The good folk at Joystiq posted this trailer for the upcoming XBLA game Axel & Pixel. It’s weird and charming and by the end I thought it was kind of endearing. Not usually the kind of game I’d play but maybe this time I’ll make an exception.
Undead Knights Demo (PSP)
The launch of the PSPGo meant a deluge of new content on the Playstation Store for PSP owners, so last night I spent some time poking around to see what was available. One of the demos I found was for Tecmo’s Undead Knights, a game that feels like a cross between a Dynasty Warrior style brawler and Overlord.
This being a demo, I don’t really know who you are or what your motivation is. I just knew I was here and the game wanted me to go there. And I had a really big sword. And I could turn enemies into zombies. And the odds were against me. So I waded in swinging.
When you get near an enemy in Undead Knights, you can hit the Circle button to grab them by the throat and convert them into a zombie. As soon as you grab them, a circular gauge starts filling. Once it fills, the enemy is converted. If you get clobbered during the process you’ll drop your foe and have to start over again. However, if you give the opponent a solid whack with your sword first, he’ll blink red. While blinking you can insta-convert him.
Left to their own devices, zombies generally act like zombies, stumbling around attacking anything that comes close. But you can grab a zombie and hold him up to use as a shield, or you can grab one and throw it at an enemy, which will cause that zombie to attack the enemy you threw it at. Early in the demo you’re faced with a big ogre thing, and to bring it down you have to throw a bunch of zombies at it. They’ll crawl all over the creature and eventually will bring it to its knees, at which time you charge in and deliver the coup de grace with your sword.
You can also ‘point’ at an object and direct your zombie horde to interact with it. This works almost exactly like Overlord. There’ll be a gate that needs tearing down, so you face it, hit the right shoulder button and cry DESTROY THAT! and your zombies will charge it. You’ll see a counter showing how many are attacking the object vs how many you need to have on it to destroy it. If you don’t get enough zombie-power on there quickly enough, they’ll all fall off, take damage, and you’ll be back at square 1. It can take your zombies some time to stop what they’re doing and shamble over to the target, during which time you might be attacked and have to stop giving orders. Which again, means the zombies fall off, taking damage, and the obstacle remains in place. At one point in the demo you even have the zombies form an un-living bridge for you to run across!
If it sounds like un-life is hard on a zombie, you’re correct. They take a real beating and don’t last very long, so you’ll constantly have to refresh your supply (tip: when a zombie is missing his head he doesn’t have too much more time left). Luckily enemy foot soldiers seem virtually endless, and they’re easy to take down and zombie-fy. More skilled enemies are more rare, harder to kill, and harder to zombie-fy (but when you do, they seem to be identical to the grunt zombies, so it makes no sense to go to the extra effort of zombifying your tougher opponents).
I had a lot of fun for the duration of the demo and if you have a PSP (and don’t mind gory zombie combat) I suggest you check it out. Frankly it isn’t a game I’m going to run out to buy right now at full price, not with all the AAA titles coming in the next couple of weeks. But it’s one I’ll put on my watch list to pick up on sale during the next gaming drought.
Here’s a gameplay video a snagged off of YouTube. Not created by me but it gives a good sample of almost everything I just mentioned, if you watch carefully:
Just moping around…
I’ve been in a really strange place, gaming-wise lately. It’s like I’m holding my breath, waiting for the deluge of holiday titles to hit.
I haven’t been playing any PC games (including MMOs) because of an RSI-ish injury to my arm. Keyboarding for too long starts to hurt a lot, and sadly I have to save my ‘good hours’ for work. I went to the doc yesterday and he gave me some drugs, so hopefully that problem will be in the past soon enough.
Over in console land, I picked up Need For Speed: Shift for the PS3 but (yeah, I’m whining at this point) the same arm injury causes my fingers to go numb (in a skin-deep way) on my left hand. I think because they’re numb I jam the shoulder buttons too hard when I brake (which you do a lot) in Need For Speed: Shift. Whatever the cause, playing that game for a weekend left me feeling like I’d crushed my finger with a hammer, so THAT was off the table.
