Naruto fans will be doing air kicks in excitement once they see the latest trailer for aruto Shippuden: Kizuna Drive for the Playstation Portable!
Taking place in the Naruto Shippuden universe, this title will be an original adventure featuring a mysterious clan powerful enough to create a new Jinchurriki. Players can battle alone or can team up with mates with co-op gameplay, and is set for a Spring 2011 release. A demo is available now, and anime fans should definitely check it out, or at least watch the epic trailer below, as it is filled with lots and lots of ninja goodness!!
Overview:
Various anime have taken references from other media to help build themselves up. There is your usual source material of being created from a manga or a light novel but what if that source material featured heavy references to another source. Pandora Hearts the anime was created from the manga of the same name, but what is really interesting is the fact that they draw upon the world of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass to base itself around. Now we’ve already seen episodes 1-13 and what they have to offer. How does Xebec Anime Studio and NIS America close out the story of Pandora Hearts in Volume 2?
Art:
Before I go into the artwork it is good to mention that, as with Volume 1, Xebec has used a film grain effect that will make some people believe that the production values are low, but in fact is a choice by the production company. Now this film grain can cause some people to not enjoy the way that the anime looks if they prefer a crisp image but in fact the film grain actually fits perfectly with the themes of the anime, especially during the fights that take place. Plus after watching a few minutes you will not even realize that there is a grain effect on the image.
Once you look past the grain, you will find a well done, Victorian gothic styled environment. The character designs are well done and the environments that they explore, both the dimensions and the real world are animated well enough. As I said before in my previous review, the characters are designed with a more Victorian England style of clothing and have appearance relatively similar to that time period. Also I must say that the Will of the Abyss is one of the best looking characters in the anime itself, short of Alice of course.
Audio & Subtitles:
The spoken language for the anime is Japanese which means that watchers of the anime will be forced to read the subtitles, unless they know Japanese of course. This is either a good thing or a bad thing depending on whether or not you prefer English dubs or listening to the original Japanese voices. The Japanese voice work though is really well done and matches the characters perfectly.
Junko Minagawa provives the voice of Oz while Kosuke Toriumi provides the voice of Gil. Perhaps the best performances are done by Ayako Kawasumi as Alice and Kana Hanazawa as Sharon. These voice actors are perfect in their roles and will be pleasing to the ears, regardless of whether or not you know what they are saying without the subtitles.
As far as the musical aspect goes, Yuki Kajiura handles most if not all of the original sound track. The dramatic themes that she uses are very well done and can draw out the emotion of the scene perfectly. The songs themselves may sound familiar if you have heard her work before, but if it is your first time then you are in for a treat. The opening and ending music is suitable, but not worth much praise or notice on the other hand.
Now the subtitles themselves are white lettered and unobtrusive which is exactly what viewers are looking for in regards to subtitles. On most screens they will appear just under the black line of the widescreen viewing area which means that they will not be in the way of what is happening on the screen. I didn’t encounter any translation issues either from what I watched which is a plus.
Story:
The story picks up immediately starts where the last volume left off with Alice being captured by Cheshire Cat and Oz and Gil attempting to rescue her despite the fact that they will be at the mercy of the Cheshire Cat in his own dimension. Oz suffers the attacks of Cheshire cat continuously, both mentally and physically until he is saved by what is left of Jack Vessalius. Jack shows him the Tragedy of Sablier which began much of the mystery that the series holds within itself.
During the events of the Tragedy of Sablier Oz finds Alice murdered and this causes him to truly lose his mind and causes him to use the power of B. Rabbit through his contract to Alice and starts to destroy the Cheshire Cat’s dimension until Gil snaps him out of it by reminding him that the whole reason they came here was to save Alice.
After successfully saving Oz is completely engrossed in trying to find the truth behind the mystery of what happened at the Tragedy of Sablier. There are many different things which occur however that continues to delay his quest for finding the truth behind what happened, including the fact that the Citizens of Baskerville continue to pursue him and that the Will of the Abyss is continually hunting Alice to kill her once and for all.
Those who have watched the first Volume will already know the depth of the mysteries and the plot twists that compound on top of one another as the story progresses. While these mysteries are intriguing, the best parts of the anime are the character interactions. The characters are some of the best that you can find in any anime and has plenty of character development. I can’t imagine how many times animes have introduced the characters of a story, only to leave it at that. Pandora Hearts looks into every characters’ past and delves into different facets of their personality.
Unfortunately, the story does have one downturn and that is in the ending. The manga that it is based off of is still continuing today in Japan, which means that the story has to have an anime original ending which leaves a lot of mysteries unanswered and can leave watchers wanting more or at least have some more questions answered for them. Despite all of this though, if you enjoy plot twists and character development then you will definitely find Pandora Hearts to be one of the best to fit that category.
Premium Edition:
As with Pandora Hearts Volume 1, Volume 2 comes in an oversized hard black box that has the Pandora Hearts title and Volume 2 Premium Edition on one side with white ivy designs on the top and bottom of the box, while the other side shows off a very impressive portrait of three characters from the anime. Rather than a more gothic styled portrait like Volume 1, Volume 2 has a portrait that shows the Will of the Abyss, a cat (name withheld), Jack and Gil in a very cheerful looking atmosphere, minus Gil of course.
