takeoffs and landings, including taxiing to the base runway in the first mission; in 2009's HAWX, missions began and ended in the air, with your plane already cruising towards your waypoint. "We want to give you the full experience, from when the pilot gets in the plane to when he gets out again," said Douglas. "In HAWX 1, you spawned in in third-person view in the air, the missions ended that way, you never knew who you were or why you were there."
That fuller, more authentic experience of modern air warfare goes further than runways and landing gear, adding aerial espionage with unmanned aerial vehicles, stealth missions with night raids, and gunship missions to the mix, as well as midair refuelling and precision bombing. We jumped ahead in the campaign to Interception Course, set in southern Russia, where separatist leaders have been surrounded and pinned down in the Caucasus Mountains. Separatists, meanwhile, had captured a Russian military base and taken cargo planes and bombers and were en route to rescue their leaders.
As a Russian military pilot in a Mig-29 Fulcrum, armed with heat-seeking missiles and flares, we flew with our squad to intercept the rescue attempt. The basic flight controls in HAWX 2 are mostly unchanged, and the same first-person cockpit view and third-person view from just behind the tail are available, along with the "assistance off mode," which flips you into a remote perspective some way behind your plane and enables more advanced manoeuvres (though at the risk of stalling as you attempt them).
After lining up to intercept and then delivering a final warning to the separatists, our squad was ambushed by a swarm of fighter planes, triggering an all-out dogfight over the peaks of the snowcapped mountain range. This combat resembles the familiar patterns of HAWX before long--circling, air-braking, tracking targets to get a missile lock-on--but is occasionally broken up by more inventive enemy AI; in this mission, enemy pilots tended to get in close, making lock-on trickier, and tried to outmanoeuvre us through the steep-walled valleys. Unlike in the first HAWX, there's no system for issuing commands to AI wingmen, but the whole game will be playable in up to four-player co-op.
"We're really trying to make dogfights a lot closer, more personal," said Douglas. "The way the weapon system works will encourage you to fight at different ranges, different AIs will use different tactics’ some will use flares more, [for some] you'll have to use cannons versus fire-and-forget missiles."
The rocky, mountainous terrain, partly obscured by clouds, looks good, as do the grass and trees further down the slopes; a low flyover doesn't expose the kind of blocky textures present in the original game. As in HAWX, though, the game maps draw on real satellite data, with some as large as 130km by 130km.
After taking down the separatist fighters, we were denied permission to return to base by a presumably soon-to-go-rogue Russian general, who bemoaned weak-willed politicians and told us to refuel instead so we could defend a Russian withdrawal from the region. This set our objective on a distant tanker aircraft, requiring that we match speeds and line up with it by flying through a green hoop in midair--an element of the augmented reality pathfinding Enhanced Reality System (ERS) left over from the original game.
The ERS is gone from the general dogfighting, however, meaning you won't be pursuing targets through a series of hoops. "We found the ERS was very helpful in the first HAWX to find other players and ground targets in dogfights," said Douglas, "[but] we found the air combat mechanics we developed for the second game got to a better level where’ we didn't need nearly so many assists and handholding for the player. It's still there for landings and certain precise bombing targets, if you want assistance." With a five-minute time limit to refuel, we had to approach the refuelling craft with gradual acceleration and delicate, precise manoeuvring--a change of pace from the wild, wide loop-the-loops we generally navigate our dogfights with.
Jumping ahead again to another American mission, Oil City, we were back in the pilot seat of a US fighter, packing air-to-surface missiles and heat-seekers and launching from the deck of a US aircraft carrier. The mission, set over the ocean at sunset, had us defending friendly forces by taking out antiaircraft sites on oil rigs and shooting down enemy helicopters. This meant prioritising targets that were threatening friendly units, flipping between missile types, and picking off targets as the health percentage of our allies ticked down.
Once the helicopters were down and antiaircraft sites near the oil rig's airstrip had been subdued, the strip became available for landing. This meant lining up, adjusting pitch, and lowering landing gear for touchdown. There isn't the depth or complexity of a full-on flight sim, but we're told later missions will add further challenge to takeoffs and landings. We're told in the final game these will range from straightforward runway affairs to nighttime aircraft landings and emergency takeoffs under fire, and other missions in the game will allow for landing and rearming mid-mission.