So I moved on to Halo ODST on the 360, which I can play as much as I want to… but I’m just not feeling it. I jump in and play for 30 minutes or so and jump out. Put it this way… everyone says the campaign is 5-6 hours. I got ODST on launch day and haven’t finished the campaign yet. I know people love this game; I’m just not one of them. At least not yet. But then, I didn’t love Halo 3 either. I guess when so much emphasis is directed at multiplayer, the single player campaign is gonna slip some.
Anyway, I have gaming ennui!
/emo
Why? Because next week, Demon’s Souls is coming out for the PS3 and I’ve been looking forward to it since a friend played, and raved about, the import version. It’s supposed to be a pretty difficult game, which honestly isn’t often my style, but this time I’m ready to embrace the challenge…for a week.
Why for a week? Because the following week Uncharted 2 and Brutal Legend both come out. I loved Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and the reviews of the sequel have been universally positive. I can’t wait to play! And after sampling the Brutal Legend demo, I’m eager to play it, too. Though I’ll admit, part of why I’m buying this at launch is just to support Tim Schafer, who finally seems to be getting the recognition he deserves.
And then the week after that (the 20th?), Borderlands comes out. With a high co-op factor, it is again a game I want to play at launch. It’s no good playing a co-op game 6 months after it’s come out, right? Either no one will be playing, or everyone that IS playing will be uber compared to you. So I gotta get that.
But that’s 4 games in 3 weeks. That’s stupid… there’s no way I can play games that fast. And yet I’m still gonna do it, budget be damned. We’ll just go without heat for a few weeks. We have blankets!
And then there’s Dragon Age: Origins coming out on November 3rd… and that looks like it’ll own me for a while. I’ll need to clear my calendar for that one. Heck, I was thinking I had some breathing room in there but I guess that’s just two weeks after Borderlands. /sigh
I guess if there’s a good time to not be able to game on the PC, we’re coming up to it (though I had planned on getting Borderlands on the PC, I guess I’ll go Xbox 360 instead, given the circumstances). I just wish next week would arrive so I can get going!
In the meanwhile, I’m finding I really miss Fallen Earth, of all the MMOs I play. Maybe because I was in full swing playing it when I had to curtail PC gaming? Or maybe it’s just an unpolished jewel? Not sure, really.
A whole bunch of holiday titles slipped into 2010, and there are still this many great games coming out (I certainly haven’t mentioned them all). Can you imagine if they’d all launched 4th quarter 2009!?
So what’s everyone else buying between now and, say, Thanksgiving. Any plans?
Dragon Age: Origins — The City of Denerim
More teases from Bioware about the upcoming Dragon Age: Origins. This time we’re looking at Denerim, the capital of Ferelden and a place that will figure prominently in your adventures.
Denerim is an ancient coastal city that got its start as a Mage Tower (now used as a fort). Over the years the city sprang up around the tower, but space was limited by the surrounding cliffs and mountains, so Denerim is now a densely populated place with various districts, including the labyrinthine docks and the Elven Alienage (remember, elves are 2nd class citizens in Dragon Age and so are kept segregated from the rest of the populace). In the Palace District is the Birth Rock, a memorial honoring the prophetess Andraste, who was born in Denerim.
I encourage you to watch this one in full screen, HD mode:
Here’re a few still shots to give a bit more detail:
More Dragon Age goodness
Bioware released another handful of screenshots from their upcoming RPG Dragon Age: Origins. The one that interested me most showed the UI and what gameplay is probably going to look like most of the time. Very evocative of loved Bioware games of the past.
Click to enlarge:
Can’t wait to get my hands on this one.
The rest of the shots are just full of pretty, so I’m just going to offer them as a gallery for your enjoyment. Just a bit over a month to go! (Click to see full images!)
Dragon Age: Origins – The Music
If you’re anything like me, some of the early Dragon Age trailers has music that felt a bit off-putting. I, at least, just don’t want Marilyn Manson in my fantasy RPGs.
Fear not. Giant Bomb ran a video today talking about the music and the score in Dragon Age: Origins. Take a lot and have a listen. Of course, if you were super-stoked for the Marilyn Manson stuff, you’re gonna be disappointed!
A look at Need For Speed: Shift – Part 3
In part 1 of this series, we looked at the progression aspects of Need For Speed: Shift. In part 2 we looked at the actual races. Today we’ll talk about controls and try to finish things up.
