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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 28/09/10 in Features, Top 5, and tagged with action-adventure, Namco Bandai, Ninja Theory, PlayStation 3, third-person, Xbox 360.
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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 25/09/10 in Reviews, Top 5, and tagged with Blue Castle, Capcom, PS3, third-person action, Xbox 360.
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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 17/09/10 in Reviews, and tagged with action, PlayStation 3, PS3, third-person, Ubisoft, Xbox 360.
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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 14/09/10 in Features, Top 5, and tagged with bungie, flight sim, fps, Microsoft, PlayStation 3, Ubisoft, Xbox 360.
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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 10/09/10 in Reviews, Top 5, and tagged with Eugen Systems, PC, PS3, tactics, Ubisoft, Xbox 360.
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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 25/08/10 in Previews, and tagged with action, adventure, Blue Castle Games, Capcom, PC, PS3, third-person, Xbox 360.
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In well rehearsed style, Capcom are teasing out the cast of Marvel Vs Capcom 3 in a dramatic fashion that wouldn’t be out of place in Stan Lee’s own hallowed pages. We recently had the pleasure of dissecting an early build of the game with producer Ryota Niitsuma.

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Posted by Rupert Higham on 21/08/10 in Interviews, and tagged with Beat 'em up, Marvel Vs Capcom 3, Ryota Niitsuma, Street Fighter.
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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 20/08/10 in News, Top 5, and tagged with Arcade, Capcom, fighting, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360.
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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 19/08/10 in Previews, and tagged with 2011, Kirby's Epic Yarn, nintendo, platforming, wii.
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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 17/08/10 in Features, News, Top 5, and tagged with adventure, Digital Illusions CE, PC, PS3, Xbox 360.
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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 13/08/10 in Features, and tagged with arthouse, indie, Microsoft, platformer, XBLA, Xbox 360.
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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 10/08/10 in Interviews, and tagged with 2010, flight sim, shooter, Ubisoft.
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The chances are, if you are the kind of gamer that would take a fierce punch into shoryuken over a melee into shotgun, you have found yourself drawn into nonsensical “what if” cross-over beat ’em up debates. What if Shin Gouki could compare fireballs and haircuts with Goku in Street Fighter Vs Dragon Ball? Who would triumph in a tooth and nail tussle between the Blanka and Macho Man Randy Savage in Street Fighter Vs WWE? What if Sagat could exchange uppercuts with Tony the Tiger in Capcom Vs Kelloggs: A New Age of Breakfast?

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Posted by Rupert Higham on in Features, Spotlight, Top 5, and tagged with Street Fighter, Tekken.
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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 06/08/10 in Previews, Top 5, and tagged with first-person shooter, fps, Microsoft Games, preview, Xbox 360.
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Our understanding of what 3D can bring to videogames is still a partial one, like Kim Kardashian’s wardrobe. Thanks to E3 and its ranks of kitted-out booths, pundits have seen enough of the technology in action to grasp a few of the possible advantages – better object ‘pop’, heightened immersion – and disadvantages – reduced brightness, disorientation – but until the bulk of consumers get their hands on the requisite boxes, cables and headsets, much of the discussion will remain academic.

Sony and Nintendo, of course, would like us to feel that 3D’s contribution is nothing short of revolutionary already. Having Trojan-Horsed the Blu-ray media format into PlayStation households, Sony is looking to repeat the trick with its next generation of high-definition displays: hot upcoming gaming properties like Killzone 3 and Motorstorm: Apocalypse are justifications as much for 3D Bravia tellies as for PS3′s 10 year lifecycle. Nintendo, meanwhile, is pursuing new conceptual frontiers in on-the-go entertainment with its ‘glassless 3D’ handheld.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 05/08/10 in Features, Interviews, Top 5, and tagged with 3D, Killzone, technology.
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Posted by Kikizo Staff on 04/08/10 in News, and tagged with .
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Posted by Adam Doree on 03/08/10 in Interviews, News, and tagged with Ed Fries, halo.
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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 30/07/10 in Features, Top 5, and tagged with FAQ, how to, interface, Microsoft Games, motion control, motion sensitivity.
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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on in News, and tagged with Activision Blizzard, Bungie Studios, Bungie.net, PlayStation 3, PS3, wii.
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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on in Interviews, News, Top 5, and tagged with Activision Blizzard, Bungie Studios, Call of Duty, Deniable Ops, Firefight, first-person, fps, halo, master chief, Modern Warfare, Modern Warfare 2, Slayer.
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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 28/07/10 in Features, Previews, Top 5, and tagged with 2010, action, adventure, DSi, E3 2010, hands-on, impressions, Nintendo 3DS.
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Meet Eva Robins. She has the honour and privilege of being Microsoft’s Product Marketing Manager for PC gaming accessories. Which accessories? Why, accessories like the SideWinder X6 gaming keyboard, with its detachable keypad for left or right-handed play and programmable macros. Eva Robins wants to tell me about the SideWinder X6, and about the SideWinder X8 wireless mouse, with its seven assignable buttons and 13,000 fps image processing.

But here’s the thing: I’m a news writer, not a hardware reviewer. I don’t care about the SideWinder X6, even though it features automatic and manual profile switching, or the SideWinder X8, despite its 30 hour battery life. I care about headlines, preferably at a rate of two or three a minute.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 23/07/10 in Interviews, Spotlight, Top 5, and tagged with 2010, Christmas, Kinect, Microsoft, motion sensitive, PC, peripheral, Xbox, Xbox 360.
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They are to videogames what the Williams sisters are to professional tennis: gorgeous, intimidatingly successful and, in the absence of much real competition from beyond the gene pool, fierce rivals. I am, of course, referring to Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. There’s more between these particular siblings than six Grand Slam titles, though. For all their common interest in filling what you thought were your sleeping hours with crunchy, charismatic role-playing goodness, in many respects the pair appear to spring from completely different bloodlines. Final Fantasy is baroque, ‘adult’, po-faced. Dragon Quest is cartoony, ‘childish’, unpretentious.

