As the song goes, DNF’s “been here all along”, and boy howdy, has it, though never in any tangible form. Until today, that is, when the internet exploded with reports that the game was playable at this weekend’s Penny Arcade Expo, and now, we have proof, thanks to video from Kotaku:
Of course, the Idle has you covered for all the rest of the news coming out of PAX, so remember to check back for all the latest.
A significant update regarding the status of Atlus USA just came to my attention via the company’s official Twitter account.
A post made on Atlus USA’s official forums reads as follows:
Dearest Atlus Fans,
Recent news out of Japan that Index Holdings, the parent company of Atlus Co., Ltd. (and its wholly-owned private subsidiary Atlus U.S.A, Inc.), would be merging the Atlus brand into itself has created uncertainty as to the future of Atlus and its games. We want to assure our fans and affiliates that Atlus remains in operation and will continue, as always, to support our beloved community with the finest quality game experiences possible.
The Atlus-Index merger allows us to achieve greater synergy among the Index group companies and further strengthens the foundation of Atlus, both in Japan and here in the United States.
-Shinichi Suzuki
President/CEO, Atlus U.S.A., Inc.
This is certainly a reassuring statement, and hopefully time will bear this post out to be more than mere rhetoric.
Yes, Samus is back, and although Other M is a return to a more traditional-style Metroid game, rather than the jarringly different yet well-received Metroid Prime series, the game is already creating more of a fuss than the series did when it turned into an FPS.
Why, you ask?
Well, G4 (or more specifically, regular contributor Abbie Heppe) didn’t care much for the game in their scathing review. Meanwhile, other sites have given the game fairly positive scores, so why the disconnect? Well, for the first time, Nintendo has managed to branch out of the bland narratives found in all of their major franchises and allowed Team Ninja (under the guiding hand of Metroid co-creator Yoshio Sakamoto) to explore Samus’ personality, give her a voice, and give you a deeply personal glimpse inside of gaming’s first lady.
The result? A veritable shitstorm of controversy.
One of the game’s central secondary characters is Adam Malkovich, Samus’ former commanding officer (back before she became an intergalactic bounty hunter). Samus, responding to an S.O.S. signal, runs into Malkovich and joins his team (although you spend much of your time on your own outside of the game’s earliest moments). Whereas other Metroid games have Samus lose all of her items and equipment in increasingly arbitrary ways, Samus is ordered by Malkovich not to use some of her weapons until he “authorizes” their use. According to Heppe’s review, this “smacks of sexism”. While this may be one of the more stupid things Metroid has done to take away Samus’ abilities, would the review have been different if Malkovich had been a woman? Probably, but it shouldn’t have been. It was a poor design choice, sure, but it’s one that the Metroid series has always adhered to, albeit the items are being unlocked at fixed points in the game, rather than being somehow miraculously spread across the game’s landscape. The fact is that, in the seventeen paragraphs that constitute the G4 review, only five are dedicated to the actual gameplay.
So let’s focus on that, shall we?
The controls are very tight, despite being relegated to using the d-pad on the Wii remote, rather than using a Nunchuck or Classic Controller. For reasons still unknown, there’s no support for any of the Wii’s alternate control schemes, which would have fixed most of the game’s flaws. One of these flaws is having to continually change your grip on the Wii remote, depending on what you want to do. Need to recharge your missles (yes, you have a more-or-less infinite supply in Other M)? Hold the remote vertically and hold down the A button. Low on health and need to recharge? Same thing. Need to fire a missle or look at something in first-person view? You have to point the Wii remote at the TV, which means having to turn the controller 90 degrees, and then aim at your target. Despite this, it’s something that you’ll eventually get used to. Personally, I would have been fine with removing the first-person aspect of the game entirely, as it adds little to the overall feel of the game.
Those issues aside, the crux of the game is still about fighting and exploring in third-person mode, which is thankfully where this game shines. Team Ninja doesn’t disappoint, as anyone who’s familiar with the Ninja Gaiden series will be right at home. In addition to the standard run-and-gun aspects, Samus also has several cool cinematic attacks, including jumping on an enemy or placing a downed enemy in a headlock and finishing them with an up-close blast.