The two slim DVDs that are included in the package feature Jack on one cover with Break on the other and with the first disc holding six episodes and the second disc holding six as well. Of course the best feature of the second disc is the fact that it contains all of the special omake (bonus scenes) that feature the main characters acting completely different than they would normally and are often very hilarious and show the funny side of most of the characters. Of the four omake included, I found 9th Time’s the Charm?! to be the best, but it will be up to you to find your favorite.
Perhaps the most interesting bonus that comes with the Premium Edition is the hardcover art book which reads right to left as if it were from Japan itself and features information on certain characters in the story and explains their backgrounds as well as provides a more detailed description of certain events in the story such as the Tragedy of Sablier. Personally I would recommend reading the explanations until after watching the show to avoid spoiling parts of the storyline. But after the character explanations are beautiful pieces of full colored art work which shows the characters in a number of different situations that are a sight to see. Also at the end is the second half of the Gilbert in Wonderland which takes a fun turn compared to Gil’s usual serious side. The small manga is a nice addition but people who haven’t read the first half from Volume 1 may be a bit confused about what is happening despite the short length.
Overall:
Yet again Xebec and NIS America have delivered a great anime to US shores and have done so with plenty of extra bonus features wrapped up in a great looking package. Even more bonus features than were in Volume 1. Pandora Hearts Volume 2 is much more serious than the first volume though as the series tries to wrap up many of the mysteries involved in the storytelling and some may call it even better than the first volume because of this. Despite a lukewarm ending Pandora Hearts Volume 2 definitely belongs on your shelf next to Pandora Hearts Volume 1 and will not disappoint viewers.
Devil May Cry 4: Refrain Platform:iPhone (Reviewed), iPad, iPod Touch
Publisher:Capcom
Developer: Capcom Mobile
Genre: Hack n’ Slash/Beat em’ Up
Release Date: February 3, 2011
Price: $5.99BUY NOW!
Even though this port has had so much taken out and downgraded for the iPhone, DMC4R is actually still a real blast to play.
The Devil May Cry series is proudly standing near the top of Capcom’s mountain of A-listers, right up there next to Street Fighter and Resident Evil. Now making cameos in games outside the franchise and even sporting its own anime, the saga saw a major change recently with lead character Dante not being the main protagonist in Devil May Cry 4 on the Xbox 360 and PS3. Now the title comes as Devil May Cry 4: Refrain on the iPhone to blow us away all over again. Thanks alot Capcom, we’re still trying to recover from the original title! However the question stands clear: can DMC4 still be as awesome when downgraded for a mobile phone?
While the story is decent, its executed and told poorly, however the very seldom still images like this one look beautiful and are nice eye candy, but sadly most gamers will just skip through these.
Presentation
Devil May Cry 4: Refrain Is filled with style and is just bursting with ‘cool’. From the fonts to menu screens, this game is bursting with character. Its dark demonic focusing on dark colours but throwing in a lot of bright crimson and red to freshen things up. From character designs to the music to the game play, everything is about style and looking cool, and it hits the mark with ease. The only major set back presentation-wise is the unfortunate telling of the story. While a decent storyline does exist, it is executed poorly through a mix of in game animations which are decent at best, to a bunch of really nice art work and uninspired narration. The mix of the 2 styles really seems out of place, and honestly the story is almost impossible to follow, and anyone except a hardcore DMC fan will more than likely just skip the cinematic all together, which is a darn shame.
The combo and ranking system really makes pulling off combos feel very rewarding, and preforming stylish kills can become easily addictive!
Gameplay
The engine behind Devil May Cry 4: Refrain is by far the highlight of the game, and Capcom has done its best to emulate the high adrenaline rush for the iPhone provided by the superior console games, and its come pretty close. The analog stick is at most times good, and depending on which option players choose they can have 3 buttons jump, devil bringer, and attack-which automatically decides if you should slash or shoot, or two separate buttons for guns and sword. Neither really change the game too much, but its still a nice option to have included. What makes the gameplay shine however is its epic combo system. A bar is shown which can be built up with each hit, and when filled you achieve a new grade-either D for Deadly, C for Carnage, B for Brutal, A for Atomic, then S for Smokin! Gaining these grades is alot of fun as to link hits together to create combos requires a mix between taking on multiple enemies at once, and using combinations between all buttons. After a certain amount of hits, opponents will be sent flying either away or upwards, when sent upwards, one can jump to land a few mid-air hits, or when sent flying away, the devil bringer attack can pull them closer to you for a few more hits like Scorpion from Mortal Kombat’s harpoon ‘Get Over Here!’ move. Also, guns can be used to shoot far away enemies which help links chains of attacks, and it can also be charged up among a few other techniques. This depth is really easy to master and is alot of fun, and with the ranking system-very, very rewarding.
Refrain has many flaws, but its gameplay, soundtrack and style are so great it truly makes up for the aspects it lacks in.