A lot can be said for this lack of a family resemblance. In an industry notorious for rip-offs, it’s fantastic that two games can cosy up to approximately the same audience in such incredibly contrary fashions. But there’s no denying that the race has gotten a little one-sided of late, with the 13th Final Fantasy proving a love-or-hate experience for most, and as Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Sky rampages into European retailers amidst reviewer ecstasy, it’s perhaps worth asking what the new game can teach its slightly wayward sibling.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 22/07/10 in Features, Spotlight, Top 5, and tagged with Japanese role-playing game, JRPG, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 3, wii, Xbox 360.
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To first-person shooter studios, the Wii market is deeply hostile territory. But then maybe it’s just a question of making the right shooter, the one that will alter how the platform is perceived and developed for. After all, nobody really gave a damn for console ballistics full stop till the original GoldenEye blew N64′s socks off back in 1997.

Can Activision’s newly Sean-Bean-less Wiimake repeat the trick, 13 years later? Producer Dawn Pinkney seemed to think so when we spoke to her at a preview event last week. Asked whether she and developer Eurocom were fazed by the genre’s struggles on Wii, Pinkney didn’t miss a beat. ‘No, I mean, for our game – did I go through all the different controllers we’ve got?

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on in News, Spotlight, and tagged with 007, action, Activision, Eurocom, fps, James Bond, News.
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Bringing a real-time strategy franchise to console is, veterans of the genre would tirelessly argue, much like taking a Challenger 2 tank, swapping the L30A1 120mm rifled gun for a champagne cooler, repainting the whole thing cream and using it as a golf kart. Unless, that is, you’re poor old now-defunct Ensemble Studios, creator of the mighty Halo Wars. Or, apparently, Eugen Systems, the outfit behind the deceptively swish and fuss-free R.U.S.E.

Speaking to VideoGamesDaily in an interview this week, Producer Mathieu Girard has insisted that R.U.S.E. is none the worse for its multiplatform credentials. In fact, he reckons the R.U.S.E. team have ‘basically solved the remaining issue in console strategy gaming’.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 20/07/10 in News, and tagged with 2010, general, Microsoft, PlayStation Move, simulation, Sony, warfare, World War II, WWII.
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The parallel that comes first to Producer Mathieu Girard’s mind when he thinks of R.U.S.E., Ubisoft’s punctuation-loving real-time strategiser, isn’t Command & Conquer, or World in Conflict, or any of a hundred twentieth century warfare sims, but something far more ubiquitous and, many would say, humble – poker. R.U.S.E. might rock more plate armor, but beneath its carapace lurks the same love of trickery that routinely empties (and occasionally fills) the pockets of thousands of internet card-sharps.

In many respects the game is an exercise in refinement, boasting an intelligently reorganised interface and a dynamic zoom function that makes tracking around enormous battlefields a piece of cake. The icing on that cake, however, is the ruse system: 10 special powers, doled out per the ticking of a resource timer, that allow you to manipulate your opponent’s perceptions or uncover his secrets. Build balsa-wood tanks and cardboard gun turrets, shroud regions in radio silence or lift the curtain on enemy waypoints.

Girard was at Royal Hospital Chelsea in London this month, demoing the game at Ubisoft’s post-E3 showcase. We had a bit of a chat with him. Read it below.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 19/07/10 in Interviews, Spotlight, and tagged with PlayStation 3, real-time strategy, Xbox 360.
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Activision has just demoed James Bond: Bloodstone, a new chapter in secret agent history developed by tyres-and-vinyl studio Bizarre Creations, at an event on London’s Marylebone Street. Daniel Craig fans: the eagle has landed.

We were there when they walked the crowd through 10 minutes of predictably frenetic Grecan boat-killing action. We were there too when no less a person than Joss Stone was announced as new Bond girl (or at least, the voice and likeness of the new Bond girl) and composer of the title track. And we’re still there now, huddled in a corner to bring you exclusive first impressions of 007′s next adventure.

The game is a third-person shooter loaded with vehicular action sequences. The demo begins a few thousand feet above Athens, as Bond leaps from a military transport at the behest of a stressed-out M (voiced again by Judi Dench). Terrorists are up to their old terrorising tricks, and James must hunt down one of their key players, a hirsute gentleman named Greco, and ask him nicely to stop through the barrel of a Silenced P99.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 16/07/10 in Previews, Spotlight, and tagged with 007, Daniel Craig, first impressions, James Bond, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360.
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Any PC agnostics ravenous for a taste of Capcom’s spin-off film series Zombrex Dead Rising Sun had better invest in an Xbox 360. The publisher just emailed to let us know that the premiere will air exclusively over Xbox Live on 4th August, pipping even the Dead Rising Sun website to the post.

We’ve phoned to enquire after a possible PSN release. No response as yet – we’ll update the article as and when. Full show timetable after the cut. Keiji Inafune directed it, and you can find the teaser here.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 15/07/10 in News, and tagged with adaptation, Capcom, Dead Rising 2, exclusivity, Interviews, Xbox 360.
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Not so keen on partying up to smack terrorists around? You might want to mull over that Ghost Recon: Future Soldier preorder a little. Chatting to VGD at a preview event in London last week, Ubisoft’s Aziz Khater has called four-man co-op the ‘best’ way to play the new game.

‘To us,’ explained Khater, who is Product Manager on Future Soldier, ‘in order to have the players living the experience of a squad not a solo player, it’s something we really wanted to push in this opus, and we think that the real experience of Ghost Recon, this new Ghost Recon, you’re going to have the best of it if you play in co-op.’

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 13/07/10 in News, Spotlight, and tagged with 2011, co-operative, console, four-player, News, PC, sociable, squad, Ubisoft Paris.
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For many first-wave Xbox 360 buyers, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter was the game that scored the line between hardware generations the deepest, with its snazzy in-set video displays and billowing high resolution dust. Critics certainly thought so, and the game went on to pull Best Game at the British Academy Video Game Awards, joining Half-Life 2 and Grand Theft Auto in the heavily shelled foxholes of history.

Advanced Warfighter 2 wasn’t quite so explosive a release, though warmly received, lacking the caricatured allure and online robustness of younger shooters like the omnipresent Gears of War. A little more time in the incubator seemed requisite for the next iteration, and Ubisoft duly took the franchise back to formula.