Like the original HAWX, it seems HAWX 2 aims to combine arcadey accessibility with the sheen of Tom Clancy near-future military authenticity. And, between expanding the experience to refuelling, takeoffs, and the like, adding in mission types, and advancing the enemy pilot AI, it should do so with greater variety come September 3, 2010.
Is the backing of one of Europe's premiere trance DJs enough to get dance floors jumping? We sat down with developer TransGaming Inc. to find out.
Developer TransGaming Inc. knows that even with all the will in the world, it can't compete with the likes of publishing behemoth Activision and DJ Hero. Instead, Armin Van Buuren: In the Mix walks a different path. Rather than calling it a rhythm game, TransGaming is calling In the Mix a "DJ simulator," allowing gamers to create their own bespoke mixes and play them at some of the world's best superclubs. A unique user interface has been created to accomplish this, combining a traditional note chart with four decks, crossfaders, and a whole host of knobs to twiddle.
Seeing the UI for the first time is initially confusing, but an in-depth tutorial mode guides you through its features. A circular tunnel sits in the centre of the screen, with four lines surrounding it that pulsate to the beat, acting as a metronome. Each corner contains a turntable; the bottom two contain the two tracks you are mixing together, while the top two contain effects and samples that you can drop in on top of the main track. To get your mix started, you point to one of the bottom two decks, bringing up a tracklisting. Once you start playing a track, a stream of colours flows from the turntable to the centre of the tunnel, letting you know it's active. You can then cue up another track on the opposite turntable and mix it in with the crossfader.
Though all the tracks are already at the same beats per minute, you have to play a small minigame that simulates beat matching in order for them to play in time. Two rapidly spinning disks marked with a black line on one side pop up in the centre of the screen. You have to stop them so the two lines match up, giving you a correct beat match. You're then free to fiddle with the crossfader, cutting in beats or mixing the track in fully. Periodically, icons pop up in the stream of music playing, which signify the action you have to perform. These include crossfading, psyching up the crowd by punching the air or clapping in time with the music, and adding effects. You add these by selecting the upper left deck, where you can select from such effects as filters, delays, and choruses. You can also add in samples by selecting the upper right decks, including vocal stabs, drum loops, and instruments, such as pianos and guitars.
The bulk of the gameplay lies in the Career mode, where you try to mix your way up to DJ stardom. You start off with a basic equipment set of two turntables and a mixer, playing house parties and small clubs. As you progress, you earn money for gigs, which you can put toward buying new equipment, such as headphones, four-channel mixers, and effects units. Items, such as headphones, make certain gameplay elements like beat matching easier, while bigger venues may ask you to have better equipment before you're allowed to play at them. Before each gig, you have to compile your setlist, which must consist of a minimum of two songs. An element of strategy is involved in song selection because each venue has a certain demographic of people that frequent it. For example, a venue may contain a higher ratio of women than men. In this case, selecting tracks that are known to resonate better with women, will give you a higher score at the end of your set.
In addition to the Career mode, there's a Party mode, which allows you to mix tracks and add in effects, without any challenges to complete. There is about seven hours of music to play with, consisting of many of Van Buuren's tracks, as well as many from his favourite artists. If you get bored with the song selection, then you can create your own using the studio. You can use any of the game's samples to build up a song in a simple eight-channel multitrack, where you can cut elements in and out at will, layering up sounds to make the next dance-floor anthem. Sadly, the songs you create aren't available to use in the Career mode, but you can drop them into your mixes at will in the Party mode.
In the Mix's visuals are bright and colourful, with the sound streams that emanate from your decks reminiscent of the wacky visualisations you usually find in media players on the PC. The crowds you play to are less impressive, with many identical character models and wooden dance moves being used, which makes the crowd look like a bunch of strange zombie dancers. However, they don't detract from the core gameplay, which looks to be a unique take on the rhythm genre. Budding DJs can start dropping beats when the game is released August 21 on the Wii. Look out for a full review on GameSpot soon.
Tackling dummies and doing wind sprints are the order of the day as EA whips you into shape for the NFL Scouting Combine.