However not all elements of the game are as spot on, unfortunately the camera angles are often pretty terrible and are often so far away you can occasionally feel disconnected from the action and you can sometimes be surprised by enemies that are off screen, making it hard to find who to attack. Sometimes with only a few enemies on the screen at once combat doesn’t feel as chaotic as it should, but this reviewer doubts the iPhone in most cases can’t take too much more so it’s not that big of a deal. Possibly one the games biggest flaws is it’s level design. While there are a few interesting ideas thrown in here and there which do their job of breaking up the action and keeping the system fresh, its easy to get lost in levels as they arn’t all so straight forward, and some puzzles arn’t explained or implied very well so they are a bit more difficult than you’d expect for a game you don’t wanna think with-just button mash. However, this isn’t so bad it gets rid of the gameplay.
In video games, a bullet to the head has always been not that big of a deal. I suppose bullet-proof vests cover your face too somehow, maybe?
Hardcore Devil May Cry fans will be disappointed to hear that Dante isn’t a playable character, however word is he will be a downloadable character in the future, and this is just one of a few things missing in this port. However since it’s gone from the most powerful home console gaming system of all time to a device that’s been built for text messages and calling people-it’s actually pretty impressive what Capcom has managed to squeeze into this game. One of the biggest highlights as well as the combo system is the boss battles though. No exaggeration here- these are some of the best boss battles you will play on the iPhone. These are epic, amazing and will blow you away. Its really surprising how climatic these feel on an iPhone game, and you really get that stylish cinematic Devil May Cry feel to it, truly breath taking, and comes close to competing with it’s original source title. Whats nice to see is there is quite a bit of replay value to the game, as you can unlock extra features which can really switch up the gameplay as well as customisation options which really make up for the short ten levels of Refrain, a nice bonus.
Theres an unwritten law in video games: All games must include either a Ice Boss or a Water Temple. No questions asked!
Graphics
The graphics of Devil May Cry 4: Refrain are a mixed bag. Some scenes like in boss battles and some particular effects thrown in here and there are nice and the character models are decent, especially on the enemies you fight against. However the textures arn’t always as nice or as detailed as I’d like, as sometimes they seem a little basic. Not all models are smooth, especially in levels that arn’t as dark and gloomy and are more bright in colour where the edges can seem a little rough, but it isn’t always the case. While the graphics arn’t perfect though, they are good and they do get the job done, just expect more Devil May Cry 1 than 4 in this department, and to be honest it usually isn’t as good as the first one, but the graphics are still good enough.
No idea why this guy is in such a heated mood, he probably should cool off and chill out!
Audio
The Devil May Cry franchise is well known for its awesome Industrial soundtrack, and this Refrain is no exception. Its dark, its exciting and it feels evil. Very gothic and to be simply put and said, its just very good! Swapping between creepy, quiet and haunting tracks to hard-hitting, fast-paced industrial tracks that really gets you in the mood to slay demons and it stays true to the style of the franchise. It’s probably one of the best soundtracks you’ll hear on an iPhone game. Only problem is often it goes quiet between enemies, but since they appear in every room, the music is going soft to loud receptively and it gets old fast. In most cases, it would’ve probably been nicer to just keep the combat music throughout, since fighting is all you really do in Refrain. Furthermore, while the sound effects and occasional voice acting is done with absolute perfection, they aren’t executed as nicely as they could’ve been with the reuse of lines such as ‘Be Gone!’ repeated what seems to be every 5-10 seconds, and gets really annoying quickly.
Hope you like killing things, cause your gonna do ALOT of it in this game!
Conclusion
While making Devil May Cry 4: Refrain, I believe Capcom knew it was fighting a loosing battle, as it is impossible to equal possibly one of the greatest beat em ups available on a next generation home console. This game has a lot of small things holding it back and it is far from perfect, however it’s combo system is so good it makes up for at least 70% of it’s problems. Furthermore, the soundtrack is memorable and could probably even hold its own on a cd against other soundtracks, has some of the most epic boss battles you’ll probably have on the device (or at least from my experience so far) and the entire game is just over flowing with style.While many fans of the original may really hate this port, keep in mind that the iPhone does not have the capabilities of your Xbox 360, so what Capcom have done to translate it and still keep its signature style and gameplay is commendable. This is all on the same device you call your boss on to say your late for work, or checking your twitter or facebook under the table in class. While many things aren’t done amazingly, at the end of the day this title is really, really fun to play, and is a delight to all button-mashers out there. Easy to enjoy for both hardcore gamers, fans and even casual players, this game is easy to recommend to any fans of the beat em up genre, as it is one of the best options available on the system. However, if you have a choice between the iPhone and the home console versions, I recommend DMC4 over DMC4:R. Refrain is amazing by the standards of an iPhone game, and the original is amazing by the standards of a next gen home console game which are much higher, just keep that in mind.
Devil May Cry 4: Refrain isn’t the greatest beat em up of all time, but its easily one of the best for the iPhone.
PROS
Great Controls
Awesome Combos
Addictive and rewarding ranking system
Epic Boss battles
Amazing soundtrack
Good replay value
It’s Devil May Cry 4-on your iPhone!!!
