The Official Zack & Wiki site now has a demo that lets gamers play a level from the Wii game in Flash. I urge all Wii owners on the fence about this game to play this demo. It is just a taste of this game and may very well make you get it

http://ms2.nintendo-europe.com/zackwiki/enGB/index.html ...

Endless Ocean
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Arika
Genre: Simulation
Players: 1

Ok after a long wait I have finally found the drive to write up this review. I certainly hope you people like it :P So lets jump right in here. Endless Ocean. This "non-game", while not for everyone, is indeed for me. From day one I found myself interested in this unique scuba diving game. It attempts to give you an open world take on the ocean and does it very well. Heres the thing though. If you dont like exploration dont buy this game. If you do buy 3 or 4 copies so the makers think its a huge hit..

Graphically this game is nearly on par with the greats of the console like Mario Galaxy or MP3. Notice I said nearly.. Not quite but its good. The graphics do their job of being immersion and thats all you/I want anyways right? Oh and did I mention the graphics are great only when you're in the water? On the boat they arent so hot..

As far as the controls go you'll soon forget their are any. Its that natural. Simply point at the screen and hold the B trigger or hit - to toggle auto swim. Thats it. Just point and go. Immersive? yes. Simple? yes. Does it work? Again yes.

The sound work is great. Plenty of breathing noises and all those underwater sounds you'd expect. Granted its nothing breathtaking but it serves to make you feel like you're drowning. One big issue is the absence of literally any voice over work. Often times you speak to other people and its completely silent minus the birds and water splashing. Very underwhelming.

All in all its a good not great game. It does exactly what you want and little else. It does, however, have online but again NO VOICE CHAT means why bother to me.


Replay Value 4/5 If you like the game you'll keep coming back for a very long time. The ocean is huge and theres plenty to explore.
Sound 4/5 Dolphin noises like you've never heard them before. Also breathing and water moving noises. Whoopie.
Graphics 4/5 Just a notch or so below Mario Galaxy and Metroid. Probably 2 notches though.
Gameplay 4.5/5
Score:


Via: C*M ...

This is just a quick video I shot.

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When Guitar Hero III was released for the Nintendo Wii on Oct. 28, would-be rockers got a bit of a shock when they plugged in. It turned out the game - advertised as being in stereo and supporting the Dolby Pro Logic II surround-sound standard - was outputting in mono.

Gamers began posting on IGN and other sites the day the game launched, citing examples of the problem and asking for clarification from publisher Activision/Red Octane. For the past few weeks, Activision has remained mostly silent on the issue. But today, in response to our questions about the issue, the company told IGN it is working on the problem and it plans to have a fix available early next year.

"We recently became aware that some consumers have not been able to enjoy the full audio output in the Nintendo Wii version of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. We are currently working with Nintendo and are planning to issue an improved audio experience in future versions of the game," said Activision spokeswoman Rhy-Ming Poon. "We expect to have re-mastered discs available by early 2008 and we will be offering consumers replacement discs at no cost once they become available. We thank all of our customers for their support and patience."

Since the issue first came to light there have been 970 posts about the problem on the company's official Guitar Hero III message boards. In the posts, users say they e-mailed Activision technical support about the issue as early as Oct. 29 and reportedly received this response:

"We are looking in to it right now. The time frame is still unknown at the moment we are still looking in to the problem."

We recently tested our copy and confirmed that there is an issue with the game's audio output. IGN's retail copy of the Wii bundle of Guitar Hero III lists the game as being compatible with Dolby Pro Logic II on the box, on the game and in the game manual. The manual also tells players they can turn stereo sound on or off in the game's audio settings menu.

However, the version of the game we tested did not list it as an available option. Making sure stereo was turned on in the Wii's main menu, we rocked out to Foghat's "Slow Ride," using headphones to listen to the audio output. Both the left and right audio channels produced the same output – a mono signal.

Guitar Hero III was developed by Neversoft, ported to the Wii by Vicarious Visions and published by Red Octane – all of which fall under the Activision corporate umbrella.

http://wii.ign.com/articles/840/8400...0&RSSid=840066

via: Codemayhem ...

We gave last year's Elite Beat Agents a 9.5, so you can bet we've been hoping for a sequel. Our hopes were fulfilled today. Japan's Dengeki Online reports that a sequel to the unique rhythm title is being readied for Japanese release later this year.

