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by Published on July 20th, 2009 21:02
Nintendo only adds four titles to the Wii and DS this week, with the Virtual Console passed up completely, but hey...one of the games has "Final Fantasy" in it, and the kids love Final Fantasy.
Of course it also has "Crystal Chronicles" in it, which tends to make many a Final Fantasy fan cringe, but we won't hold that against Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a Darklord for WiiWare (1,000 points). It's a different kind of tower defense game, in which the player places monsters and traps throughout his or her tower, in order to keep heroes from getting to the Dark Crystal on the top floor. Hopefully no Gelflings show up. Damn Gelflings.
Along with the game itself, Square Enix has also released two packs of downloadable content for My Life as a Darklord, getting an early jump on a little extra-added revenue. 400 points scores you the Darklord Armory, adding four destructive spells and one healing spell to your arsenal, each useable once per battle. For 200 points you can purchase the Vile Ribbon, an accessory for the game's protagonist Mira that adds 50 NP to your pool before every battle. And no, I don't know what NP are either, but 50 of them are worth $2.
My Life as a Darklord is joined on WiiWare by Battle Poker (800 points), which is standard poker with a card grabbing twist, and 5 Spots Party (500 points), a game that challenges players to find five differences between a pair of similar pictures. 5 Spots Party also wins the least intriguing game name of the year award.
A lone DSiWare title rounds out this week's list. Art Style: Zengage (500 DSi points) is a sliding square matching puzzle with more than 100 stages taking place in a surreal world, and at this point I'm not sure the description even matters. The Art Style series has slipped into collectible status for me on the DSi, with any title prefaced by those words an automatic download. Let's hope Nintendo doesn't abuse this power. Art Style: Barbie Princess? Noooooo!
WiiWare
FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: My Life as a Darklord
Publisher: SQUARE ENIX
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: E10+ (Everyone 10 and Older) - Mild Fantasy Violence, Mild Suggestive Themes
Price: 1,000 Wii Points™
Description: Step into the royal shoes of the Darklord's daughter as she installs traps and monsters inside her tower to fight back the endless waves of invading adventurers in this world-conquest RPG. Known as Artifacts, these monsters and traps are your only hope in keeping the adventurers from destroying the Dark Crystal on the top floor. Fly your tower across the land and conquer every stage on your way to dominating the entire world.
Battle Poker
Publisher: Left Field Productions
Players: 1-4
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone)
Price: 800 Wii Points
Description: Battle Poker is a family-friendly card game with up to four players battling against the clock to make the best five-card hand possible. Battles are played across multiple rounds, and points are scored for each round based on the quality of the hand. Each player uses a Wii Remote™ controller to point and click on a standard deck of cards on the screen. The first click flips the card over, at which point it can be grabbed by anyone else. You've got to have fast fingers and eyes to grab the cards you need before someone else snatches them.
5 Spots Party
Publisher: Cosmonaut Games
Players: 1-4
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone)
Price: 500 Wii Points
Description: Have fun with the entire family and compete in three different play modes. 5 Spots Party is a game of skill for all ages based on the popular game of finding five differences. The goal is to find the greatest number of differences in the pictures shown. In the party modes, you must compete with other players and find as many mistakes as possible. In the 1-Player mode, you must find the differences before time runs out in order to beat the game's highest scores. How far do you think you can go?
Nintendo DSiWare
Art Style: ZENGAGE™
Publisher: Nintendo
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone)
Price: 500 Nintendo DSi Points™
Description: Do you dream of relaxing with a great puzzle game? Art Style: ZENGAGE revolves around sliding cells (squares) to match colors with cores (beads) located on the board. Clear each stage by matching all of the cores and cells. As you progress through the game's 100-plus stages, you'll encounter cells with special characteristics, such as immovability, which further add to the challenge. To truly master ZENGAGE, you must keep your mind sharp and employ careful strategy to complete stages in as few moves as possible. Combining wistful graphics and mesmerizing sound, ZENGAGE creates a surreal world that should be experienced by all puzzle gaming fans.
http://kotaku.com/5318440/the-ninten...-as-a-darklord ...by Published on July 20th, 2009 21:02
Nintendo only adds four titles to the Wii and DS this week, with the Virtual Console passed up completely, but hey...one of the games has "Final Fantasy" in it, and the kids love Final Fantasy.