So far, I’m thoroughly enjoying my time with the game, despite it’s shortcomings, but due to all of the game’s controversy regarding it’s supposedly “sexist” overtones, I’ll almost certainly be bringing this game back up for some Revisionist History as soon as I’m finished.
G4 is reporting that Atlus Games, the company responsible for bringing titles such as the Shin Megami Tensei: Persona and Disgaea series stateside, has been dissolved. Index Holdings, Atlus’ parent company, says that the brand will continue to exist in some capacity, and that work on games already in development will continue. Still, it casts a shadow over the future of successful franchises like Persona and Trauma Center.
Here’s hoping that a new publisher like Aksys Games or NIS America picks up the slack.
Over the course of the week, a number of reports on various video game news sites reported new “leaked” tracks for Rock Band 3. Harmonix responded to these reports in the most awesome way possible:
Rock Band 3 Setlist OFFICIAL Comment from Harmonix on Vimeo.
Yes, that is the entire Rock Band 3 track list scrolling in the background. Well played, Harmonix. Well played.
Good morning, Idlers! Let’s kick our Friday off with some new MvC3 footage revealed at Gamescom earlier this week. Enjoy!
So, what characters do you want to see in the final version of Marvel vs Capcom 3?
Well, it’s certainly a bit late in coming, but I finally managed to get a copy of the follow-up to last year’s fun-but-flawed BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger. If you’ve followed this blog from it’s early days, you know I’ve already written more posts about this game than any other, going through all twelve characters from the original’s roster, so rather than simply rehashing old material, let’s just go straight to what’s new.
Although Continuum Shift has been ordained by Arc System Works as an official sequel to Calamity Trigger, the little-more-than-a-year development cycle and the re-use of a lot of backgrounds and music from the original makes Continuum Shift feel more like an update, rather than a full-blown sequel. Even so, the reduced price tag ($39.99) helps ease concerns that it’s a straight Madden-style cash grab.
So, assuming you paid $59.99 for Calamity Trigger, what does another forty bucks get you? For starters, you get three new playable characters: Tsubaki and Hazama, who both made numerous appearances as unplayable characters in the story mode of the first game, and Mu, who is essentially a version of Noel that has been given the Nu treatment. There are more characters coming via DLC (Makoto is already available for a fairly steep price tag of $7.99 or 560 Xbox Live points), but in truth it’s a bit of a disappointment considering the 10 new playable characters that Super Street Fighter IV offered players earlier this year.
Perhaps the most important new feature, however, is the extensive rebalancing of the game’s roster. Certain move attributes and the damage output all characters has been carefully examined, tweaked, and re-balanced to enhance each character’s ability to become viable at high-level play. Not surprisingly, Nu (now known as Lamda, technically a “new” character, but whatever) is the character who sees the most changes, as she loses her QCF + D projectile that traveled across the bottom of the screen or could be summoned from behind by performing QCF + D, C. Instead, a stationary wheel is summoned that causes multiple hits (and can still be summoned from behind), but it’s much more difficult to connect with. In addition to the name change Lamda also gets a new move where she dashes forward, and the C version of the move causes a wall bounce that can open up an air combo. While there are still other changes to the other characters’ move sets, most of them are relatively minor, and not worth going into in any great detail here.
Other minor improvements include a new game mode, Legion, in which you battle characters and amass an army by recruiting fallen foes. Entertaining, but forgettable, and sadly nothing like the Conquest mode in Soul Calibur II. Also, there are in-game tutorials explaining both the fundamentals of 2-D fighting games and advanced concepts specific to BlazBlue: CS hosted by the always sarcastic Rachel, making it both a useful guide for beginners as well as the most entertaining tutorial in the history of video games. There are also character-specific strategy guides that can be accessed in-game, and a “Challenge Mode” that is more than a little reminiscent of Street Fighter 4’s character-specific trials. Unlike SF4’s trial mode, however, you have the option of watching the computer perform each move, so you can see what each combo is supposed to look like.