In Japan, the sequel will be titled Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Tamashii Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2 (the original was just Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan). The first part of the title translates to "Burn! Hot Blooded Rhythm Soul!". Now we're really excited!

Aside from the promise of multiplayer support for up to 4 players, details on the sequel have yet to be made public.

Nintendo Japan announced a few other games today, including more "non-games" that Japan is sure to eat up. Check back here at IGN DS and over at IGN Wii for more details to follow.

via:IGN ...

When we put together our Top 100 Games of All Time list way back in 2005, Sid Meier's Pirates! sat confidently at number six. In our estimation, only two Mario games, one Zelda title, Tetris and Sid's own Civilization III have ever bested the classic adventure romp. The game first pulled anchor in 1987 and saw two overhauls in later years on the PC, first in 1993 with Pirates! Gold and then 2004's remake with Sid Meier's Pirates!, which also saw a release on the Xbox.

The franchise has now set sail on the PlayStation Portable with Sid Meier's Pirates! Live the Life. The game is something of a mix between the PC and Xbox versions, bringing back some of the features that were stripped down for the console release, while also tweaking some of the PC's aspects, like sneaking into town. The resulting game is a classic in the truest sense of the word, a title that adheres to everything that we've loved about the franchise for roughly 20 years now. The port (get it?) did take on a few rough edges in the translation, but on the whole, it's an experience that's not to be missed.

For those who have never played Pirates! on any of its released systems, you've missed out on one of the most open-ended sandbox games that's ever been released. You begin a career (of which you'll have many) by choosing your starting year, difficulty and allegiance, either the English, Dutch, French or Spanish. Most every action you perform will alter your standing with one or more of these countries. Attack one of your enemies and not only will your country begin rewarding you with a new rank, some loot and maybe even some land, but the attacked country and possibly even its allies will turn against you.

Once a country has you on its bad side, its ships may begin attacking you at open sea and it may block your entrance into its towns. Anger a faction enough and its town may even open fire if you approach its vicinity. One of the game's coolest elements is that the ownership of towns can and will change over time. You can attack and take them over for your own country, and the computer will fight amongst itself over time. Indian tribes can also take over villages, and rogue pirates can attack and pillage towns and leave them empty.

While this sounds like Pirates! is based entirely around battles, that's not the case at all. You can make a lot of money by trading goods amongst towns or selling off booty that you've picked up from other ships. Treasure maps and the like will make their way into your hands, and the governor's daughters are always looking for a dance partner and even husband. Should you have an aversion to open warfare, you can make an entire career out of simply trading goods and looking for lost treasures.

The most important aspect of any game of Pirates! however is the management of your fleet and crew. You can pick up new seamen by either taking some on after winning a ship battle or by recruiting them at a local tavern. If you win a battle without sinking a ship you can add that to your fleet, though you need to manage your total crew count with the required hands for each ship, possibly leaving you with a small crew on your lead battle ship. You also need to make sure that your crew stays happy, and the bigger the crew, the more likely they are to become upset with "the man" (a.k.a. you) and attempt to take him down (a.k.a. mutiny).

Pirates! can arguably be called a collection of mini-games. Each of the actions, like ship battles, sneaking into a town, swordfights and such, are reasonably basic if not strategic, making it a very easy game to get into. You'll need a lot of skill for many of these things at the highest level, but this is where most of your notoriety will come into play.

While all of these things are rather simple, most all of them were implemented almost perfectly in their original design, adding up to make the game larger than the sum of its parts. Should a number of these have fallen short in the PSP port, especially the bigger ones like swordfights and ship battles, then the game would have come apart at the seems. Luckily, Full Fat did a mostly great job in keeping them very much intact and most of them are identical to their PC counterparts.

Swordfights, ship battles and general navigation work perfectly with the PSP's controls as these are more action-oriented tasks, and each of them work exactly as you'd find on the PC. Most of the towns and their various buildings, like the governor's mansion, tavern, shipyard and such, all work exactly as they do on the PC as well. However, these menus (as you generally just manage things) leave something to be desired here as they're just text options and don't offer the flash or presentation that we had assumed we'd find on the PSP. For instance, while in the tavern all you get is a cheap-looking line of text at the bottom of the screen ...

