Console Lineup: The Year Ahead

[Velorath]

Here's the Crackdown trailer for anyone interested (I don't mean to shoot you down Vel, but I think it looks weak. It's 3rd person action, but with 1st person animation and movement. Cityscape, and general artwork look bad too. This comes as a surprise to me since it's virtually a first party title).

The demo should be up for download in a few hours I think (2am PST on the 23rd from what I hear) so I'll be giving it a try soon enough.


Edit:  On another note for 2007 games, Seriously Square, fucking stop it already.  For those too lazy to click Square is releasing slightly updated versions of FF1 and FF2 for the PSP in celebration of the 20th anniversary of FF in their continued attempt to avoid actually having to create something new.

[stray]

In other news (and this may be old):

Virtua Fighter won't have online capabilities. 

Ever. Not for the PS3. Not for the 360.


I don't see my friends enough these days to enjoy the competitive nature of this game. Online mode would have been the shit (and something I'd be so much better at than FPS's as well).

[Sky]

Don't forget GTA 2007.

I'll miss Mass Effect, hopefully it gets the Jade Empire treatment at some point. Bioshock I'll play on the pc, Two Worlds, Spore, bunch of good pc titles this year. Gears should hit the pc in the next year or two, and spring 2008 should see GTA 4 on pc. Oh, and mmmmm Dragon Age. Just off the top of my head.

Not to make this a crusade post, either (NOT SERIOUS BUSINESS). Just pointing out it's a great time to be a gamer in general, no matter what platform you favor. Wish I could budget in a 360 for a few things, too.

[stray]

I don't mean to exclude stuff like GTA, it's just that it's multiplatform.

But...

I think I'll take the time to list the multiplatform highlights later (may as well).

Personally, I'm kind of losing interest in GTA. I don't doubt it'll be an incredible and large world, especially without the XBox/PS2/old DVD constraints, but I really want to see them improve upon the gameplay even more. I'm burned out on the old formula.

[stray]

Uh, actually, I'm probably the wrong person to list multiplatform games. I don't care about most of them.

Personally looking forward:

Assassin's Creed
Rainbow 6 Vegas
Splinter Cell Double Agent
 
Sonic
Armored Core 4
Virtua Fighter 5
Virtua Tennis
Sega Rally Revo

Fatal Inertia
Bladestorm

Alone in the Dark 5

Jericho

GTA IV

Strangelhold (Heh...That'd be second trashiest game I get outside Age of Conan).

Spider-Man 3 (unfortunately, it's not Treyarch. Will probably suck)

[Velorath]

Been playin around with the Crackdown demo a little bit.  Nothin great really, but I can see it appealing to GTA fans.

[Velorath]

Related to the Gears of War sales figures we were talking about earlier in here, the game released in Japan last week and reached #7 for the top selling games lof the week with sales of around 33,000.  Not too bad, all things considered.  For the record, #1 was the new .hack game for the PS2, #2 was a new Wario game for the DS, and #3 was Shining Force EXA for the PS2 (which scored a 35 in Famitsu, which is encouraging).  And of course 18 out of the top 30 games were for the DS.

[stray]

So umm...UT2K7 finally announced for the 360 (not sure why it took them this long), and it's not called UT2K7 anymore. It shall now be known as: Unreal Tournament 3.

Kane and Lynch now coming to PS3.

[Strazos]

Is that the 360 name, or the franchise name?

Also, wouldn't it be more properly named UT 4?

[stray]

Is that the 360 name, or the franchise name?

Also, wouldn't it be more properly named UT 4?

Franchise name.

UT4....Hmm...

Well, I guess that maybe they're silently admitting that UT2K3 was shit? /shrug

It did use the same engine as UT2K4 though, so they really aren't seperate UT games per se. UT2K4 is just what 2K3 was supposed to be.

Thirdly, I suppose this makes it convenient for them align their engine name (UE3) with their flagship game name (UT3).

...

Anyways, yeah, it's pretty confusing.

[Strazos]

Shame...I liked the 2Kx naming convention.

[stray]

Umm....Yeah, forget about this "nextgen" shit. PS2 still rocks:

http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?r=1&type=wmv&id=16885

Pretty great models for a 7 year old console: Pic

[Trippy]

Umm....Yeah, forget about this "nextgen" shit. PS2 still rocks:

http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?r=1&type=wmv&id=16885

Pretty great models for a 7 year old console: Pic

Given the resolution of those images and no obvious signs of image scaling it's highly unlikely that's an in-game real-time rendered frame.

[stray]

They're just blown up, I think.

Here's another: http://media.1up.com/media?id=3188633

As you can see, the background is nothing to get excited about. So I doubt the scene is prerendered.

Besides, that griffon he's killing doesn't look too different in the pic than it does in the vid.

[Trippy]

They're just blown up, I think.

No.