CONS
Story is told poorly
Some graphics and texture issues are a bit rough
A few uninspired level design and puzzles
I give Devil May Cry 4: Refrain for the iPhone a devilish:
Fighting fans will be happy to hear that the Mortal Kombat story trailer for Liu Kang was released today and he is looking as brutal as ever! The trailer shows us a look into the fighter’s storyline, as well as demonstrating his fighting technique and showcasing his musical theme.
Interestingly enough, the character has undergone a few subtle changes. These include a new teleport move and most importantly, his signature bicycle kick now now longer defies gravity, but now looks much more realistic, more like a move used by Keanu Reeves in the first ‘The Matrix’ movie. The trailer also has cameos from characters such as Raiden and Kano, as well as two other noteworthy fighters. First of all, it appears Shang Stung’s appearance which changes in almost every game now is more like how he appeared in MK2 and at the end of MK Shoulin Monks, and takes the form of Reptile at one stage. The cameo that caught my attention most however is the inclusion of Bo’ Rai Cho from Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. Nothing is confirmed or announced if he will appear as a playable character in the game, but so far he seems to be the only new character from the MK universe related to this title from a game outside the original trilogy.
The trailer also includes the song “Liu Kang’s Theme” by DJ and producer Congorock. Liu Kang’s Theme will also appear the album “Mortal Kombat: Songs Inspired by the Warriors” and will be released in April 2011, and the track is now currently downloadable on Amazon here and iTunes here. This is the second theme to be released, first of which was Mileena’s which you can read about here. The trailer also includes shots of goodies included in the kollector’s edition, which is also worth checking out.
Get as excited as you Kan! Mortal Kombat for the PS3 and Xbox 360 is shaping up to be a really Krazy looking game!
inFamous had your standard morality system which you played either good or bad Cole and depending on your choices, it made the citizens of the city hate you, change your appearance, and also provide a different ending. Some people may have found this black and white, evil and good, system relatively overused and the developers of inFamous Sucker Punch have decided to show the difference this time around.
In the latest videos released for inFamous 2 we see a few different ways that your choices in the game will effect the world and the missions. There is one video which shows off the good way to handle a mission which involves saving the police and helping them out with the cops’ help, or you could be doing the other method which involves blowing the entire enemy complex away with a street car full of explosives. These decisions may seem relatively similar to what you were presented with back in inFamous 1 but we shall see.
There sure are going to be a lot of different dungeons in Skyrim, especially after hearing that there are eight different dungeon designers working on the project. Today Bethesda released a handful of Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim concept art which shows us a few different areas that are just begging to be explained and explored.
We see a mountain top temple with what appears to be wolves attacking two people, as well as the fact that a viking like warrior is about to take on a bear that is standing over the body of a dead woolly mammoth. Also we see what appears to be some sort of catacombs and a cool looking statue. Sure concept art always looks better and more detailed than the finished product, but if these areas even look half as good as they do on paper, I’m even more sold then I already am.
Gamers in Australia have a very difficult time whenever a game with lots of gore or questionable content is announced. They are of course very excited, but they have to worry that the game will either not be released in their country or they will get a chopped up and edited version of the game that removed all of the fun parts that were advertised for other countries.
But thankfully 2K Games’ Duke Nukem Forever received an MA 15+ rating which means that the game will be coming through the rating process unscathed. This is great news to fans of the series in Australia because it would have been horrible to play a Duke Nukem game with all of the good things that the series is known for taken out.
In addition to reducing productivity at work, retro game developer Q42 looks to change the quality of games we play with browsers using HTML5 and their site Sarien.net. Starting out as a simple retro chat environment then evolving into a full-scale Ipad game using HTML5 without the need for the App Store, surprisingly this little start up didn’t concern Apple as much as it did Activision. This was due to the fact that the games being ported into Browser Based experiences were Sierra games, which Activision owns the license to. The Co-Owner of Q42 Martin Kool had been developing the technology since 2003 and was only recently brought into the limelight due to the success of their Ipad friendly games; they effectively showed what the Ipad can do without the App Store. Martin recently agreed to do an interview with us on all of these topics and more, this is how it went!
1. Welcome Martin, thanks for talking to Capsule Computers; firstly I’d like to ask are you much of a current generation Gamer? Or do you prefer to keep it retro?
MK: To be honest, it’s not a specific era of gaming that I prefer. I’m just a sucker for gameplay value and originality. Some of my favourite titles are all over the map in terms of age and genre:
Beyond Good & Evil
Sensible Soccer
Day of the Tentacle
Tie Fighter D/Generation
Fallout (the original)
Fable (all three)
Red Dead Redemption
Quest for Glory 1 (the remake)
Diablo
Space Quest 3
Half-Life
Galaxy on Fire 2
2. Tell me a little bit about Sarien.net, what it does and why you created it.
MK:Sarien.Net is a website that offers the first series of Sierra adventure games such as King’s Quest and Police Quest, playable in a browser, and while you’re playing you can see other people playing and chat with them. It’s a mix between retro adventure gaming and a social experiment. The first adventure game truly designed for multi-player still hasn’t been invented yet (Sierra tried with TSN and failed). When my Sierra-inspired chat-environment Good Old Adventures made people request the original gameplay, I regarded it as a natural next step for me to build the actual game interpreter but keep the multiplayer aspect. So even though there’s no actual multiplayer gameplay, it’s been great to see so many people having fun out there. To me, the experiment was a huge success, and I think the “Sarien treatment” would work well for a whole lot of other games, old and new. The adventure game genre is back in the spotlight these days. That wasn’t the case when I started working on Sarien and I believed that these games deserved to be played again, only this time in a more contemporary format. That’s what Sarien offers and it turned out to be a technical showcase once iPadsupport was added
3. What was the first game you ported into Sarien.net and what sort of technical difficulties did you have to get it working?