The truth is, Need For Speed: Shift did not make a good first impression on me. I started the game, jumped into career mode, started playing from my habitual behind and above the car view, and spun out all over the place for a few laps. Honestly if this had been a rental I would’ve returned it right there. Let me help you avoid this bad first experience.
First of all, play from the in-car view. It makes the game orders of magnitude more interesting (which is not to say easier, but more interesting). When you’re outside the car, the camera feels like it is bolted onto an invisible arm coming off the car. This makes everything feel stiff, and makes the car feel like it is pivoting around a central axis rather than turning.
The interior view doesn’t feel bolted on (whereas it does in most racing games). Your view will shift slightly as you drive. Slam on the breaks and the view will move forward a bit. Hit the accelerator and it moves back. It’s subtle, but it makes a lot of difference in the ‘feel’ of the game. When using the in-car view the game feels alive and real. From outside it feels like you’re steering a Matchbox car around the track.
Second, tweak the controls. The devs have done a great job of letting us adjust game controls to suit our needs. However the defaults felt awful to me; I was constantly over-steering.
To tweak the controls, hit Options from the Main Menu, then Gameplay, then Adjust Control down at the bottom. The options & their default settings are:
Steering Dead Zone: 29%
Accelerator Dead Zone: 10%
Break Dead Zone: 10%
Steering Sensitivity: 16%
Acceleration Sensitivity: 50%
Breaking Sensitivity: 50%
Speed Steering Sensitivity: 100%
Even after all the time I’ve been playing, I continue to tweak the controls, but the defaults had me way over-steering thanks to a too large dead zone and too sensitive steering. So I’d push the stick, nothing would happen, then too much would happen. Ditto acceleration: I was constantly over-accelerating coming out of corners and breaking the wheels free (btw I’m playing using a standard DualShock 3 controller).
My current setup is:
Steering Dead Zone: 12%
Accelerator Dead Zone: 10%
Break Dead Zone: 10%
Steering Sensitivity: 10%
Acceleration Sensitivity: 30%
Breaking Sensitivity: 50%
Speed Steering Sensitivity: 80%
This is another place where the in-car view helps. I’ve learned to watch the steering wheel rather than think about how far I’m pushing the stick.
Here’s a tip: there’s no “Practice Track” to learn the controls on. But you can fake it easily enough. Pick the Quick Race option, then set the number of opponents to zero and the number of laps as high as you like. Then you can practice driving with your tweaked controls without the outside influence of other racers bumping you off the track. Weirdly, you’ll even earn prize money for coming in first this way.
Third: learn to accept that this isn’t real life. The physics here are…otherworldly in some ways. Smash into another car and 9 times out of 10 you’ll wind up going *under* that car, with it flipping up and over your car. Also these cars handle worse at low speeds than real life cars do. You can spin out taking a banked turn at 40-50 MPH pretty easily: turns that you could probably take easily in whatever is sitting out in your driveway right now. You have to learn the rules of physics in this game if you’re going to get the most enjoyment out of it.
Pop-up cars:
Once you get the controls dialed in and get used to the physics, Need For Speed: Shift can be a very rewarding game.
Let’s wrap this series up with a look at some pros and cons. On the negative side, two things stand out. First, load times are long, even with a mandatory installation on the PS3 version. Ditto save times. The game saves after every race and you’ll spend too much time watching that Saving icon float in the middle of your screen.
Second, the replay system has one crucial flaw. There’s no good “TV view” (as I call it). No good camera setting that shows the race from a removed 3rd person view. You’ll want to watch the replay of some races to see what you did wrong, and theres no good way to do that consistently. There’s a cinematic camera that includes *some* good angles, but it also includes way, way too many “cool” shots of the front of your car from a foot in front of it, or a camera point of view right beside a tire, or something equally pointless. There’s also no way to connect the view to a car other than yours.
So please, for Need For Speed: Shift 2, cut loading and saving times, and give us a full-feature replay ability.
On the positive side. other than the basic fact that the game is fun and rewarding, there’s some neat extra features. You can take a screenshot from the replay feature and upload it directly to your NeedForSpeed.com page (the images in these articles are all taken via that feature). This is one thing the replay system does well (but a video clip would be even nicer!).