Future Soldier, the result of those few years in retreat, doesn’t so much attempt to think round the attritional mindset behind much present-day tactical action as think through it, borrowing a stealth camo suit from Metal Gear Solid 4 in order to slide under the skin of enemy formations that might, otherwise, be so much cover-shooty precision-aim fodder. The demo we were shown at a recent Ubisoft event in London balanced the finding, fixing and flanking of yore with tip-toe sallies right under the noses of your opponents – not to mention behind their backs, and over their cold dead bodies.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on in Interviews, Previews, Spotlight, Top 5, and tagged with co-operative, Microsoft, nintendo, PC, PlayStation 3, Sony, tactical shooter, third-person, TPS, Ubisoft Paris, Xbox 360.
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‘Getting back to the roots’ is a phrase we often hear in connection with sequels to series that have gone a bit Lindsay Lohan, and what more clear-cut a case of franchise crash-out than Driver, celebrated for its first iteration, panned for its third and sniffed at complacently for its second and fourth? A Senior Brand Manager bolds the point at our Driver: San Francisco hands-on by propping a weather-beaten copy of the original game against the TV. There it sits beside the high definition rough-and-tumble of its descendent, very much like a grandma abandoned in a theme-park cafe while the kids merrily concuss themselves on the big dipper.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 09/07/10 in Previews, Spotlight, Top 5, and tagged with 2010, Microsoft, nintendo, preview, PS3, race, Sony, Ubisoft Reflections, upcoming, Xbox 360.
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When Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood was dated for release almost 12 months to the day after Assassin’s Creed 2, many pundits expressed fears that the franchise would become Ubisoft’s Call of Duty – the publishing equivalent of Santa Claus, shoved out into the cold to wow the kiddies on a yearly basis.

If you’re one of those pundits, here are two things to reflect on:  (1) Activision’s high intensity release schedule hasn’t exactly brought Call of Duty to its knees, or at least not yet, and (2) as far as Assassin’s Creed is concerned, Ubisoft is happy to take things slow. Like a Venetian assassin stalking a well-defended prelate, perhaps.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 08/07/10 in News, and tagged with action-adventure, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, calendar, cashcow, PlayStation 3, PS3, release sheet, schedule, third-person, Ubisoft, Xbox 360.
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Staying true to the spirit of past games has been of more than usual importance during development of the third home format Assassin’s Creed, which retains a protagonist, era, sandbox template, stealth and free-run mechanics from its predecessor but folds in a multiplayer mode and online character development. Having run appreciative fingers over the game itself, we joined Producer Jean-Francois Boivin in the shady grounds of Royal Hospital Chelsea for a chat.

VideoGamesDaily: I was surprised to see Assassin’s Creed attract a multiplayer-oriented sequel. Can you explain the thinking behind that move?

Jean-Francois Boivin: We’ve been dabbling with the idea of including a multiplayer component for quite a few years now. I think the important part for us was making sure that it wasn’t something that felt slapped on.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on in Interviews, Spotlight, and tagged with 2011, action-adventure, PC, PlayStation 3, PS3, third-person, Ubisoft, Xbox 360.
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It’s an upsetting truth that sometimes, really great ideas just don’t work. Even when they’re mine. Case in point: while playing a multiplayer build of Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, recently on show at a preview event in London, I was struck by how wonderful it might be to add drop-in co-op to the single player.

Just imagine entering into another assassin’s game, tracking him patiently through the world and excavating his Adam’s apple with a wristblade right on the verge of some key objective. Or conversely, helping him to spruce up run-down parts of the city of Rome. Bloody marvellous.

When I broached the topic with the game’s Associate Producer, Jean-Francois Boivin, he was a little less enthused. It seems the random interventions of other players wouldn’t really gel with Assassin’s Creed’s tightly conceived story arch.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on in News, and tagged with Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, Ezio, News, open world, PC, PlayStation 3, stealth, technology, Ubisoft, Xbox 360.
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‘Unprecedented’, ‘unmatched’, ‘ultimate’, ‘unparalleled’ – just a few of the words that don’t deserve to be on the fact sheet for Crackdown 2. There’s scarcely a thing to be said for this game that can’t be said far more confidently, perhaps while thumping the table for emphasis and dribbling a bit, of fellow open-worlders Just Cause 2, Saints Row 2 and InFamous. Rather sad, that, because the latter, randomly-picked threesome wouldn’t be the success stories they are without lessons learned from Crackdown’s high-altitude hopscotch, ability-augmenting collectables and synchronisable explosions.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 05/07/10 in Reviews, Top 5, and tagged with Microsoft Games, open world, review, sandbox, Scotland, third-person shooter, X360, Xbox 360.
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"Zig Zag Ball"? "Cup in!"? What's this?!

If you have access to the Japanese PlayStation Store and need some 32-bit happiness to cheer you up after some kind of beating, why not check out the latest round of PlayStation classics? Some of these new additions to the old Game Archives are as cheap as 300 yen – namely the titles from D3 Publisher’s generally excellent Simple 1500 series of games. Read on for the best picks – it’s list ‘em up time!

Zig Zag Ball (600 yen, pictured above) – This one is a primary-coloured amalgamation of pinball, crazy golf and billiards with four-player modes and helpful blue pixies.

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Posted by J.D. on 28/06/10 in Japan, and tagged with D3 Publisher, Game Archives, PS3, psn, PSP, retro, Simple 1500.
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The high point of my Electronic Entertainment Expo (and, I suspect, everybody else’s)? Nintendo 3DS, by a country mile. Hardware reveals always chalk up a spike on the gaming Richter scale, but this one was thermonuclear material even by E3′s seismic standards. The sight of Naked Snake’s scowl protruding from the depths of that pin-sharp new top display was enough to sell most attendees a unit right there and then.