MK: A year or two before I began building the interpreter I had already created a few stand-alone tools for extracting and converting in-game pictures and objects to images, HTML, CSS and Javascript. This test environment had an avatar walking behind and in front of objects and path-detection was somewhat in place. My next step was converting the original logic scripts (containing all the game triggers and making stuff happen) to something that was javascript-parseable. This was one of the challenging parts, because these games were written in a non-object-oriented language, and used GOTO statements to arbitrarily jump back and forth between the game logic. I de-compiled all nested statements to a flat-lined heap of calls, and surrounded it with javascript’s switch/case construction in an infinite loop. This allowed me to keep track of a virtual line number while code was being executed, and then loop back into the switch statement that would delegate the code to the next lines, wherever they may be.
It turned out to be a working replacement of GOTO’s without using a stack of function calls, thus giving me control over the engine (and with multi-player) which resulted in an interpreter stub that ran without errors. It did nothing at all, it just didn’t fail. So here I had an interpreter that was doing nothing at all except being an endless looping game cycle, and then I had my separate test environment with an avatar walking around. Now where to start? This was the second challenge, as I had to merge all these things together and build the actual interpreter logic as well as all AGI commands required. I took a scene from one of my favourite games, the elevatorscreen at the start of Space Quest 1, and focused on making that scene work. So I started implementing the logics that would draw a room when the code required it and draw the avatar when and how the original game developers chose to do it. Then I made the alarms flash, made some event-triggering code work so that the elevators would open and close once you got near it, etc. This approach had me implementing code and testing it by walking around. Each day, more stuff started working.
4. Gaming on browsers has been around for quite awhile, but more casual games than anything else, especially with the rise of Facebook gaming. The games you’ve done could be considered to cater for the hardcore minded or nostalgia induced gamers. What inspired you to bring full-blown retro gaming to a browser based format?
MK: I used to do a lot of back-end programming, but 11 years ago I fell in love the web. Q42 showed me their HTML editor that they made in javascript (it was wysiwyg, which was quite impressive in 2000) and I was hooked. We teamed up, and within a few months we released an online playground called Quek that offered a virtual avatar on top of an existing site and had you chatting with others. My love for web technology only went on from there, as did the format itself (web 2.0, ajax, HTML5). I think my passion for the web, technology and games was a sweet combination. Never did I set out to build a full blown game, but neither did I see any limitations that prevented anyone from doing so. Sure, the web offers a lot of constraints, but that’s what drives creativity. Twitter didn’t invent the @ sign, hashtag or retweets. People worked with constraints and the format adapted.
5. How does the multi-player work on Sarien.net ?
MK: It’s a very simple approach, and there are quite a few other ways I’d go about implementing it now in hindsight. It’s basically an asynchronous pulling mechanism, each player has an interval at which it sends recent changes to the server. These changes contain information such as “walked to x,y”, “said this or that”, etc. Each time the player sends this information; it receives the changes that were made by other players in the same room, and processes it on the client. This means that the game engine will make other players walk around, show speech balloons, and if there’s a discrepancy in where they should walk to and where the browser allows them to walk, I fall-back to fading a player out and in again. The server is also very simple. All it does is keep track of rooms, players, player actions and some bookkeeping with date/time stamps. All Sarien’s conversion tools are open source, including the browser-based game interpreter as well as Q42’s multiplayer engine.
6. How many games are currently running on Sarien.net? Could you list them all?
MK: Right now there’s Space Quest, Police Quest, King’s Quest and only the first episode of each series. Then there’s The Black Cauldron and Gold Rush. As I write this there is no Leisure Suit Larry as I just received my second Cease and Desist letter so I removed it, though chances are it’ll return with official authorization (similar to what Activision did)
7. You’ve mentioned that you were originally sceptical of the Ipad, until you started working with it. Would you consider doing anything for Android tablets as more come out this year?
MK: I don’t know. Sarien isn’t allowed to host iPads specific games anymore, and I’m not into Android tablets that much. Not from a fanboy perspective (I don’t consider myself one, even though I work on a Macbook Air and carry an iPad/iPhone) but Android phones/tablets just aren’t my thing. I got a plastic Android phone at Google IO one time and gave it away. Didn’t like it. Perhaps I’m an Apple fanboy after all? I am intrigued by Android honeycomb though, but that’s probably the geek in me that wants to take such a tablet out for a spin.
8. 2011 in the tech world is supposedly going to be the year of the Tablet, which means more and more apps/games will be coming out. Do you see browser based games becoming a bigger competitor, or a unique alternative to the App store?’