Of course it also has "Crystal Chronicles" in it, which tends to make many a Final Fantasy fan cringe, but we won't hold that against Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a Darklord for WiiWare (1,000 points). It's a different kind of tower defense game, in which the player places monsters and traps throughout his or her tower, in order to keep heroes from getting to the Dark Crystal on the top floor. Hopefully no Gelflings show up. Damn Gelflings.
Along with the game itself, Square Enix has also released two packs of downloadable content for My Life as a Darklord, getting an early jump on a little extra-added revenue. 400 points scores you the Darklord Armory, adding four destructive spells and one healing spell to your arsenal, each useable once per battle. For 200 points you can purchase the Vile Ribbon, an accessory for the game's protagonist Mira that adds 50 NP to your pool before every battle. And no, I don't know what NP are either, but 50 of them are worth $2.
My Life as a Darklord is joined on WiiWare by Battle Poker (800 points), which is standard poker with a card grabbing twist, and 5 Spots Party (500 points), a game that challenges players to find five differences between a pair of similar pictures. 5 Spots Party also wins the least intriguing game name of the year award.
A lone DSiWare title rounds out this week's list. Art Style: Zengage (500 DSi points) is a sliding square matching puzzle with more than 100 stages taking place in a surreal world, and at this point I'm not sure the description even matters. The Art Style series has slipped into collectible status for me on the DSi, with any title prefaced by those words an automatic download. Let's hope Nintendo doesn't abuse this power. Art Style: Barbie Princess? Noooooo!
WiiWare
FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: My Life as a Darklord
Publisher: SQUARE ENIX
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: E10+ (Everyone 10 and Older) - Mild Fantasy Violence, Mild Suggestive Themes
Price: 1,000 Wii Points™
Description: Step into the royal shoes of the Darklord's daughter as she installs traps and monsters inside her tower to fight back the endless waves of invading adventurers in this world-conquest RPG. Known as Artifacts, these monsters and traps are your only hope in keeping the adventurers from destroying the Dark Crystal on the top floor. Fly your tower across the land and conquer every stage on your way to dominating the entire world.
Battle Poker
Publisher: Left Field Productions
Players: 1-4
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone)
Price: 800 Wii Points
Description: Battle Poker is a family-friendly card game with up to four players battling against the clock to make the best five-card hand possible. Battles are played across multiple rounds, and points are scored for each round based on the quality of the hand. Each player uses a Wii Remote™ controller to point and click on a standard deck of cards on the screen. The first click flips the card over, at which point it can be grabbed by anyone else. You've got to have fast fingers and eyes to grab the cards you need before someone else snatches them.
5 Spots Party
Publisher: Cosmonaut Games
Players: 1-4
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone)
Price: 500 Wii Points
Description: Have fun with the entire family and compete in three different play modes. 5 Spots Party is a game of skill for all ages based on the popular game of finding five differences. The goal is to find the greatest number of differences in the pictures shown. In the party modes, you must compete with other players and find as many mistakes as possible. In the 1-Player mode, you must find the differences before time runs out in order to beat the game's highest scores. How far do you think you can go?
Nintendo DSiWare
Art Style: ZENGAGE™
Publisher: Nintendo
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone)
Price: 500 Nintendo DSi Points™
Description: Do you dream of relaxing with a great puzzle game? Art Style: ZENGAGE revolves around sliding cells (squares) to match colors with cores (beads) located on the board. Clear each stage by matching all of the cores and cells. As you progress through the game's 100-plus stages, you'll encounter cells with special characteristics, such as immovability, which further add to the challenge. To truly master ZENGAGE, you must keep your mind sharp and employ careful strategy to complete stages in as few moves as possible. Combining wistful graphics and mesmerizing sound, ZENGAGE creates a surreal world that should be experienced by all puzzle gaming fans.
http://kotaku.com/5318440/the-ninten...-as-a-darklord ...by Published on July 20th, 2009 21:01
While Team 17's upcoming Alien Breed renewal, Alien Breed Evolution, will be coming to XBLA, PSN and PC, VG247 has learned that the game will be arriving on XBLA a bit earlier than the other two. "It will come to PS3 and it will come to PC as well, but initially it'll be Live Arcade," Team 17's Martyn Brown said.