One thing and one thing only, to my mind, could have matched the impact of the 3DS announcement, and that was a successor to PlayStation Portable, heavily rumoured in the preceding weeks and months. But this, alas, was not to be. Instead, we got a renewed Sony commitment to its ageing pocket warhorse, showreels larded with footage from games already known about, a teaser trailer for yet another God of War, invisible blue monkeys and ‘Marcus Rivers’, latest in a long line of patronising attempts to spark a ‘cult of PSP’.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 24/06/10 in Features, Spotlight, Top 5, and tagged with Europe, North America, opinion, portable game system, SCE, SCEA, SCEE.
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As a piece of hardware that promises to ‘change everything’, attached to a piece of hardware that ‘does everything’, it’s perhaps no more than fitting that PlayStation Move is having a mild identity crisis. Like Nintendo’s Wii MotionPlus, the new ‘high definition’ motion-sensitive controller is an inessential purchase at present for owners of its parent format: only a handful of Move-dedicated PlayStation 3 games have been announced, though more are reportedly in development. Unlike Wii MotionPlus, however, Move is being touted not just as a peripheral but as a ‘platform’, a drastically different proposition in the mind of the consumer, and the gulf between publicity drive and reality may count against Sony in the long run.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 22/06/10 in Features, Spotlight, Top 5, and tagged with Europe, franchise, North America, opinion, originality, PlayStation Blog, PS3, SCE, SCEE.
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The dust settles; crows circle; the blood drains slowly from your vision; another Electronic Entertainment Expo draws to a close. This year’s gaming news firestorm sparked, raged and died much like the one before, and the one before that: there were uppers and downers, raters and slaters, shocks and crocks. The details change, the dancers trade places, but the great waltz remains the same.

Here at VGD, we might not have dished out the coverage quite as rapidly and fulsomely as some other sites, but we were there to pen considered judgements on all three manufacturer keynotes and a few things besides.  Find the lot below.

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Posted by Kikizo Staff on 19/06/10 in Features, Spotlight, and tagged with 3DS, console, digest, DS, Kinect, Microsoft, Move, nintendo, PC, PlayStation 3, PS3, PSP, round-up, Sony, wii, Xbox 360.
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Pricing hardware at launch is a tricky call. Demand for the product may never be higher, as novelty works its magic and thunderous marketing campaigns make themselves felt. A good time, then, to pump a few extra noughts into the RRP, and perhaps recover some of that titanic research outlay a little quicker. But just how far dare you push it?

It’s a question Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo will, of course, be asking themselves over the coming 12 months. Each has pinned its colours to an untried commercial quantity: Microsoft’s ‘controller-less’ peripheral Kinect purports to flatten the barrier between practised 360 owner and wary dabbler; Sony’s Move wants to upstage the Wiimote as the benchmark for motion-sensitive controllers; and Nintendo has bet the farm (or at least a few hundred acres) on the appeal of ‘naked eye’ portable 3D.

Right now, only the Move has a nailed-down official price tag, but analyst commentary and reliably indiscreet retailers have furnished us with plausible hints as to the other two devices. In the following feature, we consider speculations and reactions from North American and European sources thus far.

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Posted by Kikizo Staff on 18/06/10 in Features, Spotlight, and tagged with console, dollars, editorial, euros, feature, Microsoft Games, nintendo, NoA, NoE, opinion, pounds, price, retail, SCE, SCEA, SCEE.
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Attendees of this year’s E3 pressers could be forgiven for thinking that the manufacturers had got their scripts mixed up. There was Microsoft, high prince of the marines-and-mohawks brigade, blowing controller-free kisses at the fun-for-all-the-family demographic. There was Nintendo, lifestyle marketing queen, flashing an awful lot of leg in the direction of the long-estranged hardcore. And there, finally, was Sony, once a definite second fiddle in the multiplatform software duet, slobbering all over exclusive content deals like a nymphomaniac after two months in solitary confinement.

It was a conference with a very clear objective: to re-establish PlayStation as the go-to guy in multiplatform gaming. There were first party offerings enough to pip Microsoft to the post, with powerful showings from Killzone 3, LittleBigPlanet 2, Motorstorm: Apocalypse, Gran Turismo 5, InFamous 2 and the rumoured Twisted Metal sequel, but where Sony really put clear light between itself and its arch-rival was in the third party presence.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 16/06/10 in Features, Spotlight, and tagged with announcement, E3 2010, Los Angeles, reveal, SCE, SCEA, SCEE.
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We all know what to expect from Nintendo’s E3 conferences by now. Cute gizmos. Footage of waxen-faced twenty-somethings in rooms filled with white furniture. Execs bouncing around with cheerful lack of self-respect in front of the latest bright-eyed ‘Wii + X’ party compilation. And very, very little in the way of product that the people who bought and cherished NESs, SNESs or N64s really care for.

In turn, we’re sure Nintendo now knows exactly what to expect from us, the embittered heart of the gaming community. Fiery polemics about the fates of obscure, decades-old franchises. Flared-nostril disdain for anything even tenuously associated with the word ‘casual’. Constant moping after the Nintendo of yesteryear, the Nintendo that ‘still made’ videogames, the Nintendo that knew who its ‘real friends’ were.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 15/06/10 in Features, Spotlight, and tagged with announcement, DSi, E3 2010, Iwata, Los Angeles, Miyamoto, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo DS, wii.
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Glance at the forums of a few videogame websites right now, and you might conclude that Don Mattrick had personally tracked down and bitch-slapped the internet’s grandma. After a fairly dismal (if theatrics-crammed) Kinect reveal gig over the weekend, with pre-taped show-reels markedly more evident than genuine gameplay, all eyes were on yesterday’s press conference to ‘save’ Microsoft’s E3. Salvation, however, was not at hand. Or was it?

Let’s run through a few of the criticisms. Perhaps tellingly, many of them are those so often levelled at Nintendo’s pressers since the Wii’s E3 debut in 2006. The nutshell version: too much emphasis on ‘expanding the market’, on family-friendly or lifestyle offerings powered by suave gimmickry; not enough in the way of new core titles, like shooters, role-playing and action games.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on in Features, Spotlight, and tagged with Electronic Entertainment Expo, launch, Los Angeles, Microsoft, North America, PC, release, Xbox 360, Xbox Live.
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Besides the expansiveness of Microsoft’s pockets, the histrionic stupidity of E3 in general and the fact that there is no depth to which PR teams will not sink, given sufficient quantities of caffeine – no abuse of the brain, knee joints and bladder they will not contemplate – the one thing last night’s Cirque de Soleil extravaganza should have re-impressed upon you is that Kinect is ‘for everyone’. Universal appeal was the company line at the peripheral’s unveiling a year back, and universal appeal remains the company line today.

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Posted by Kikizo Staff on 14/06/10 in Features, Spotlight, and tagged with Cirque de Soleil, E3 2010, editorial, Electronic Entertainment Expo, Los Angeles, preview, Promotion, Xbox 360.
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If Hideo Kojima is to be believed, the working title for MGS Peace Walker included a rather significant 5 numeral. It doesn’t take the imagination of a conspiracy theorist to see why – Having been burned by Acid twice and bemused by the clunky kidnapping simulator that was Portable Ops, PSP owners needed to believe in a portable instalment that would be treated with the same care and attention lavished on the mainline series.