MK: I think that Apple’s recent move to cash in on subscription-based publishing apps will have developers seek other possibilities, and HTML5 is a viable option for such apps. Games on the other hand, that’s a different story. I think a masterpiece such as Braid would play well if ported to mobile safari because it could use a smart combination of canvas and sprited images. Technology-wise, browser-based 2D games on tablets are a possibility and could par with some native games. However, for browser-based games to succeed, we need more than just the technology to make it happen. Apple proved that a centralized store makes all the difference, and payments should be a simple and hassle-free process. Buying a game on the iPad requires a few taps and one password. You’d need to make things mainstream with development tools aswell.
Even though the web is moving forward I think that native technology is moving forward in a much faster pace (as it comes without the sluggish W3C/browser-vendor process of adapting new features). Although I love the open concept of the web for gaming, I don’t think it will ever surpass native gaming. And why should it? Native mobile technology and web technology are two separate worlds. Google is betting on both: on one hand they’ve got Android and its marketplace, on the other there’s Chrome OS, the Chrome browser (my personal favourite) and perhaps most important, the Chrome Web store includes easy payments with Google Checkout. In the end, I don’t think there will be one winner, just two alternatives.
9. Given the retro nature of the games you’ve successfully ported so far, just how complex can browser based games get right now? Are you limited or is something like 3D possible with HTML5?
MK: Theoretically speaking, if someone would port Grim Fandango to HTML5, javascript and canvas it should run fine on Chrome or Safari on a desktop machine. So a combination of 3D/2D, music and sound sure isn’t a thing of the future. I do however think that’s it not a matter of the technology being ready for it, but it’s the tools becoming mainstream. Current SDK’s, frameworks and IDE’s focus on what’s mainstream, and HTML5 isn’t that (for gaming). I’d love to see Unity compiled to HTML5 and canvas.
10. Do you think HTML5 will eventually overtake Flash? And if so, how long do you think it’ll take before that happens?
MK: Didn’t it already? I don’t know what statistics would mark this moment, but as far as I’m concerned, flash never lived. The only thing still holding it together are those shovelware flash games. Even for monolithic campaign websites you see people use HTML5 as the tools to do so are indeed emerging. I recently saw a few products that focus on interactive banner development using HTML5. Like I said earlier, you need both the technology and tools to be ready for it.
11. You’ve briefly mentioned on your site that there’s an exciting Q42 project, which involves newspaper publishers on the Ipad having the ability to cut out the middleman; any chance of giving us a hint of what that involves?
MK: *Smiles* No
12. Now that you’ve had some contact with a publisher (Activision), do you think you’ll develop any original IP’s in the future?
MK: Perhaps. But it’s not what I’m after. There are a few chapters I like to finish in terms of my involvement with Sierra games, and I would love to bring them natively to the iPad with a gameplay experience that I envision. If my pursuit succeeds, who knows what happens next? I’m not after doing any original IP development per se, its creativity and a unique proposition that I value. It helps that I’m perfectly happy with my life, both personal and professional, as I’m not after the big bucks. I look for opportunities, not business opportunities. This happens to clash in a healthy and often funny way with my awesome business partners from time to time.
What I like to do is build something special, something that I believe makes a difference, regardless if it’s a game, an app, a service or something carved out of wood. Sarien’s retro slash multi-player experience is just one such example. Also very special to me is Quplo, our tool for HTML prototyping that fills a gap in the development process right between design and development. I’m really glad it is already helpful to thousands of users, and we’ve been able to release quite some side products to the open source community along the way. For instance, Backfire – a tiny open source project that allows users to save changes made on a web-page with firebug – has recently been ported to Django. Those things mean a lot to me.
13. Who do you think is the coolest Sierra Character ever made and why?
MK: I’d have to say Larry. Actually he’s certainly not the coolest, but his character is portrayed very well, and his clumsy self-unawareness makes him a very charming guy. Al did a great job crafting him, and it’s a shame that the last two instalments (that were written and built without Al Lowe’s consent) screwed the franchise over. I mean, Leisure Suit Larry really nuked the fridge with Box Office Bust, naturally scoring as low as 20/100 on metacritic. If it were up to me, I’d build and release a native iPad version of the original Leisure Suit Larry, but include the GUI enhancements, unlockables and all the other stuff that I added to Sarien’s iPad version before it got a Cease and Desist letter… Twice.
14. Well Thanks for your time Martin and In-depth answers, hopefully the readers enjoyed it. One last question as I assume you’re a fan, what’s your favourite Sierra game?
MK: Quest for Glory 1, the remake
Martin Kool is a Stunt coordinator, co-owner of Q42 and Founder of Quplo. He Wrote Sarien.net and considers himself a Technologist, Geek and gamer.
2K Games have revealed a special edition treat for collectors regarding the long-awaited Duke Nukem Forever. Arriving alongside the standard editions on May 3rd 2011, the Duke Nukem Forever Balls of Steel edition for the PlayStation 3 , Xbox 360 and PC is a must-have for those who have been waiting all this time for the return of the King.
