During last week’s Comic Con in New York, Square Enix’s Final Fantasy VII branded CG film Advent Children walked home with the award for Best Anime Feature at the event’s inaugural American Anime awards celebration. The best? Really?
“Thanks to the dedication of our loyal fans, Final Fantasy VII has come to enjoy 10 years of undying popularity,” said the film’s producer Shinji Hashimoto. “Final Fantasy VII<: Advent Children, a direct sequel in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII series, brings the series into the next century with today’s state-of-the-art CG, and we’re sure fans enjoyed seeing old friends brought to new life on the screen.”
He added: “As creators, we are very proud of the finished product, and as developers, it is truly an honor to receive an award of this magnitude. We hope for your continued support as the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII delves deeper into this exciting world. Thank you.”
Electronic Arts has shipped the Wii exclusive SSX Blur to retail. The game features wacky Wii style controls for all the tilty, waggly controls you can handle across 12 downhill tracks. And for those of you locked away in Europe, your version of the game ships March 9. We’re deep into the trick-heavy game now, and will have a review shortly.
Being press, we are often gifted with various oddities from publishers and other game companies in an effort to promote their latest products. One of the most avid supplier of this so-called swag is Nintendo, who often fills boxes with odds and ends with each game sent our way.
Today a box proclaiming to contain the company’s upcoming Wario: Master of Disguise arrived at our office, though upon opening the package, the game was nowhere to be found. All that we saw was the dapper gentleman in a purple mask. Now if you’ll excuse me, this mysterious guest is taking me out to lunch.
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As gamers, many of us have gone through periods where we lost sight of the reasons we first got into our hobby. Being a devotee to a specific form of media certainly has its merits, but it also comes with a number of downsides, not the least of which is that keeping up with the latest and greatest games can sometimes feel like a job. Games like World of Warcraft force you to endure a never-ending cycle of repetitive tasks that have a way of straying away from what most would consider a relaxing good time. Then along comes a title like Crackdown, which, while far from flawless in its execution, affirms the deeply held belief that we’re supposed to be playing games to have fun.
Crackdown puts you in the role of a superhuman cop tasked with cleaning up Pacific City by any means necessary. Gangs have overrun nearly every corner of the small island metropolis, and the city’s meager police force is ill equipped to take on the crime bosses in a direct confrontation. And neither are you, for that matter. While your abilities as a supercop are indeed quite super, you’ll need to level up your core attributes through constant use before you can hope to make a move on each of the city’s three kingpins. What’s more, each kingpin has a veritable army at his disposal, and direct confrontation can and will lead to a bloody and bullet-ridden end for your renegade hero. That is, unless you take on the lieutenants first, crippling the support networks that keep them in power.
While Crackdown has drawn numerous comparisons to Grand Theft Auto due to its sandbox nature, it is here where you can see the big difference between the two. The Grand Theft Auto games are traditional linear third-person action games put in the sandbox setting, Crackdown is a sandbox. Once you understand the task set out before you, the game leaves you well enough alone. Outside of periodic intelligence updates on the various lieutenants (including a nifty probability of success calculation), the game leaves things up to you. The sandbox element isn’t separated from the narrative itself. You’re genuinely encouraged to do things as you please. If you want to go for the kingpins and end the story straight out of the gate, the game leaves it open for you to try. For some, this sort of freedom might be a little too much, but for most, the ability to take complete control of your superhero is really a dream come true.
What elevates the game out of the realm of a short diversion or curiosity into A
After the success of the original Battle for Middle Earth RTS game, it was obvious that EA would make a sequel. Many people anticipated that it would be the same thing as the previous game, something that has sadly been associated with the EA brand name. Thankfully, those people were wrong. BFME II is not only an excellent sequel but a greatly enjoyable RTS based on the Lord of the Rings franchise.
Though it is undeniable that the Lord of the Rings books and movies were some of the best pieces of literature and film making, it was getting tiresome to play as the Fellowship of the Ring. In BFME II, players get to play as the other heroes/villains who lived during the War of the Ring. The game centers around these people and hardly on the Fellowship. In fact, they are only featured in one level during the Evil campaign, where you must kill all of them. Some characters, like SmA