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Posted by Rupert Higham on 11/06/10 in Reviews, Top 5, and tagged with Hideo Kojima, Konami, Metal Gear Solid, Peace Walker, PSP.
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So those are the current Top Ten best-selling games in Japan, as compiled by Japanese number-counters Media Create and translated by little us. Now let’s look at what those numerals mean, kids, with a few things we can learn from this week’s chart…

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Posted by J.D. on 09/06/10 in Japan, and tagged with analysis, charts, mario galaxy, nintendo, stats.
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Posted by J.D. on 04/06/10 in Japan, and tagged with robots, Sega, virtual on force, Xbox 360.
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What do you do when you’ve squeezed all the imaginative juice out of both World War II and the present day setting? You quarry the territory in between, apparently. Treyarch’s fourth Call of Duty project takes place in the claustrophobic second half of the 20th century, with Asia and the Middle East swamped in proxy wars. VGD pitched into a roundtable chat with Mark Lamia, Studio Head, and Josh Olin, Community Manager, at a preview event this week. Interview by the incomparable Rupert Higham.

VideoGamesDaily: Hi Mark, Josh – great to speak with you. What details can you reveal about the Black Ops storyline?

Mark Lamia: OK, so, right: disclaimer – the story and the plot are sort of under wraps because we want you to experience it fresh, and we’re putting a lot of work in to try to make it an exciting story with character development, there’s going to be some twists and some turns. But what I can tell you is, it takes place during the era that is the Cold War. It’s not about the Cold War, it’s not about the Vietnam War – it’s about the black operations that occurred during that period.

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Posted by Kikizo Staff on 02/06/10 in Interviews, Spotlight, Top 5, and tagged with Activision, first-person, fps, sequel, shooter, Treyarch, Vietnam.
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Surely there can’t be a more difficult market to launch a new IP in than that of the FPS? There’s no questioning the genre’s might in the market, but going head to head with the likes of Valve, Infinity Ward/Treyarch, id and Epic is hardly the most heartening of challenges.

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Posted by Rupert Higham on 31/05/10 in Previews, Spotlight, and tagged with Blacklight: Tango Down, digital distribution, fps, PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Zombie Studios.
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To outsiders, game design is like an iceberg: the part you can see is a tiny fraction of the monstrosity beneath. Ideas and assets are in circulation for years, from scribbled asides on weapon recoil through texture maps to fully rendered lumps of geometry, the vast majority destined for the scrapheap, unknown to and unsung by fans of the final product.

Which is why it’s so fascinating when one such abandoned concept or approach comes to light. Take the two campaign levels Treyarch showed off at its Call of Duty: Black Ops event in London this week. One of them’s called ‘Slaughterhouse’, and is set in Vietnamese Hue City. It is, as most previewers agree, quite the exercise in single player craftmanship. But it was first built for multiplayer.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 29/05/10 in News, Spotlight, and tagged with Activision Blizzard, competitive, cooperative, CTF, deathmatch, Europe, fps, North America, shooter, squad, Treyarch.
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There are two kinds of developer in this world, boys and girls: the hairy-palmed half-men who are prepared to ship a game running at an immersion-scuppering, yawn-inducing 30 frames per second, and the steely-eyed heroes for whom nothing, nothing short of double that number will suffice.

Guess which group Call of Duty: Black Ops designer and Treyarch studio boss Mark Lamia belongs to. That’s right.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 28/05/10 in News, Spotlight, and tagged with Activision Blizzard, first-person shooter, fps, game engine, shooter, technology, Treyarch.
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“Race like a big boy,” tease Activision in Blur’s Mario Kart-baiting TV spot for the powered-up racer. While some publishers may shy away from direct comparison with a more established competitor, Activision’s self-assurance is not misplaced.

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Posted by Rupert Higham on in Reviews, and tagged with Bizarre Creations, Blur, PlayStation 3, racing, Xbox 360.
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The best proof of a videogame classic isn’t a high review score average, or the number of times some foppish mainstream celeb references it on Twitter, but how many different answers you can get to the question ‘what’s your favourite bit?’ True all-time greats are like rivers: you’ll never cross the same one twice. Each player will discover something unique to their experience of the game, some minor but original and perfectly worked touch amid the wonders of the whole.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 22/05/10 in Reviews, and tagged with action, adventure, Europe, mascot, nintendo, platform, retro, UK, wii.
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Posted by J.D. on 20/05/10 in Japan, and tagged with FFIX, Final Fantasy, Game Archives, PlayStation Store, PS3, PSP, retro, RPG, Square Enix.
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Posted by J.D. on 19/05/10 in Japan, and tagged with Game Archives, Gradius, PC-Engine, PS3, psn, PSP, retro, shmups, Twinbee.
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Success can grow to be a burden, and as the creators of the GTA series – as much a cultural phenomenon as a game – Rockstar have had to work hard to ensure Red Dead Redemption is taken on its own merit and not be dismissed as simply Grand Theft Equine.

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Posted by Rupert Higham on 18/05/10 in Reviews, and tagged with PlayStation 3, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar San Diego, Xbox 360.
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Sometimes you’ve got to take one step back to take two steps forward. It’s not a sentiment that comes easily to the Prince of Persia games, despite their penchant for time travel. Ubisoft’s elegant third-person action adventures are specialists in the art of always going forward, threading chains of acrobatics around and through ostensibly open-plan wrecked hallways, courtyards, temples and towers. Even the 2008 release, with one agile regal foot lodged in Zelda’s free-roamable door, wound its disconnected areas into arabesque loops and spirals.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on in Reviews, and tagged with Babylon, console, India, parkour, PC, platform, PS3, Xbox 360.
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Posted by J.D. on in Japan, and tagged with retro, Yahoo! Auctions.
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Posted by J.D. on in Japan, and tagged with Cave, Ketsui, models, shmups, Toys.
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Eight new... more