Why not release on all three platforms simultaneously from the get go? Brown says it has to do with Microsoft giving Team 17 a chance before anyone else would. "They showed a lot of faith in us early doors [British for "early on"] and that's kind of kept going really," Brown notes. He even goes as far as to call the relationship a "first-party publishing relationship" (which is the case for Team 17's other franchise, Worms, but not Alien Breed). Hey, Microsoft, you trying to put a ring on that finger?
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/07/20/mi...eed-hits-xbla/ ...by Published on July 20th, 2009 21:00
Greenpeace today released three videos to highlight what they say is the presence of "highly toxic substances" in video game consoles.
The stop-motion videos turn the bits and pieces of the Playstation 3, Wii and Xbox 360 into fictional spokesman defending the companies decisions.
About two years ago Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony were added to Greenpeace's Guide to Greener Electronics. The organization said they added the companies to the list because of their use of toxic substances, including polyvinyl chloride and brominated flame retardants, in the consoles.
Sony has not announced any plans to drop the use of the materials, while Microsoft says they will in 2011, according to Greenpeace. Nintendo says they will, but has not set a date, the organization says.
"These videos contrast the weak excuses of console makers about toxics phase out with the very real impact of toxic chemicals when old electronics end up being dumped in the developing world,". said Tom Dowdall, Toxics campaigner at Greenpeace International. "Do Sony laptop users deserve fewer toxic chemicals than Playstation gamers?"
"It might be easy to dismiss consoles makers' low scores as not playing ball with Greenpeace, but in fact when users are getting toxic chemicals as unwanted and unneeded extras in their that shiny new console box, it's the consumer who's getting short changed", he added.
http://kotaku.com/5318542/greenpeace...ty-in-consoles ...by Published on July 20th, 2009 20:59
Would you like to be one of the movers and shakers to get the upcoming Xbox 360 dashboard update before all the filthy, "regular" people? If so, you'll be happy to know that Major Nelson has just announced an Xbox Live Update preview program. Microsoft ran a similar program prior to the NXE, which allowed lots of gamers everywhere the chance to see all the fabulous updates early.
The new update includes plenty of cool new features, including Games on Demand Movie Parties for Netflix and Avatar Awardables, so we know you want in. To register, simply head over to Microsoft Connect, sign in with the Live ID connected to your Gamertag and then fill out the "Xbox LIVE Update Preview Sign Up" survey. The program is open to both Silver and Gold Xbox Live members, though Major Nelson notes that preference will be given to Gold members. If you make it into the program -- MS is accepting "multiple thousands" of participants -- you should be contacted in about a week.
Good luck!
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/07/20/ms...eview-program/ ...by Published on July 20th, 2009 20:58
The Nintendo Wii couldn't contain the Raving Rabbids' first solo game, so Ubisoft is bringing Rabbids Go Home to the DS as well, with extra-added functionality for those who've upgraded to the DSi.
Featuring the same storyline as the Wii version, Rabbids Go Home DS trades in the console's Katamari-esque collecting gameplay for a puzzle-adventure format. The little screaming mutant bunnies work their way through 15 levels, solving puzzles in order to gather enough garbage to build a tower to the moon, which their vast collective intellect has determined to be their home.
Once you've completed the story mode, there's four challenge modes with twenty puzzles apiece, as well as a level editor that lets players create and share their own puzzles with the Ubisoft community.
As an added bonus for those of you with the DSi, Ubisoft is including My Rabbids, a camera-based application that allows players to customize their photos with Rabbids clip-art. It's not the most innovative use of the technology, per se, but at least someone is using the damn thing, right?