Second, this game has the best ‘death penalty’ (my MMO roots are showing) of any racing game I’ve played. When you crash badly, your vision dims or goes all blurry for a few seconds, making a second crash pretty damned likely if you’re still moving at speed. Plus even with damage turned to visual only, if you’re playing from inside the car, the windshield will crack, obscuring your view and making the rest of the race a real challenge. I love this ‘crash vision’ idea and hope other racing game devs borrow it.
Crash-vision:
And cracked windshield:
So should you buy Need For Speed: Shift? Hard to say. If you’re a PS3 owner, you don’t have a lot of options right now. Blur has been delayed to 2010, Gran Turismo 5 is still a ways off — if you’re hungry for a road racing game, NFS: Shift is probably a safe bet. For 360 owners, you’ve got Forza a few weeks away, so for you I think Shift is a much tougher sell. Forza is a bit more hard-core than Shift is, but you can tone that down by turning on various helper functions.
Again I should stress you shouldn’t take any of this as a definitive review: I haven’t ‘completed’ the game yet. I’m racing in Tier 3 (of 5) at driver level 20 (of 50) and have 135 or so races under my belt. I’m really enjoying myself, but the game could totally implode at Tier 5 and I wouldn’t know. But hopefully this series of posts will at least give you some idea of what you’re getting into if you consider purchasing Need For Speed:Shift.
Honest, I had nothing to do with this. I barely tapped him!
A look at Need For Speed: Shift – Part 2
In Part I of this look at Need For Speed: Shift, we took a look at the progression aspects of the game. Earning points and stars and money helps keep the player motivated to do better and/or retry races until they squeeze every drop of progress out of them.
Today I want to talk about the races themselves. Unlike most of the earlier Need For Speed games, Shift races all take place on closed courses. There’re no cops to chase you, no ‘civilian’ traffic to get in the way. The courses seem nicely varied, from basic Indy-style modified ovals to twisty narrow courses carved out of regular roads, Monaco-style. In all races, efficient cornering is the key to winning: this isn’t a game where you never touch your brakes.
The two main varieties of competitions are races and drifting. They’re almost like totally separate games. In fact, they’re so different that I’m more or less ignoring the Drifting while I work on my racing skills. Drifting feels ‘right’ to me (based on my mis-spent youth raising hell in cars), but that means it’s tricky; rather than hitting the emergency brake and steering while pouring on the gas, Drifting here is about much more subtle controls. At least that’s how it seems in my limited exposure to it (thus far).
Traditional races are broken down into several types. The basic race is you in one of your cars (which you’ve probably upgraded and tuned) against 9 other cars. That makes for crowded conditions on most of the tracks since they tend to be fairly narrow. Bumping and jostling is expected and inevitable (some courses reward a star for causing opponents to spin out). For this reason I suggest setting Damage to visual only, but I’ll talk more about options later.
In addition to the basic races, there are invitational events where you’re given a specific car to drive, as well as “Car Battle” races where you pick one of two offered cars and race against a single competitor in the car you didn’t choose. These battles are best 2 of 3 deals. First you start in the lead, then you star behind, and for a tie breaker you and your opponent start side-by-side. To win these Car Battles you have to pull 5 seconds ahead of your opponent or cross the finish line first.
Between the variety of race types, courses, and the general crowdedness of the tracks, Need For Speed: Shift hasn’t grown dull for me. I’m currently at 116 races and driver level 18 or 19.
Next time: Crashing, options and control.
Planetside II — WHAT?!
I just got the most curious email:
CALL TO ARMS! WE NEED YOUR HELP!
That’s right, you heard what we said! We plan to expand the PlanetSide® universe with another game and we need your help with the design. After all, who knows the game better than you, our customers, the people who actually play it! Don’t worry about the original PlanetSide, it isn’t going anywhere.
We want to hear your opinion and to do so we have put together a short survey. The information you provide will play a critical role into helping guide the development and direction of the next hit Massively Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter. As a loyal player and experienced shooter fan, we value your input and look forward to hearing what you have to say.
With a link to a survey.
SOE is doing another Planetside game? This is the first I’ve heard of this: have I been living under a rock or is this news to all of you, too?
A look at Need For Speed: Shift – Part 1
I’ve been meaning to write a post about Need For Speed: Shift all week, but I never find the time and stamina to write everything I have to say about it. So I’ve decided to break it up across several posts. Today I just want to give an overview of the game.
