SpawnPoint

Sadly I didn’t get to interview Jun Takeuchi, the producer for Capcom’s newest iteration of the Resident Evil series. However, I did watch the interview (I laughed when they referred to Resident Evil as Bio Hazard – think about it, as a pure translation, you can see how it fits) and this post will mainly be an overview of what Jun talked about.

The main theme that came across throughout the entirety of the interview was that they wanted everything to be unparalleled in terms of quality (nothing to complain about from this end).

The first major point Jun talked about was the idea of Light and Dark. He outlined how the Resident Evil series had always worked on the abstract concept of Light vs. Dark but could never really implement it directly. Resident Evil does just that. If you’ve seen any screenshots or videos of RE 5, you’ll notice that it has a very harsh lighting scheme to it and the contrast between outside in the broad daylight and in the shadow is huge. When the player goes from the sunlight into a dark area they will nearly literately be blinded as the “eyes” of the game adjust to the change in light. RE5 plans to use this to their advantage in terms of scaring the player when they are the most venerable.  

The second and really only other major point that Jun talked about was the additions/changes to the game-play from RE4. The majority of close-quarters combat was done with the “action” button and the action done then depended on the situation it was used. Jun says that he wants this back and wants more emphisis on it, especially during close-quarters combat. He also mentioned that he wants the gun-play to let the players have a large selection of weaponry to destroy the hoards of zombies and for the player to not have to worry so much about watching the number of bullets left in the player’s pistol.

Check out the interview in its translated entirety over at GameTrailers - http://www.gametrailers.com/game/2036.html.

It was never really explained to me how the Spartans of the Halo series were so strong and resilient to attack. Well, I’m still not too sure on the resilience front but if they are humans inside some suits, it might not be as science fiction as some may think.

Introducing the Sarcos XOS exoskeleton, a suit that has a working prototype (see here: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/humanoids/sarcoss-exoskeleton-is-more-amazing-than-we-thought-326128.php). A normal person can jump into the suit and as they move the exoskeleton will move with them, except for the fact that the endurance of metal is far above a human’s. That and the suit is far stronger than a human. Planned for use in the military, the XOS could be the next step in one on one combat. All that is required now for the “combat evolved” that the original halo spoke of is some ability to take a large amount of bullets without getting any bigger or cumbersome (check out the video, I personally want to see what it can do to a punching bag with full force).

When the Original F.E.A.R. was released, it was praised for its many qualities; from its spectacular A.I., to its horror filled scenes and its the ability to manipulate the environment due its detail to physics. From previews that I’ve read, Project Origin (the spiritual successor to F.E.A.R. – legal issues halt the ability to actually name it F.E.A.R.) will have a much larger focus on the narrative of the main character that the player controlled throughout the first game and the young, tortured girl Alma.

Other than the narrative, the game promises to make the “the best first-person shooter combat ever” – Lead Producer Troy Skinner. They plan to do this; for one at least by “making the destruction happen an inch from the player’s face”, which from personal experience of dealing with the intricacies of immersion, this is a good way to make the player feel as though they are there in the drama and only barely surviving.

From the previewers (www.gamespot.com) descriptions of their hands-on experiences with the game Monolith (the developers of the game) are doing a pretty good job at making the player feel like their placed in such intense situations.

-
With PSP games reaching wow-levels in the field of technical achievement one must ask, how powerful is the PSP and will it eventually overtake the PS2 in its ability to output technical masterpieces?
We’ve seen a steadily increase of technical achievements on the PSP. Daxter could be seen as one of the first that tried to push the system to its limits and Daxter has been challenged by games like GTA III: Liberty Stories, God of War: Chains of Olympus and most recently Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core; each being able to squeeze little more juice than the previous. When comparing some of these titles to predecessors on the PS2 (original God of War for example) the main complaint is that there is less. Less game-play, game-time, weapons, etc. This is the main problem with technical progress on the PSP and that is fitting everything on that tiny UMD disc.

To have a look at the nitty, gritty technical specs of the PSP vs. the PS2 we find that the CPU of the PSP is 33MHZ faster than the PS2 but this is not all we must concern ourselves with. The hardware designed specifically to deal with graphical calculations on the PS2 is split into three parts, making for the ability to run in “parallel” and therefore theoretically faster than the PSP. The other major comparison is storage space. The PS2 uses DVDs which hold 5ish gigs, whereas the UMD discs only hold 1.4. I’ve also heard that the time that it takes to extract data from the discs into a running game is a lot slower with UMD than DVD. Personally I would say that doing the same thing the PS2 would usually prevail, however the trick here is that the size of the PSP screen is a lot smaller than that of your average T.V. that you run a PS2 from and because of that; textures and models in the game require less detail.

The storage issue may become irrelevant in the future as SD-Memory cards storage space is continuing to get bigger or game developers may move to multiple UMDs to offer a better experience. As it stands at the moment the biggest problem is storage and until that problem is resolved we’ll continue to hear reviews complain that there could have been just that little bit more content.

 What with the release of Metal Gear Solid 4, GTA IV, Fallout 3 and many other largely anticipated games, a few goodies are falling under the radar. This post plans to showcase some that I have found.

MLB 08: The Show – PSP

Baseball, while not so celebrated in New Zealand (we deal with Rugby) is a great sport to emulate in a game and MLB 08 does just that with great precision. While also on the PS3; the PSP version is not a straight port with dropped down graphics for more sales just based on the franchise. MLB 08 works from the idea “if it ain’t broke, then don’t fix it”, so if you’ve played MLB 07 don’t expect anything new to blow your mind. However, it found what was broke with the last game and fixed nearly every major issue. If you have a PSP hungry for a great baseball experience, MLB 08: The Show will hit all the right spots.  

Ikaruga – XLA

While Ikaruga may not reach the height of triple A titles, it gets a place as one of the best top-down shooters out there. Originally released in 2002 on the Dreamcast; a review of the original from Gamespot’s Greg Kasavin sums it up nicely: “Ikaruga achieves the impossible: It's an accessible, over-the-top, extremely intense, highly challenging, utterly action-packed space shooter, but one that demands the utmost of care and restraint on behalf of the player.”

The World Ends With You – DS

Square Enix may quite possibly have been a strong influence in starting the emo craze, with its stories containing angsty, teenage lead characters being put in situations where anything that could go wrong, did then it’s no less bluntly obvious in The World Ends With You where the name itself screams emo. An emo style isn’t necessarily bad, especially when you add it with the stunningly amazing artists and designers at Square with a game that’s target audience is (I dear say it) emo. So moving on from the fact that its emo, the game is full of unique game play. First off, the combat uses both screens of the DS at the same time; the top screen utilizing the d-pad and buttons in a DDR’esque fashion while the touch screen uses a system of pins that have different powers that players manipulate with the stylus to defeat foes. This, added in with character development in the way of buying cooler looking (and stat increasing) clothing, the ability to read characters’ minds and an angst driven plot; The World Ends With You is definitely a game you want to take a closer look into as there is more depth than there may seem.