Posted by J.D. on in Japan, and tagged with D3 Publisher, Donpachi, Game Archives, psn, retro, shmup, Simple 1500, Technosoft.
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Posted by J.D. on 17/05/10 in Japan, and tagged with 360, countdown, Sega.
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Posted by J.D. on in Japan, and tagged with .
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Posted by J.D. on in Japan, and tagged with fashion, Mario, retro, Right-On, t-shirts.
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If Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is your quintessential videogame roller coaster ride, alternating swiftly between cavernous depths and giddy, bullet-flecked heights, and Grand Theft Auto 4 resembles a building-sized, perilously unbounded Dodgems rink, then Capcom’s new third-person romp Lost Planet 2 is a series of giant adventure playgrounds, all tunnels, ladders, ramps, platforms, garishly painted moving parts and wanton messiness.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 12/05/10 in Reviews, and tagged with alien, Capcom, Europe, extra-terrestrial, network, PC, PS3, science fiction, shooter, UK, Xbox 360.
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Posted by J.D. on in Japan, and tagged with Arashi, J-pop, nintendo, Super Mario Galaxy 2, TV CM, wii.
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Posted by J.D. on 11/05/10 in Japan, and tagged with Apple, iPad, Softbank.
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You know those times when you can literally see history being made? This is one of those times, and nothing to do with the UK election. At some point on Sunday, a little London-based web service called Green Man Gaming will introduce gamers around the world to the idea of the digital game trade-in.

You thought the Natal unveiling was big? Pah. We think gamers will come running to hear about this from miles and miles – except they won’t, because the whole point of a digital trade-in is that you can do it from your desktop in the comfort of your own home. No fuss. No worries about the disc being too scratched to trade in, and no hunting for the instruction manual. Just a handful of clicks, and hey presto: Fresh credit in your account to spend on new games!

We’re sure you have questions. We’ve certainly got some answers. This week, Video Games Daily paid a visit to Green Man Gaming to get the full scoop and demo of exactly how it works and why digital trade-ins won’t be coming to any existing digital retailers any time soon (hint: it might have something to do with a patent on the entire concept).

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Posted by Kikizo Staff on 07/05/10 in Features, Spotlight, and tagged with digital distribution, digital trade ins, gian luzio, green man gaming.
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Capcom don’t exactly make it easy to produce an informative eye-opening review. Over the last eight months they have orchestrated a steady drip-feed of information via developer blogs, Seth Killian demonstrations and Justin Wong combo videos, detailing practically every facet of the game a fan could ever want to know about.

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Posted by Rupert Higham on 01/05/10 in Reviews, and tagged with Capcom, PlayStation 3, Super Street Fighter IV, Xbox 360.
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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 30/04/10 in Videos, and tagged with blow-out, Capcom, trailer.
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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on in Cheats & Strategies, and tagged with action, Avalanche Studios, Eidos Interactive, mod, Square Enix.
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If you were to argue that this generation of gaming was defined by any central concept, online community would have to rank pretty high on the list. From the 12 billion socialites playing World of Warcraft to the hundreds of thousands that regularly evaporate the hours away on Modern Warfare 2, the pleasure of participating in a connected collective community has definitely struck a chord with gamers.

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Posted by Rupert Higham on 29/04/10 in Features, Spotlight, and tagged with Capcom, PlayStation 3, Super Street Fighter IV, Xbox 360.
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Posted by J.D. on 28/04/10 in Japan, and tagged with DSi, DSiWare, Hudson, rapid-fire, Takahashi Meijin.
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Posted by J.D. on 26/04/10 in Japan, and tagged with Famicom, Ikki, PS3, psn, Sunsoft.
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Posted by J.D. on in Japan, and tagged with rarities, retro, Yahoo! Auctions.
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During Capcom’s recent Super Street Fighter IV preview event in Central London, we sought out the game’s producer, Yoshinori Ono, to grill him on the feverishly demanded and repeatedly-rumoured Darkstalkers sequel that he seems oh-so-happy to talk about given an inch of column space.

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Posted by Rupert Higham on 24/04/10 in News, Spotlight, and tagged with Capcom, Darkstalkers, Vampire, Yoshinori Ono.
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Friday night ‘little known fact’ time! The average U.S. Ranger carries up to 50 pounds of combat gear, which translates to about 22 of our homely British kilograms, or roughly the same weight as these. Roman legionnaires had it even tougher: some historians put their kit in the region of a spine-warping 93 pounds. Keep these sobering statistics in mind next time that recruitment guy tries to wow you with talk of exotic climes, paid accommodation and generous pensions.

Keep them in mind, too, next time you look at a Monster Hunter Tri screenshot and feel inclined to say something like ‘there’s no way he could lift a lance that big’. Capcom’s renowned fauna-bashing epics do veer a little on the exaggerated side when it comes to so-called ‘handheld’ weapons, but ask yourselves this: what’s more faithful to military reality, hearing the sinews creak in a warrior’s forearms as she hefts half a ton of hide-bound thighbone? Or being able to skip across miles of broken rock in scorching heat with sixty billion rifle bullets and a Predator in your pocket, arriving at the frontline fresh enough to nail split-second reloads and hold a scope level?

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 23/04/10 in Reviews, and tagged with action-RPG, Capcom, Europe, Japanese, Monster Hunter, North America, role-playing game, UK.
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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on in Videos, and tagged with awesome, blowout, competitive, head-to-head, online, Rockstar Games.
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If the late 1990s was all about deathmatch, and the mid-Noughties belonged to the ever-inadequately-defined ‘casual gamer’, then the past two or three years are beginning to look more and more like the golden age of co-op. Gone are the days of poorly optimised bolt-on splitscreen, offering much the same objectives and threats you’d face in solo play at half the frames per second. With gaming at its most extrovert thanks to the growth of online networks and greater audience breadth, team spirit is absolutely everywhere.

There’s the comradely claustrophobia of Left 4 Dead, the family-friendly enmity of New Super Mario Bros Wii, the glitzy group careerism of Rock Band. Once a tertiary feature, co-op has become a significant part of the action game package in particular: recent heavyweights Modern Warfare 2, Splinter Cell: Conviction and Resistance 2 boast standalone two or four player modes with their own distinct mechanics, experience systems and even storylines.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 16/04/10 in Previews, and tagged with Capcom, Europe, May, North America, PlayStation 3, UK, Xbox 360.
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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 15/04/10 in Videos, and tagged with comedy, live stream, WTF, Xbox Live.
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Posted by J.D. on 13/04/10 in Japan, and tagged with iMode, Keitai, N64, Square Enix, Wonder Project J2.
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Discussing Splinter Cell: Conviction’s co-op modes at a recent showcase, Game Director Patrick Redding has hinted to VGD that ‘Spies versus Mercenaries’, the team-based match type that cemented the franchise’s multiplayer credentials, may put in an encore performance as downloadable content post-launch.

