September 2007

TGS 07: Resident Evil: Umbrellas Chronicles Hands-On

September 24, 2007

News / by Kathryn Bailey Make a comment! / Tweet it!

A lot of people don’t seem to know what to expect from Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, the game expected to sell Nintendo’s new Wii zapper. Reactions were mixed when it was announced several months ago, but anticipation has steadily climbed as details and screenshots have trickled out from Capcom. Having finally gotten my hands on it, I’m still not sure how I feel about it, but my initial feeling was disappointment.

The Wii Zapper itself generally feels good. The end tucks itself into the crook of one arm while the nunchuck is held in the other hand. It’s comfortable, but it also makes the aiming feel a tad off because it doesn’t naturally come to eye level like most zapper peripherals (or guns for that matter). Still it doesn’t really detract all that much from the experience, and it shouldn’t be a problem for players to bring it up for more precision aiming.

At first glance, the graphics are excellent, particularly the opening cinematics. Capcom knows how to do presentation, and its flagship games are always top-notch in that department. The details on the enemies are generally very crisp and clear, and the environment (a train), is quite detailed as well. However, once the shooting begins, the shiny coat of paint begins to wear off a little bit.

For one thing, the guns just don’t feel very powerful, which is of course a big problem for a game that’s trying to sell itself on a Zapper peripheral. The first weapon is the handgun, and the bullets don’t seem to even phase the zombies as they approach. It seemed possible to take out their legs, but otherwise the bullets felt like they were bouncing away until they died. Perhaps this was Capcom’s intention, handguns aren’t very powerful after all, but it wouldn’t have hurt to add a little extra oomph to the shooting.

The submachine gun and the shotgun definitely felt better, but both also felt a bit wild. It was easy to end up spraying bullets all over the place with the submachine gun. The shotgun, while definitely more powerful than the pitiful handgun, lacked ammo, so I didn’t get much time with it. Regardless, perhaps it’s an unfair comparison, but I tend to feel like House of the Dead III was the pinnacle of the arcade-style use of a shotgun , and I don’t think Umbrella Chronicles even comes close in that regard. It’s true that House of the Dead III was built from the ground up around that one weapon, but it just goes back to my original point that the guns really need to feel good for the shooting action to be effective.

The graphics, as mentioned before, were generally very good, but they seemed a little bit muddy at times. More than once I found myself squinting against the dark palette of browns and blacks in an effort to make out the little leech creatures that seemed to spend a lot of time attached to my character’s face. They blend in a little bit too much with the background, and suddenly they attack. The zombies themselves are nicely animated and detailed, with all of the usual trappings in place like tattered clothing and hanging flesh. I generally think that the Los Ganados of RE4 are the current zombie gold standard for the series, and the Umbrella Chronicles zombies are at least as detailed as their parasitic cousins, if not more so.

The final battle is with a scorpion-like boss that keeps its claws tucked in front of its vulnerable face/mouth parts. Here, the games strengths and weaknesses seem to be the most apparent. The boss is very detailed, those nasty claws look real enough anyway, and comes off as fairly impressive as leaps in and out of combat with the player. However, like with the zombies, the bullets don’t seem to even register, even when you are hitting the vulnerable head. It’s hard to tell whether or not you’re doing damage without glancing at the life bar every few minutes, even when you pull out one of the other weapons.

Unfortunately, my game ended prematurely as the boss presumably devoured my intestines, but I feel like I played enough to justify leaving with mixed feelings. It’s not the definitive shooting experience by any stretch of the imagination, especially when compared with the forthcoming Time Crisis 4 on the PS3, but it played well enough to likely be the zapper’s premier game. I only hope that Capcom uses the time left to it before release to tighten up the experience just a little more so that Umbrella Chronicles can jump from A

TGS 07: Bandai Namco Press Conference

September 24, 2007

News / by Kathryn Bailey Make a comment! / Tweet it!

As many westerners as there are attending TGS, it’s easy for the overseas audience to forget that this show primarily caters to the Japanese media, with a lot of the materials and presentations being almost entirely in Japanese. Bandai/Namco felt our pain though, and drafted localization team member Austin Keys to organize a press event at the Namco/Bandai booth just for westerners.

Now wasn’t that nice of them? Yes, yes it was.

Six games were shown for the assembled media, four of which we know a fair amount about already. While Austin only briefly touched on Beautiful Katamari (still no Katamari for the Wii, sigh), he did treat us to new TGS trailers for Soul Calibur Legends, Soul Calibur IV, Time Crisis IV, Ace Combat 6 and the newly revealed Family Trainer – Athletic World for the Wii.

The Ace Combat 6 trailer looked to be an extender version of the trailer released earlier this year, which primarily consisted of numerous beautiful shots of dogfighting jet fighters, missile trails and explosions interspersed with images of a young civilian woman and a swelling orchestral score. The high resolution ground textures are still absolutely stunning, and the planes themselves have never looked shinier.

Out of the two Soul Calibur trailers, Soul Calibur Legends did a good of helping us understand what exactly the game is all about (Siegfried, Soul Edge and a lot of slashing, if you want to know). It’s still pretty ugly, running on what appears to be a modified version of the four-year old Soul Calibur II engine, but the action at least looked pretty entertaining. Soul Calibur IV primarily hinted at a final, cataclysmic battle between Nightmare and Siegfried. I don’t think this will be the last Soul Calibur by a long shot, but as a fan of the series, it’s nice to see the long-running story finally come to a head. Naturally, the action was pretty impressive too.