For a while it seemed like the PSP would never get a library of first-person shooters. Coded Arms delivered a decent romp in virtual space, and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex had some good ideas, but neither games made good use of the PSP. After these two shipped, Sony's little system got Medal of Honor Heroes, a game that finally showed what a really good FPS would be like on the handheld.

Soon afterward, Ubisoft and Activision announced their own FPS titles, Brothers in Arms D-Day and Call of Duty: Roads to Victory. The former shipped a little bit ago, though it sadly fails to elevate the FPS genre on the PSP. At this point gamers don't even care to have a revolutionary shooter on the PSP - they just want one that works well. And that's the problem with D-Day. Even with an adequate representation of elements seen in the PC versions, D-Day simply needs more to succeed as a portable FPS. It has clunky controls and muddy visuals, and the AI could use some sharpening.

D-Day takes place during the Normandy invasion and chronicles the harrowing account of two soldiers, Sergeants Baker and Hartsock. Sergeant Baker starred in the first PC game, titled Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 while Sergeant Hartsock appeared in the sequel, Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood. D-Day doesn't just borrow characters from the first two games; it takes entire missions and scenarios. Players will essentially get a "best of" collection with D-Day, as opposed to a new game. Not a bad thing in itself, but anyone expecting some fresh content may want to look elsewhere. Also, there are the aforementioned problems to worry about, as well.

First, the squad-based action of the original games simply doesn't translate well to the PSP - or at least not in D-Day. This has less to do with thinking through a tactical situation and everything to do with how players control themselves and their squad. Since there's only one analog stick on the system, it's difficult to keep an eye on surroundings while engaging enemies in heated gunfights. The game does include the situational awareness view, which offers a birds-eye view of the action, but this only helps coordinate tactics. Surviving can get pretty difficult when actually running around the battlefield while struggling with squad commands and a funky control scheme. D-Day offers two different schemes, but neither works all that well.

As such, all but the most experience players will die constantly. But thanks to a handy-dandy checkpoint system, that's never really an issue. Brothers in Arms is a challenging series to master, both on PC and PSP. Fortunately, the save system lets a player beat sections of a stage without too heavy a penalty when death does occur. But the secret to not dying is understanding that D-Day is not Medal of Honor Heroes - running into the heat of battle will only result in premature death. That's where D-Day's cover mechanic comes into play. It actually makes for interesting firefights because the game makes it almost impossible for a player to take the Rambo route - it's necessary to think ahead.

In short, players need to use their squad to suppress enemies. This opens the door to various flanking maneuvers the player can then carry out while the enemy is confused and huddled under cover. It's easy to see when an enemy is suppressed thanks to a red circle floating above their heads - a nice touch given many of the game's environments get rather dark.

The only problem with this 'suppress and flank' dynamic is that it tends to get a little old after a while. Players can get through many of the game's encounters by doing the same thing in exactly the same way. Maybe this would be fine if the game in general progressed smoothly, but it doesn't. Where players could execute finely tuned strategies and engage in dynamic firefights in the PC original, the PSP version offers an experience far less refined. It still works on a fundamental level, but it's simply not as fun as it used to be. Players will struggle with the controls and camera every bit as much as with the Nazis they're trying to kill.

The game also has a few AI problems, too. Most of the enemies in D-Day seem content to get shot in the face and not do too much about it. It's strange to say a game with poor AI can actually be difficult, but that's the case here. But that's beside the point. It would have been nice to see enemies react appropriately to adverse situations like they did in the PC games, but that really doesn't happen all that often. And finally, the game's visuals are very mixed bag. The game can look downright pretty at times, and at others, muddy and unimpressive. There's a good amount of detail on the soldiers and in some of the environments, but overall, D-Day could have used a little more flair.

Closing Comments
Brothers in Arms D-Day could have been a ...

According to the Entertainment Software Rating Board, developer Ubisoft is set to bring its open-world car game, Driver: Parallel Lines, to Wii. The game recently popped up on the ESRB's official website, an unofficial, but reliable confirmation that it's coming.