Duke Nukem Forever Balls of Steel edition contains a copy of the game with exclusive Balls of Steel cover art and the following extras:
Collectible bust of the greatest alien ass-kicker of all-time
Numbered, limited-edition certificate of authenticity
100-page hardcover book: The History, Legacy & Legend: Duke Nukem Forever Art from the Vault
Duke Nukem Forever postcard series
Duke Nukem Forever radioactive emblem sticker
Duke Nukem Forever collectable comic book
Duke Nukem Forever foldable paper craft
Duke Nukem Forever poker chips
Duke Nukem Forever mini-card deck
Duke Nukem Forever radioactive emblem dice
It’s looking like a cool package that really pays homage to the return of the King and offers a thank you for fans kept waiting all this time.
When: ~6PM until ~9PM February 10, 2011. Though I probably left at ~7PM.
Event: 3DS Preview thing.
Mood: Awesome.
The day began unlike most days as this would be the one day I have off TAFE (Technical College) due to awesome timetabling by the I.T staff at the campus I attend to become educated. I awoke at approximately 1PM, due to an alarm error on my phone, and proceeded to take a hot and steamy shower to make myself clean and to remove the trace-amounts of beard I may or may not have growing in strange patches on my face. Upon exiting the shower I did stuff that I don’t quite remember, though, I’m sure I had some kind of chicken for lunch (it may or may not have been alien). I left home at ~3:20PM to catch the bus to my local train station.
After waiting ~45 minutes for my bus to arrive (seriously, bus company that I’m not going to mention the name of, stick to your timetable! Buses are to come on the time that they are announced to arrive at, not way before or way after… on… freaking… time!) it finally does and I board it and it’s all good. The bus trip itself was largely uneventful, but my trusty MP4 player came in handy and I rocked out to Galneryus. I probably shouldn’t headbang on public transport though (not that anything bad or embarrassing happened this time, it’s just some kind of weird reflex that I have no control over). Anyways, after the ~20minute bus trip, I finally arrive at the train station.
I make a small detour to the local shopping center to grab some cash to spend on stuff and in-case of emergency, stop in at the 7/11 for some drinks/snacks then make my way to the train station. I sprint up the stairs, ninjaing two-steps at a time while maintaining a high speed (seriously those stairs go up about 10meters high, and come out about 7 meters, I can do them in about 3 seconds; faster going downwards) and as I make it to the top of the stairs I notice a train leaving. Luckily it was heading in the opposite direction to where I wanted to go, but at the time that I was there it meant that all the workers were coming off the train and home from work. I had to dodge a very large number of people down a narrow corridor to make it to the ticket vendors. Luckily for me; I lived and made it to the vendors. I promptly purchased a return ticket ($6 to get to Sydney for a student, the heck is up with that!? No wonder nobody uses the public transport system in this state, it’s consistently late and way over-priced.) and headed down to the platform to wait for the arrival of the incoming train, which arrived at ~5pm.
The train-trip was largely uneventful, I’m sure a couple of ladies were either checking me out or wondering what I was doing out of my parents basement (I don’t actually live in a basement…); but other than that, nothing really to report on. It was ~6PM when the train arrived at Town Hall station. It’s lucky that the Myer store was only “7minutes” away according to Google maps. It lied, who were they timing when they made that measurement? The Trip was much closer to 4 minutes.
So I’m now at the Myer and powering to the top of the escalator maze that would ultimately lead me to my destination, The Nintendo Connection, the sixth and (from what I could tell) final floor of the complex. I reach the sixth floor and take a quick look at my surroundings; firstly, to ensure that there were no boss monsters around; and secondly, to get a decent look at Nintendo’s best marketing campaign ever. For those of you who don’t know about Nintendo’s best marketing campaign ever, I shall quickly explain it hence:
Rediculously beautiful ladies with gaming devices attached to their belts.
Picture that Phil took of Nintendo lady rep because when I was talking to them I forgot to ask for one… (Note, from the Sydney Launch Event ).
That is all… well, there were some dudes with the traits that can be considered handsome, but I’m probably not the best judge on that.
Anyways, I see this massive queue and I immediately go to join it. I walk about 75% of it before noticing everyone has some kind of neckband thing with some kind of herding marker attached to it.
Nintendo, I really ♥you for this number!
I briefly ask myself how I could have missed it when a nice chap explained to me that some dude in black was handing them out back at the front. I head all the way back and engage in a conversation minigame with a female NPC. After a few minutes and a joke or two (high speechcraft, this will come in handy later in the story) I find out the location of the dude in black and get a cattle-tag off him. 150. That’s me, the same number Professor Oak claims that are number of Pokemon species, awesome! I take my tag, neck it and power to what appears to be the end of the queue.
Before me sat and stood a small conglomerate of other interested parties (nerds) and maybe a nerdy couple or two. I asked them if it was the end of the queue, maintaining a high level of language that would get me killed at any other locale, to which they responded positively. Joy! Shortly after, another dude who was by himself approached, I’m not quite sure if he was tagless and I prompted him to get a tag, or if he already had a tag and joined in on the queue. Anyways, we got along pretty well (though he didn’t seem to be too much of a nerd) and were talking and making jokes and observationalist comedy throughout the tedium of the queue. At certain points, during the time in which we were enqueued, one of the “Nintendo” reps would come around and let us know stuff and that. At around the 20 minute mark I tried to convince her that I was part of the Gaming Press and to let me and my compadre through. She went and asked somebody and came back with a no (Phil, I really need a business card. Make me some?).