Original Image (1098 x 960)

Image scaled down to 549 x 480 using Bicubic Sharper (original image is not a 4:3 rectangle)

549 x 480 image scaled up to 1098 x 960 using Bicubic Sharper

Notice the loss of detail on the griffin between the first and third images. Also notice how the sword in the third image in now anti-aliased, which is in fact how Full Scene Anti-Aliasing (FSAA) works -- a larger image is rendered and then shrunk down.

[stray]

Fair enough.

Still looks pretty good though :). Considering what it's running on.

Anyways, here's another: Colossus footage that was gettin' tossed around awhile back.

[Velorath]

Schild will probably be happy to hear (on the off chance he didn't already know), that yet another PS2 JRPG has been confirmed as coming to the US this year.  Atlus has announced they'll be publishing the Vanillaware developed game Odin Sphere.

[schild]

Yea, I posted it on a couple sites. Super stoked. I'll post a video tonight methinks.

Edit: And yea, I was one of the press that had to keep my mouth shut after E3. It's not a JRPG. It's a side-scrolling ARPG.

[Velorath]

I used the term JRPG loosely I'll admit.  It's an RPG from Japan, it just happens to be a side-scrolling, action RPG.

[Riggswolfe]

Side scrolling as in some kind of platformer gameplay? Or am I missing something?

[stray]

Probably not platformer so much as brawler. I hear it even has Street Fighter-ish combos. For an RPG, that sounds cool.

[Velorath]

For those interested, both IGN and 1up already have reviews up for God of War 2.

[stray]

Geez. Almost perfect scores.

[schild]

What did you expect?

[stray]

Nothing different from IGN, I guess. But 1UP can actually be overly-critical at times. Didn't expect a 9.5.


Though I don't doubt it'll be a rockin' game.

[stray]

[EDIT] Nevermind. Bad post.

Premature XBLA news (gotta a little two excited about that WC game before reading about it ;) ).

[HaemishM]

I thought the Wing Commander game sounded fun.

The Wii Sonic game is supposed to be shipping today, I think.

[stray]

I thought the Wing Commander game sounded fun.

Gamespot preview

It's not even a first person cockpit game. It's third person, and you can't even attack from the top or bottom. It looks like a multiplayer,  arcade-y version of Star Control or Asteroids.

Not that that couldn't be fun, but that isn't Wing Commander to me. I want space shooter dogfights.

[HaemishM]

D'oh. If it's not 3d, it's not Wing Commander. Could still be fun as a Star Control sort of game, but it's not WC.

[Sky]

Wing Commander was such a great game. Sliding sideways strafing a kilrathi formation while flying through an asteroid field, hoping to take them out before they emerged on your freighter...

What happened to good space sims? XvT, WC, maybe WC2, and ? Freelancer was a mouse-driven dumbed down experience and that's probably the last one I played. Actually, SWG was probably the last 'decent' space sim I played.

I was thinking that when considering Spore. This huge universe, I hope it has a good exploration aspect. I've got X3, not sure how the flying part is, since it's crashing on the intro movie, probably need some codec or something.

[stray]

Even though I like them, I can understand the death of adventure games. But space sims? No. That's a genre that should have never went away.

The closest I've played to that kind of experience is Ace Combat (actual attempts at space sims haven't). It's not space of course, but the dogfighting is similar. Kind of in that sweet spot between arcade/sim.

[Zar]

What happened to good space sims? XvT, WC, maybe WC2, and ?

Check out Descent: Freespace and (especially) Descent: Freespace 2.  The last two great space sims made, imo.  They both hearken back to Wing Commander, and by WC I mean good WC, not the long, poorly acted movies the last ones turned into.  They do both have a great story though, and they play like space sims should, not that dumbed down arcadey version you get in games nowadays like Freelancer.  Also, the capital ships are HUUUGE.  They put the capital ships from most other space sims to shame.  Your fighter is a tiny speck next to these gargantuan things.  It's fucking exhilerating to be flying between two behemoths which are literally ripping one another apart with massive beam weapons.

They came out a number of years ago.  I think I can remember seeing them in some sort of bargain space pack collection, but I'm unsure.  You do owe it to yourself to find them if you're a space sim fan though.

[stray]

Freespace is real old (almost as old as the last WC), but I've never played the sequel (or the mods).

DarkStar One is the most recent game to attempt all of this, I think. It's not bad, but it's not WC. More like Freelancer, but improved. Also, like Freelancer or the X series, they're more inspired by Privateer than they are Wing Commander. None of the cool space opera and adventure stuff in them.

Again though, if you like the "chase", and the thrill of dogfighting without too much technical sim shit, then y'all would enjoy an Ace Combat game. Don't let the setting turn you off.

[Stormwaltz]

Freespace is real old (almost as old as the last WC), but I've never played the sequel (or the mods).

FS2 was '99 (I remember playing it at Turbine the day of release), but it went open source a few years back, and it still under active development. The most recent versions have been updated to include modern video card effects.

http://scp.indiegames.us/news.php

[stray]

Yea Trusty Bell! Chopin's Dreams for the motherfucking win.

Some new shots. I'm really, really impressed. For this game, and just the future of cel-shading in general:









Wow.