Look for Rabbids Go Home DS to hit stores this holiday season.
http://kotaku.com/5318669/rabbids-go...he-ds/gallery/ ...by Published on July 20th, 2009 20:53
The San-Diego Comic-Con is all about exclusive goodies, and in that spirit Mad Catz is hawking a limited number of exclusive Street Fighter IV arcade sticks and pads to show attendees.
http://kotaku.com/5318457/mad-catz-b...s-to-comic+con ...by Published on July 20th, 2009 20:20
It's often been said that one of the many advantages of working on console is that you have a fixed set of hardware to work with, that you can "write to the metal" and code to the "bleeding edge" of the spec. However, our sources suggest that this simply isn't an optionfor Xbox 360 developers. Microsoft doesn't allow it. Suspicions were first aroused by a tweet by EA Vancouver's Jim Hejl who revealed that addressing the Xenos GPU on 360 involves using the DirectX APIs, which in turn incurs a cost on CPU resources. Hejl later wrote in a further message that he'd written his own API for manual control of the GPU ring, incurring little or no hit to the main CPU. "Cert would hate it tho," he added mysteriously. According to other dev sources, what that actually means in real terms is that circumventing the use of the standard APIs would result in a submitted game not ever making it past Microsoft's strict certification guidelines which state that all GPU calls need to be routed through DirectX. Compare and contrast with PS3 development, where writing your own command buffers and addressing the RSX chip directly through its LibGCM interface is pretty much the standard way of talking to the hardware. So in real, practical terms, what does this actually mean? First of all, in many situations the CPU usage we're talking about here is not negligible, and in some cases could be the dividing line between a solid or an inconsistent frame rate. However, having control of your own command buffers as you do on PS3 offers up a lot more flexibility. Let's say you're rendering a forest. Chances are that most of the same trees are going to be rendered from one frame to the next, with maybe a 10 per cent variance as the view changes. With Xbox 360, you'll be calling most of the same functions with the same parameters for each frame, while DirectX translates those into command buffers and feeds them to the GPU. With the LibGCM/PS3 approach though, you could build buffers for a set amount of trees across several groups. A simple check could discern if those buffers are still relevant for the next frame, and if so, they can be re-used, whereas with DirectX (and OpenGL for that matter) they will be regenerated anew for each frame. Sounds cool eh? Well in this specific case, there are both advantages and disadvantages. First of all, it's going to require a lot of memory, and that is in short supply on any console – especially on PS3. Secondly, some might call it a somewhat "cheap" optimisation. It'll up your maximum FPS, but won't do anything for the minimum – where optimisation is needed the most. But the point is that this is just one example, and there are many cases where having the choice is a seriously useful option to have in the development toolkit. If all of this sounds pretty harsh on Microsoft, it's worth noting that there is a ton of excellent reasons for standing by this requirement. It means that the platform holder can update the system software and hardware specification and ensure that all games past, present and future will work on all iterations of the console. More than that, in the here and now, it can easily be argued that the implementation of DirectX is a key reason that the Xbox 360's tools and development environment are considered to be generally excellent. Not only that, but game makers are familiar with the standard, and code is easily portable to and from PC. A firm adherence to DirectX is also good news for gamers too: it makes the chances of full backwards compatibility on Xbox Next a far more realistic prospect...
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/di...nce-blog-entry ...by Published on July 20th, 2009 20:19
OverClocked ReMix has finished its community-wide remix of Final Fantasy IV, and is offering the massive album free either whole or dissected, track-by-track.
Over 36 people collaborated to produce 46 arrangements of Nobuo Uematsu's highly-regarded score. The tone has changed to rock-opera as a result, says the OC ReMix website, although there are a range of other styles stuffed in.
There aren't many reasons not to sample a track or two, then - not least because Final Fantasy IV was released on DS recently and a sequel produced for WiiWare.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/ff...k-remixed-free ...by Published on July 20th, 2009 20:18
via Computer and Video Games
Following last week's news that Sega's awesome tactical action game, Valkyria Chronicles, would be getting a sequel on PSP, comes the first batch of shots.
Sega Europe hasn't got any info on a UK release but we fully expect to see one, even if the first one was overlooked on PS3, which is a crying shame.
The screens have been lifted form the just-opened Japanese website. If you can read it, let us know what it says. We're dying to know more.
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