We reached what seemed to be near the end of the line and our favorite rep gave us some free Fantales and Jelly-based lollies. MMmmmm. Also, a reasonably attractive male rep came along with a 3DS to whet the appetites of those in the line. He was going to start previewing it to the people just behind us, had I not interjected with a witty quip which made the other cute lady rep laugh and give us a look first. Go me! The unit that we watched through had a pre-recorded version of Resident Evil playing. The graphics on that game are stunning! They’re almost identical to the 360 version of Resident Evil 5, which quite impressive for a handheld that not only has to produce detailed graphics but must also do it two-three times to produce the three-dimensional effect of the game! And the 3D, the 3D! The depth is amazing, it takes about 10 seconds for your eyes to merge the images, but after that; it’s amazing! Seriously, it’s so hard to describe how amazing the tech is. Gameplay wise, it helps tremendously. Not only can you accurately gauge the distance of objects, enemies and walls; but it also fits the game perfectly. Resident Evil could be much more scary with enemies popping way out at you, I know it helped the atmosphere in the level that was shown. After passing the 3DS’ around between our small party, we were finally allowed to move in and trial some games.
I quickly scanned the area for games that would interest me, all the Super Street Fighter IV 3DS ladies were taken, I finally settled on Kid Icarus: Uprising. The rep set it to hard mode and I had eight minutes to learn and beat the level (that’s what all the demo’s were locked to, we had 10mins play time all up). In the level I got to play in I was on foot and had to make my way somewhere other than where I started, while killing enemies along the way. The slide-pad is used for movement where the touch screen was used for aiming and the L-button for shooting. I have no idea if there were multiple control schemes, I didn’t want to waste time checking. The slide-pad movement felt very natural despite it’s odd-looking placement. The game itself was quite pretty, though it didn’t appear to be as pretty as Resident Evil or Ocarina of Time, and was absolutely amazingly fun to play. The added depth from the 3D really makes a huge difference in dealing with enemy locations and the game benefitted immensely from it. What didn’t benefit the game was the rep demonstrating the 3D slider being turned off while I was in the middle of a fight, nearly got me killed (FPS’ reflexes and partially photographic memory really helped there). Everytime you adjust the 3D your eyes take roughly ten second to recover from the trauma. Shortly after I took a ride on some kind of zip-line through the sky the games timer ended and I moved on to Ocarina of Time.
Me and my Epic 3DS! Note the sweatband, it’s totally a Zelda themed one.
I really didn’t want to play this game as I didn’t want to spoil the surprise for when I would eventually get it on release. But man, I’m glad I did. Enhanced graphics! 3D! Depth! Controls similar to the Gamecube versions, touchscreen inventory and gyroscopic aiming (optional); this would be the second most definitive version of Ocarina of Time (first being the N64 version, I don’t care what any of you say, LALALALALALALALALALALA~ can’t hear you). Anyways, I picked up the unit and asked the dude how long the demo went for, he told me it was eight minutes long. I had two-minutes left, but I had completely forgotten about that fact. Finish the Deku-Tree in eight minutes? I’ve done it in less. I ask the guy if he wanted to see a Deku-Tree speed run, he announced to the crowd that I was going to attempt a world-first Deku-Tree speed run on the 3DS. I’m not sure if there was a cheer or not, but I knew I could do it. Slightly over a minute to go and I start the dungeon. Straight up the ladder, screw the dungeon map, who needs one of those!? Door, jump the thingy, slingshot get! Floor, aim straight up, hit the ladder, climb up, door. Backtrack to vines, kill the two spiders, climb up. Deku stick the Big spider, jump down, miss the web… GAH! Climb back up, ~45 seconds to go, hit the web, light the thingy, light the stick, burn the web, door, kill the deku scrub, ~10seconds to go, stop running you Deku! Times up. Damn…. Tried bargaining for more time, didn’t work.
I started to head out when I saw this really pretty “Nintendo” rep standing around all lonely, all the nerds ignoring her, so I struck up a conversation. I learned a few things. First, is that I might actually be slightly funny. Second is that they don’t actually work at Nintendo, they’re from talent agencies out-sourced as “crowd-control” and that third, she was really, really nice and seemed quite knowledgeable of the device and event. Where’d that guy go that I was in line with? I forgot to get his Facebook…
I promptly left for home, free 3DS neckband and cattle-label wrapped around my neck, and felt as though I had just, very briefly, been a part of the future of gaming.
Sidenote: Nintendo, more campaigns like this one please.
So all in all, the 3DS is an amazing technological marvel, it will be the future of handheld gaming and it is a universe of joy! I’m still feeling the glee two full days after playing.
Naruto fans will be doing air kicks in excitement once they see the latest trailer for aruto Shippuden: Kizuna Drive for the Playstation Portable!