Driver: Parallel Lines, is sure to be an enhanced port of the already-released PlayStation 2 and Xbox games of the same name, which received "decent" 7.2 ratings by our IGN sister sites. In the title, gamers speed through city streets and go it on foot to accomplish a series of missions. The game's quasi-sandbox presentation is much more reminiscent of the Grand Theft Auto franchise than it has been in previous Driver outings. Obviously, the Wii build of the game will undoubtedly feature new, remote-specific controls.

We contacted Ubisoft for comment, but a representative for the company had none. We expect to learn much more about the Wii version of the title in the coming weeks, though, so stay tuned.

via:IGN ...

Last March, EA released what it had hoped would be its answer to the open world genre dominated by Grand Theft Auto. It featured some interesting new ideas like the ability to take over fronts and build up your empire, along with of course a very strong storyline taken straight from the films. It wasn't perfect, but EA wasn't finished. With the Xbox 360 release half a year later, the next-gen version of The Godfather saw the addition of new content, online rankings, new abilities and more, making it something of an expanded edition of the original release.

The game is now headed to the PlayStation 3 and Wii by the names of The Godfather: The Don's Edition and The Godfather: Blackhand Edition, respectively. The two games will be identical content-wise aside from the PlayStation 3 version's online leaderboard rankings, the same that we saw on the 360. Other than the differing control mechanisms, the two versions will feature the same new additions over the 360 version, making these the biggest Godfather releases yet.

The Blackhand Edition for the Wii will make full use of the Wiimote and Nunchuck for many of the game's actions. If someone is on their knees, you just pull the controllers in an upwards manner to lift them off the ground. Moving the controllers from side to side will yank them around, and pushing them forward and then releasing the grab buttons will shove them away. Fighting is handled similarly to what we've seen in Wii Sports Boxing - if you want to throw a hook, you actually throw one and your onscreen persona will land a vicious punch.

Execution moves are done via performing gestures. If you have a bat in your hand, you can sneak up behind someone and pull both controllers towards you and your character will strangle the guy with the blunt weapon. Pushing the controllers forward while wielding a shotgun will toss the guy to the ground and then blow his head off. Similarly, if you move your hands from your sides to meet together out in front of you, you'll strangle someone with your bare hands.

Driving and general movement will default to being controlled via the Nunchuck's analog stick, with camera movement assigned to the D-pad on the Wiimote. In this setup, aiming will still be done via a lock-on system with the Wiimote used to dial in pressure point shots to the knees, arms or what have you. Alternatively, you can switch to a free-aiming mode where all of your aiming and steering will be done with the Wiimote.

EA looks to have not only added some new features to The Godfather for these releases, but tweaked some old mechanics as well for easier play. For example, while you're still able to cycle through weapons one-by-one, a quick-select wheel has been implemented that works something like what you'd find in Ratchet & Clank.or Trauma Center. As well, the skill tree has been expanded a great deal to encompass Enforcer and Operator branches. Essentially, these give you more control over various upgrades to your character while also providing more specific bonuses, like the ability to heal faster or call in a hit squad faster.

Speaking of the hit squad, that's one of the cooler new elements that we saw on display. While you're still able to hire someone to stick with you on a mission, you're now able to call in the Corleone hit squad, a group of four men that come to your assistance and lay waste to anyone around you. They'll stick with you for a while, allowing you to take a small army into a mission to take down a rival family.

Similarly, the cops can now also fight for you. You can bribe them in the same way that you could before, where they'll look the other way while you take over an establishment, but you can now pay the entire police force to take to the streets and help you take out a rival family. Combined with the hit squad, you're able to take exponentially more help with you on a mission than before.

A series of new environments will also make their way into the game. Rooftop areas will now be rather common, with plenty of shootouts taking place high above the city. A couple new transportation hubs will find their way into the games as well, namely a train station and a shipyard. Taking these over will earn you a lot more loot than a barber shop or something similar, making them prime targets on your way to the top.

Lastly, the variety in The Godfather has been greatly expanded for the Wii and PS3 versions of the game. Each family will now have their own unique compound, unlike before where they were essentially copies of each other. More pedestrians and vehicles will fill the roads and sidewalks in the game, and more unique models for each will help spice things up. Oh, and speaking of cars, you'll now be able to take them and their passengers out with the new car bombs, one of the unlockable skills you can earn. Cool stuff.

The ...