The EA Sports Active franchise has carved out a successful fitness-focused niche on the Wii, motivating players the world around to take the remote and nunchuk in hand and work up a sweat. While previous games have been about general fitness, the latest entry in the Active roster boasts a more specific theme and the official license of a professional sport. With EA Sports Active NFL Training Camp, EA is planning to put you through the paces that aspiring athletes go through to get fit and ready to compete in the NFL Scouting Combine. If you're looking to improve your 40-yard-dash time, this may be the game for you.
Check out our interview and gameplay demo for NFL Training Camp.
One of the major differences in this iteration of the EA Sports Active franchise is the new total-body tracking system. Ditching the nunchuk and its cumbersome cord, this system uses the remote in conjunction with two new sensors. One sensor straps around your thigh and features an accelerometer, just like the remote. The other goes around your arm, where it can track your heart rate. With these three sources of input, NFL Training Camp can track your movements in a number of different ways, giving you the feedback you need to have a more efficient, more effective workout.
As expected, the workouts in NFL Training Camp are similar to what you might find NFL players doing. In fact, EA consulted with a number of different professional trainers from around the NFL in order to create a variety of workout regimens that they then combined into the 60-day challenge. This is the campaign, the career mode, and the main endeavor when it comes to NFL Training Camp, and it's aimed to target the skills and stamina you'd need to succeed in the Scouting Combine (actual Combine success not guaranteed).
During the demo workout we saw, the player went through a number of different exercises without much of a break in between. He started off alternating between running and sprinting in place, pounding his legs up and down as fast as he could. While he did this, the voice of the in-game trainer told him that he would need to keep his legs moving all the time if he hoped to get through the defensive line and break tackles. He then took on another running exercise that challenged him to sidestep and extend his arm in order to quickly dodge tackling dummies. Again, a voice-over put his actions in the context of actual football, though it was pretty easy to see the application in this case.
Those exercises focused on agility and aerobic stamina, while others worked on dexterity in the guise of skill challenges, such as kicking field goals and throwing footballs at moving targets. We also saw a few strength-training exercises, including hammer curls that used the included resistance band. We were told that each workout was aimed to come in around the 20-minute mark, with time built in for warming up and cooling down. With many of the exercises chained together by jogging and other aerobic activities, it was clear that NFL Training Camp will provide a vigorous workout for those interested.
Like EA Sports Active, NFL Training Camp also tracks statistics to help motivate you to improve your performance. Graphs representing calories burned and median heart-rate levels provide valuable feedback, but in a nice nod to a gamer's motivation, you will also earn points and achievements for your workouts. Not only can you compare these against the athletes in your house, but you can compete with the times posted online by the people on your friends list. Additionally, NFL Training Camp is hoping to capitalize on fan loyalty by creating public groups tied to NFL teams. By declaring your fandom, you can contribute your workout stats to represent your team online. Now all that remains is to see which team has the fittest fans (or at least the hardest working).
With its focus on football and connections to pro trainers and teams, NFL Training Camp is charting new ground in the burgeoning fitness-game genre. The workout style and competitive elements give the game a unique feel, one that just may entice previously reluctant gamers to get off the couch and work up a sweat. You can look for EA Sports Active NFL Training Camp to hit store shelves just after Week 10 of the regular season on November 16, 2010.
Hack and slash a myriad of foes throughout time and space.
While many weapons-based combat games look for a strict setting--medieval Europe or feudal Japan being common--Swords is taking a different approach: Everything and everything. Developed by Panic Button, known for its wacky party game Go Play Lumberjack, Swords is a fighting game published by Majesco.
The story takes place outside time and space as you take control of a young hero.
Enemy opposition includes Viking warriors, royal knights, cursed samurai, modern-day punk rockers, and robotic aliens. Similar to the Punch-Out series, the game is played from a behind perspective--the player character transparent to easily meet the enemies’ various attacks. The Wii Remote is used alone to simulate horizontal and vertical slashes. Additionally, while parrying is a good technique for guarding against enemy swings, the foes can also launch projectiles, such as throwing axes or fireballs. In these cases, the remote is instead pointed at the screen and used to zap the missile weapons into nothingness.