Online play is back, and remains largely unchanged. There is a lobby mode, but still no tournaments, team battles, et cetera. In addition, the developers thoughtfully added the option of adding a number of search filter options so you can find the match-ups you’re looking for, as well as being able to play Arcade or Training mode while you wait.
It’s certainly no secret that I thoroughly enjoyed last year’s edition, and Continuum Shift is better from every facet. Complaints about DLC pricing aside, I recommend this game even more strongly than the original.
With Team Ninja’s highly-anticipated slant on the Metroid franchise less than two weeks away, Nintendo thought it fitting to catch gamers up on the series’ storyline thus far, and who better to do the honors than Samus herself?
Sit back, relax, enjoy, and who knows? You might just learn something …
So, a couple of things here: no, I don’t personally own the game, so my sales boycott of Madden titles, stemming from when EA purchased the exclusive NFL video game licensing rights after Sega put EA on notice by releasing the excellent NFL 2k5 at a scant price tag of $19.99, remains intact. Secondly, anything I say in the space below still doesn’t change my opinion on EA’s full-price, 12 month development cycle philosophy I outlined in my open letter to the developers of sports video games.
With that out of the way, I did manage to get some substantial time in with the full version of the game (as well as NCAA Football 11, which I deemed too much like last year’s version to be worthy of a feature on the site, but that I will occasionally reference as a point of contrast), and I won’t lie to you: I was actually impressed with what I saw.
One important change to the core gameplay mechanics is the removal of the sprint button. For anyone who’s ever played a sports game, this sounds a bit jarring and, at first, it is. No longer can you hit the button for a sudden boost of speed and pull away from the defense. Things like the ball carrier’s acceleration, ability to break tackles, and overall top speed become far more important than they were in previous iterations. This gives the game a slower, but more realistic, overall feel.
Another new feature of note is the new “GameFlow” system, in which you can have the game automatically call offensive and defensive plays based on the specific game situation, not dissimilar to the interface seen in the Road to Glory mode found in the NCAA Football titles over the last few years. In more hardcore-gamer parlance, this concept is similar to the “gambit” system utilized in Final Fantasy XII, and you can even customize your “GameFlow” to call certain plays based on your preferences. If left alone, however, the system often calls a play that isn’t always best suited to your team’s strengths (why are the 49ers in a Wildcat formation, for God’s sake?), and you may find yourself calling an audible frequently.
The announcing is … okay. It has all the normal pratfalls of video game sports announcing: you’ll hear the same stories and comments too many times, sometimes the wrong player name gets called, and with new play-by-play announcer Gus Johnson, there’s a new problem players have to look forward to: Gus Johnson is excited. About everything. On every play:
Minor gripes (as well as my conflicting philosophical views and lack of excitement about EA’s decision to include an online pass to try to grab money from the used-game consumer who wants to have online play with their discounted copy of Madden 11 that, by the time it’s cheap enough to be worth a used purchase, everyone will have moved on to something else anyway) aside, Madden 11 delivers everything you expect from a sports titles, as well as a few extra tweaks that send the game in a drastic and surprising new direction. If you haven’t bought an NFL licensed football game in a while, but are waiting for the right title to come along, this just might be the one.
(Psst … by the way. I just finished up a playing session of BlazBlue: Continuum Shift. You know what that means …)
It’s a well known fact of life: movies based on video games suck, and the converse is just as true. Luckily for all of us, the Scott Pilgrim vs. The World video game breaks free of its movie tie-in shackles and takes the game back to its manga-inspired comic book roots, in retro 16-bit fashion:
The game takes on the persona of the old-school beat-em-ups of the late 80’s and early 90’s, most notably the oft-forgotten cult classic River City Ransom (the in-game shops you can visit will gave players who experienced that classic an instant blast of nostalgia). To keep things from getting too stale, however, the designers wisely incorporated a leveling system, in which you gradually add new abilities to your move set.
With the inclusion of four player co-op and unlockable content, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game is a delightful homage to a bygone era of gaming, and at a reasonable $9.99 price tag there’s no reason that retro gaming junkies shouldn’t add this defiant movie tie-in of a game to their collection.