Need for Speed was born on the 3D0 system 15 years ago. It was one of the best racing games I remember for that platform. (The best? Road Rash…when is EA bringing that one back!?) Since then, the series has definitely had its ups and downs, but the last few years the franchise seems to have stumbled a bit.
This year EA decided to try something new. They’re doing two different Need For Speed games with different emphases and seeing which one sticks. Need For Speed: Nitro is their upcoming arcade racer for the Nintendo Wii and DS. Need For Speed: Shift is their “sim” game, out on PS3 & XBox 360. I’m playing the PS3 version.
When I say Shift is a “sim” I mean that relatively. It’s much closer to a simulation than previous Need For Speed games have been, but it isn’t as densely realistic as a Gran Turismo or a Forza Motorsport. In some ways, this ‘middle ground’ is a dangerous place for Shift to inhabit. Arcade racing fans will find it inaccessible and sim fans will find it too fluffy. Logic suggests that there are gamers looking for something in-between the two extremes, but getting them interested in Shift is going to be a challenge for EA.
Shift has a strong CaRPG factor going on. The basic structure of the “Career Mode” is that you have to progress through 4 Racing Tiers before you access the Need For Speed Championship. You progress through Tiers by accumulating Stars. Every race has a fixed number of possible Stars that you can earn. Generally you can earn 3 Stars for podium placement (3 for coming in 1st, 2 for coming in 2nd, 1 for coming in 3rd), 2 Stars for hitting points thresholds (more about points in a moment) and 1 Star for gaining some special objective, which varies from race to race. It might be hitting a specific top speed, or holding the proper racing line for a fixed distance, or even spinning out other racers.
You can participate in each race as often as you want, but you can only earn each Star once. You can earn cash and points over and over again in a given race. Cash is spent on purchasing upgrade parts and new cars.
Now let’s talk about Points. In addition to the Tier you’re racing in, you have a Driver Level, which caps out at 50. Every time you race you’ll earn points. You can earn 2 kinds of points: Precision and Aggression points. Precision points come from holding a racing line, coming off the starting line perfectly, clean overtakes and things of that nature. Aggression points come from bumping other cars off the road, drafting (drafting is aggressive?) and ‘dirty’ overtakes, where you scrape the sides of another car.
At the end of a race, both kinds of points are added to your accumulated total, and if you’ve hit a pre-set threshold, you’ll level up your driver level (basically these points are exp in RPG terms). While both kinds of points go into the same pool, you’ll be tagged as an Aggressive or Precision driver based on which kind of points you’re getting more of.
As you level up your Driver Level, you’ll earn cash prizes, garage slots (allowing you to own more cars) and invitations to special events.
So you’ve got Stars to earn to gain access to higher Tiers, cash to earn to buy cars and parts with, and Points to earn to level up your Driver Level. And yet there’s more! There’re in-game Badges to earn, too. All kinds of them. Badges for driving 10 miles in a Japanese car. For overtaking 25 cars. For trading paint with 100 cars. Etc, etc. Badges come in Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum (I think?) varieties, but you only seem to earn the Bronze ones. So if you earn 5 Bronze Badges for Trading Paint, they’ll get upgraded to a Silver Trading Paint Badge. Five Silver will be traded for a Gold, and so on. At least, I think that’s what’s going on.
As far as I can tell, these Badges are just for bragging rights (and aren’t directly connected to PSN Trophies or XBL Gamerscore).
Need For Speed: Shift ties in with your EA Account, and every player can have a page of his or her own at needforspeed.com. Here’s mine.
Point is, if you’re a progression fan like I am, Need For Speed:Shift will constantly scratch your itch. Even if you totally screw up a race, you’ll wind up finishing just to get the points and some cash. You gain *something* in just about every race, which makes the game pretty compelling for an old RPGer like me.
To give you an idea of how much I’ve played so far, I’ve done 90 races (I only know that from my NFS page). I believe my driver level is 16, and I’ve unlocked Tiers 2 & 3, though I haven’t done any Tier 3 races yet. I was a completionist in Tier 1 and got every Star. Tier 2 is much more challenging, so far.
I think that’s enough for Part 1 (ie, my lunch hour is over!). Next time I’ll talk about the types of races on offer and start looking at the good and bad aspects of Shift.