Although there is a large array of challenging adversaries, none of these additional characters are playable. Even in two-player split-screen versus mode, both players are given generic heroes to duel with. This is a tad disconcerting, because several of the enemies would have been interesting to control. However, you can further customize your settings by purchasing and equipping various blades. Some of these weapons have added traits, such as bonus defense or poison strike.
There aren’t just one-on-one duels. Swords will include additional combat modes, such as surviving waves of zombie hordes, destroying items for bonus points, and practice sparring with allies.
We’ll take a closer look at Swords when it's released in September for the Wii.
We go hands-on with Headstrong's family-friendly take on Tolkien's trilogy.
At E3, Headstrong Games was showing off its Wii version of Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest, while TT Fusion's PlayStation 3 version with Move integration was absent from the show. (There's no Xbox 360 version, Kinect-enabled or otherwise, in the works.) Our demo, taken from the last quarter of the game, was set in Pelennor Fields, which is the battleground that Tolkien fans will remember from the battle late in Return of the King. The game covers Aragorn's part in all three books, as told by Sam Gamgee (voiced by Sean Astin of Peter Jackson's movies) to his kids, some time after the events of the trilogy. Framing the game with a bedtime-storytelling narrator is Headstrong's way of turning the relatively dark fantasy of classic Lord of the Rings into a family-friendly Wii game, with Sam playing up Aragorn's heroism and omitting grislier details.
At Pelennor Fields, Aragorn is backed by an army of soldiers--some ghostly, some human--as well as Legolas and Gimli--as he sees off Sauron's forces, siege engines and ogres among them. You play with the remote and nunchuk and, as the title suggests, only as Aragorn, but you can pick up items that buff your small party. In our time with the game, we picked up a battle cry that confers a reddish aura and extra power to each member. Aragorn and his group began by repelling siege engines from the city walls in a side quest, aiming and shooting fire arrows with the Wii Remote. These are optional, in addition to the main level objectives, and failing them doesn't end the game, though completing them earns you useful items, such as special arrow types.
Shield and sword combat, meanwhile, make good use of the nunchuk and remote together. Raising Aragorn's shield with the nunchuk enables a shield bash (when prompted with an icon overlaid on enemies), for example, along with a sidestepping evade move. There's also a selection of special sword moves, including a charged attack and a chain of sword swings. For Tolkien enthusiasts, there are lore items to be collected and read about. A swirling breadcrumb trails of lights can be called up to show you where to go next and, in another nod to accessibility, there's drop-in co-op play with Gandalf as a second character, tethered to Aragon on the non-splitting screen.
Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest will be out this fall in North America on the Wii and PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, PSP, and the DS.
If you've got chills and they're multiplying, Grease: The Game is probably the one that you want.
Grease: The Official Video Game is a party-friendly minigame collection of the sort that abounds for the Wii. It is themed on the settings and story of the perennially popular movie and set to a soundtrack of 16 licensed songs from the same. The game includes a party mode for up to eight players (four-versus-four) and a story mode that loosely follows the events of the film.
Winning minigames nets you points, naturally, which are tallied up as you go. The minigames, all set to songs from the soundtrack, include American high school sports circa 1957, such as wrestling and baseball. The former challenges you to shake your Wii Remote harder than your opponent to get the better of him or her in the onscreen grappling. The latter requires you to time the swing of your Wii Remote/baseball bat to get a good hit. Drag racing is also an option: There is an arcadelike racing segment down an abandoned waterway in which you ram each other, dodge obstacles, and shift up through your gears to pick up more points played with the Wii Remote held horizontally. Other games, such as the dancing, are optionally compatible with the Wii Balance Board. Without the balance board, the dancing involves simple flicks of the remote as directed by a stream of prompts, with the odd bit of shaking maracas. While two players go head-to-head in one of the minigames, two more can participate by singing along with the microphone controllers in a basic karaoke offering.
The playable characters are simple, cartoony likenesses of the cast of the film. In the story mode, though, it's just Danny and Sandy on offer as you work through minigames in a sequence that resembles the movie's plot. Persistent scores can be tracked for individual characters to let family members, say, permanently adopt a character each and maintain a long-term competition.
Grease: The Official Video Game comes out in September 2010.
Gamers Corner 