Redding argued that Conviction’s more introspective, ‘rogue agent’ storyline and new AI-tricking mechanics would be hard to reconcile with the Spies versus Mercs concept, but commented ‘I don’t mean to say that there isn’t a possibility of exploring that, right now perhaps I lack the imagination to see it immediately’.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 12/04/10 in News, and tagged with PC, spies vs mercs, Tom Clancy, Xbox 360.
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Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction has pulled in a couple of great review scores already, with the brunt of critical opinion landing later this week. You’ve read (or should have read, tut tut) both our and Creative Director Maxime Beland’s thoughts on the single player mode – now lend your attention to Patrick Redding, Game Director for Conviction multiplayer, as he discusses the game’s co-op offerings.

VideoGamesDaily: Hi Patrick, good to chat. How many Splinter Cell games have you worked on?

Patrick Redding: This is my first Splinter Cell. Before this I was working on the Far Cry series, I was narrative designer on Far Cry 2.

VGD: How would you characterise the evolution of co-op in Splinter Cell? Which features have gone out of fashion, and which have retained their appeal?

Redding: I see this co-op as fitting within a trend or a tendency that I think is emerging – actually it emerged a long time ago, but I think it’s just moved into the mainstream – which is that before, co-op was a relatively hardcore gaming paradigm for people.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on in Interviews, Spotlight, and tagged with action, PC, Sam Fisher, Ubisoft Paris, Xbox 360.
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We all know how Wild Western duels are meant to go, right? Two sweaty blokes in ten-gallon hats, glowering at each other from either end of a deserted high street, the camera alternating between ever more searching close-ups of their unblinking eyes. Then the town bell rings, one man draws first – BANG, dead. That’s the way Call of Juarez liked it. Or: bell rings, BANG, stagger, drop to one knee, “Take my hand, Ned, it’s gettin’ dark”, tearful manly embrace, dead. Or: bell rings, BANG, dead, victor walks over to gloat, BUT “Not so fast, pardner, I had a sheet of iron tucked under my poncho” and BANG, tables turned.

Rockstar, being Rockstar, does things differently. Each of Red Dead Redemption’s competitive multiplayer matches kicks off with a bout of quick-draw, up to 16 scarred and pickled specimens of frontier manhood (and occasionally womanhood) clustered round a patch of soon-to-be bloody soil, but the drama is a little less “snapshot”, and a little more “bell rings, BANG BANG BANG, sideways somersault, BANG, struggle to reload, accidental standing-jump, BANG BANG, engage in frantic pistol-whipping contest, BANG, finished off by sneaky bastard hiding behind cactus”.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 08/04/10 in Previews, and tagged with PS3, Rockstar London, Rockstar San Diego, Xbox 360.
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Posted by J.D. on 07/04/10 in Japan, and tagged with King Of Fighters, PSP, SNK.
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However cheekily it may draft LittleBigPlanet’s slipstream in many respects, United Front’s ModNation Racers does veer away from the Media Molecule champ in one (besides being a kart racer, of course). It’s possible to peg out and test-drive a custom level in moments, rather than the hours, days and weeks we’ve plunged into Sackpeople habitats.

The means of doing so, what’s more, are pleasantly idiot-proof. There’s no clumsy jostling of cursors with an analog stick, or cowardly defaulting to mouse and keyboard: you create a race course simply by driving it, carving up a blank canvas at the wheel of a magic steam-roller. Curve back round to the finish line (or hold X to auto-complete) and hey presto! one fully playable, uploadable and rate-able automobile graveyard.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on in Previews, Spotlight, and tagged with Canada, Europe, multiplayer, North America, racing, social networking, Sony, UK, USA.
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Posted by J.D. on 06/04/10 in Japan, and tagged with G-Rev, Senko no Ronde, shmup, Xbox 360.
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Posted by J.D. on in Japan, and tagged with Final Fantasy XIII, Game music, Soundtracks.
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Q: “Can games stir the emotions like great films, books and music?” A: “Why yes they can, good sir, I cried like a baby when Aeris/Agro/The Boss died, and damn you for ever letting the contrary thought cross your mind.” Such tends to be the outcome of any debate as to our favourite past-time’s ability to bring tears to the eyes, or a lump to the throat, or a smile to the face. That games have the capacity for (and moreover a right to) the same emotional weight as rival artforms is a vociferously held, vociferously defended truth among specialist writers – so much so, in this one’s opinion, that the medium’s most basic characteristic – and limitation – is in danger of being overlooked.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on in Features, Spotlight, and tagged with art, console, culture, editorial, opinion, PC.
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A pertinent question. Having followed closely behind Virtua Fighter in technology stakes, the Dead or Alive fighting games have always proven to be enjoyable and accessible, if ultimately shallow and disposable in the grand scheme of the genre. Where Mortal Kombat’s gimmick appealed to our base love of violence, Tecmo’s series exploited our carnal instinct – sex.

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Posted by Rupert Higham on 04/04/10 in Reviews, and tagged with Dead or Alive Paradise, PSP, Tecmo.
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When adapting literature to other media, there can be a tendency to treat it will a degree of reverence that is quite unnecessary – case in point the 400 year old Chinese classic Journey to the West.

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Posted by Rupert Higham on 01/04/10 in Previews, Spotlight, and tagged with Enslaved, Ninja Theory, Odyssey to the West, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360.
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If the sales charts are to be believed gamers are a pessimistic bunch. Apparently we like nothing more than winding down after the daily grind by transporting ourselves to post-apocalyptic wastelands fraught with mutants, radiation poisoning and the ultimate collapse of civilisation. 

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Posted by Rupert Higham on 29/03/10 in Reviews, and tagged with 4A Games, fps, Metro 2033, Xbox 360.
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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 26/03/10 in Videos, and tagged with customisation, gang warfare, massively multiplayer, MMO, PC, Realtime Worlds.
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Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, then. Jogging over walls. Slashing sand demons. Reversing time. Not exactly earth-shatteringly original, is it? We bet Ubisoft doesn’t want you to think that. Oh wait, they do.

Speaking to us at a preview extravaganza a week or two back, Animation Director Jan-Erik Sjovall has described The Forgotten Sands as a “meat and potatoes” game, a return to “the normal way of doing things”.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 25/03/10 in News, and tagged with Europe, News, North America, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, PS2, Ubisoft Montreal, UK.
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In hindsight, we shouldn’t have been surprised to discover that Ubisoft’s fifth home format Prince of Persia game, The Forgotten Sands, handles exactly like its first, Sands of Time, with all the monkey bars, pillars and pressure panels you can swing a time-rewinding dagger at. The project’s inherent retrospectiveness is, after all, right there plain as day in the subtitle.

Ubisoft has never really ‘forgotten’ Sands of Time, of course: released in 2003, the game broke one mould for third-person action platforming only to trap itself, its creators and to an extent its own genre firmly inside another. The same-generation sequels, Warrior Within and Two Thrones, played with different narrative tones but kept the formula intact, and while 2008′s cell-shaded episode brought some interesting new ideas to the table, it repulsed as many pundits as it impressed.

Besides upgraded though not quite razor edge looks and a new plot, which pits the Prince, fresh from his original Azad adventure, against a host of sand creatures unleashed on a besieging army by errant brother Malik, the second Xbox 360 and PS3 title makes use of elemental powers such as rock armor, ice projectiles and a wind area attack. When not in combat, the Prince can also freeze flowing water to provide scalable surfaces. Nothing all that game-changing, as noted, but enough perhaps to keep the franchise’s deep-rooted fanbase ticking over.

Jan-Erik Sjovall, Animation Director, was on hand at the preview event to talk shop. And talk shop he certainly did. Read on.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on in Interviews, Spotlight, and tagged with action-adventure, fantasy, hands-on, interview, North America, preview, Ubisoft Montreal, UK.
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There’s something suspect about the phrase with which the Bad Company sub-franchise is often associated, ‘tactical destruction’. It’s the ‘tactical’ bit, basically. ‘Tactical’ lends ‘destruction’ a veneer of complexity we’re not entirely sure it deserves. Being able to explode cars at people, or shoot fist-sized lumps out of concrete tank barriers, or level houses from the kitchen windows upwards is undoubtedly a thrill, but there’s not a whole lot of nuance to be extracted.

Talking up the first Bad Company, EA DICE explained to a baying public that its patented Frostbite engine would give players ‘total freedom to be daring and innovative, adapting to and tackling challenges in unexpected Battlefield-style ways’. A less sensational way of wording this – and thus of approaching the highly similar sequel – might be that players have ‘total freedom to blow up stuff to kill people or make them easier to shoot’.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on in Reviews, and tagged with Digital Illusions CE, ea, PlayStation 3, PS3, review, Xbox 360.
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That reviewers don’t play games for long enough before putting virtual pen to paper is a well-worn comments thread complaint. Fortunately for conscientious readers, it’s pretty easy to ascertain whether somebody’s spent sufficient time in the company of Red Steel 2 to form a creditable opinion.

Simply approach the target (having first studied his habits), greet him by name and shake him firmly by the right hand. If he tears free with a disconcerted glare, or yells for security, or returns the greeting, or does anything, in fact, but scream in pain and black out on the spot, he hasn’t even made it past the first boss fight. Those who’ve burned through the full 10 hours and had a crack at completing chapters against the clock may look something like this.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 24/03/10 in Reviews, and tagged with bushido, console, duelling, Neo-Tokyo, Old West, Ubisoft, waggle, Wiimote.
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Posted by J.D. on 19/03/10 in Japan, and tagged with Game music, retro, Sega, Wave Master.
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By now you’ll know everything there currently is to know about Hunted: The Demon’s Forge, having read our wonderful preview. You’ll know that it’s a third-person medieval fantasy action game with a Gears-ish feel, some impressive boobies character assets and a co-op focus. But you’ll probably have a few questions for the developer, InXile Entertainment, questions of the most terrible urgency. Is co-op the future of dungeon crawling? Do Caddick’s tattoos go all the way down? How can you blindfire with a bow and arrow? The people need to know, damn it.

Here’s Matthew Findley, InXile President, with some additional insights. Not just “some”, in fact – best take a toilet break now, because this is one long (and interesting) read. Creative Director Michael “Maxx” Kaufmann and InXile founder and COO Brian Fargo were also briefly available for comment.

VideoGamesDaily: Matthew, Michael, Brian – thanks for the demo today. We like the idea of bringing back the classic dungeon RPG, and we thought the game looked very good in motion. On the other hand, we were a little taken aback by the similarities with Gears of War and Army of Two. Can you talk to us about that?

Matthew Findley: There are two parts to it. One, bringing back the dungeon crawl, for sure – we love it, we grew up with it, for the same reason that I think you’re gravitating towards it. But we have to recognise that today’s gameplay is different than it was 10 years ago, and so their metaphors for what their style of gameplay is are different. It’s more console, it’s action-oriented, et cetera.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 17/03/10 in Interviews, Spotlight, and tagged with Bethesda Softworks, console, interview, PlayStation 3, PS3, Xbox 360.
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There’s something Reggie Fils-Amis, Jack Tretton and Aaron Greenburg don’t want you to know about platform-exclusive intellectual properties: there aren’t any. Not really. The notion that a given parcel of design calls is wed to one system till death do them part, that its migration to other systems is not just impossible but literally unthinkable, even blasphemous, is… well, exactly what it sounds like: a phantasm invoked by smack-talking executives and the fanboy massive, and a thorn in the flank of those who prefer the exchange of ideas to head-butting quantity logic.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 16/03/10 in Features, Spotlight, and tagged with editorial, Microsoft, nintendo, opinion, PlayStation 3, PS3, Sony, wii, Xbox 360.
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Speaking at a preview event for new action-RPG Hunted: The Demon’s Forge, InXile Entertainment President Matthew Findley has told VGD he feels Japanese role-playing developers find it “very hard” to achieve “real characters, real story, real moral dilemmas” in their games.

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Posted by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell on 15/03/10 in News, and tagged with console, East, JRPG, News, PC, PS3, realism, role-playing game, Xbox 360.
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