Time Crisis IV was touted by Austin as being “better than the arcade fiction,” a feat ten years ago but somewhat more commonplace today. That isn’t to say that the trailer was bad, quite the contrary. The trailer boasts “full freedom of movement” with the GunCon peripheral, which Austin called a “well thought out bit of design.” The graphics are pretty much par for the course for the PS3, which is to say that they are better than average, but perhaps not as stunning as the likes of Metal Gear Solid IV or perhaps Devil May Cry IV. Naturally, like every cheesy action flick ever made, the trailer had to end on a A

Gaming Unplugged: Ra

September 20, 2007

Features / Unplugged / by Chris Ingersoll Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Growing up, one of my favorite game shows was Press Your Luck; it was briefly reincarnated in the early 2000s under the name of its mascot, the Whammy — a playful little imp who delighted in taking away a contestant’s prize money should they be so unlucky to stop their “spin” on one of his spaces. The oft-repeated mantra of “No whammies, no whammies, no whammies… STOP!” has taken root in the pop culture lexicon, and you will frequently hear it invoked during playthroughs of Reiner Knizia’s Ra, a tile game combining an auction mechcanic with set-collection scoring system.

The object of Ra is to acquire the most fame (points) over three epochs (rounds) by the collecting of various types of tiles won during auctions. You can only win a limited number of auctions (which varies with the number of players) each epoch, and there is a chance that an epoch can end prematurely, denying you one or more chances at auctions.

To begin, each player is assigned a group of suns valued sequentially from two to thirteen (or to sixteen with five players); these are what you use to win auctions, with the highest sun bid winning. Each player also starts with ten points, represented by stone tablets in denominations of one, two, five, and ten. The tiles in the bag represent various aspects of ancient Egyptian culture that are needed in order to have a successful dynasty (scoring tiles), disasters that remove two of their corresponding scoring tiles from the auction winner’s possession, and tiles depicting Ra, the Egyptian Sun God. The tiles themselves are colorful and eye-catching, with basic but serviceable art very much in the style of Egyptian hieroglyphics; the Ra tiles in particular stand out with their bright red backgrounds — much like the Whammies of PYL. The quantities of each type of tile are listed on the game board for probability reference (e.g., “how many Floods are left in the bag?”).

On each player’s turn, he has three options: 1) pull a tile from the bag and place it on the auction track (or the Ra track if it is a Ra tile); 2) spend a God tile (won in auctions) to claim any one tile on the auction track; or 3) invoke Ra. Drawing a Ra tile or invoking Ra initiates an auction for all of the tiles currently on the auction track, plus the sun used to win the previous auction; the first completed auction of the game includes the sun valued at one, which can obviously only win an auction if you’re the only player placing a bid. The sun you win via auction is placed face-down in front of you for use in the next epoch (or for scoring after the third); when you are out of face-up suns, you are done for the epoch.

An epoch ends either when all players have used all of their suns or when the final Ra tile is placed on the Ra track — which is usually when the Whammy reference comes into play, as the final Ra tile ends the epoch immediately, discarding whatever tiles may remain on the auction track. This is especially true when only one player has any suns left and is essentially in sole control of the board. If your playgroup is anything like mine, the inherent tension created by “pressing your luck” is usually amplified by the other players (without suns) actively rooting for you to hit the “Whammy” and get screwed; sinister chants of “RA! RA! RA!” are not uncommon in my experience.

After each epoch, points are awarded for various criteria — and occasionally deducted for a lack of certain aspects. Certain tiles are discarded every epoch, and others are retained; the latter are noted by a symbol so inexperienced players know which are which. At the end of the third and final epoch, there are two additional scoring criteria. The highest total then wins.

As the default action of pulling a tile takes about five seconds, and auctions being restricted to one bid per player eliminates down on “arms race”-style bidding increments that can occur in other auction-based games, Ra features very little downtime. Even a five-player game shouldn’t take more than an hour to finish; three players can probably get done in around half that time. The only complaint most owners of the game have comes from the fact that at some point between editions the tiles became bigger than they were originally but the bag that you draw them from did not, creating a situation where it is difficult to “shuffle” them adequately; an upcoming reprinting of the game is said to correct this nuisance. Also, I highly recommend visiting BoardGameGeek’s Ra page and printing out one of the players’ mats/scoring sheets, which will help you keep things organized and greatly speed up play (especially scoring).

While there is a heavy luck element to Ra, it is restricted only to which tiles are pulled in what order. Everything else is public knowledge, so there is a high level of strategy balancing out the random tile draws. One of the key strategic elements is knowing when to invoke Ra, which can force players to make unfavorable bids if they really want something on the auction track — or possibly let you get what you want for your lowest-valued sun if no one else steps up. Just be sure you really want (or can at least make do with) what’s on the auction track — if Ra was invoked and no other player makes a bid, the player who invoked Ra must bid, to prevent invoking from being a stall tactic.

Do you place a higher bid to cut off later bidders from getting what they want (or at least from getting them cheaply) and risk “wasting” one of your own suns? How many Ra tiles are left in the bag, anyway? Should you bid now to trade one of your low-value suns for a higher-valued one for the next epoch, and pick up some extra points before that last Ra tile messes everything up? Can you afford to eat the losses that disaster tile will cause? Hey, Chris is really collecting a good amount of Monuments over there… should I try to stop him from racking up some major points in the final round? Questions like that are what makes Ra challenging — and a blast to play for the thinking gamer.

More Screenshots

Images courtesy of BoardGameGeek.com

TGS 07: Sony Keynote – Back to Basics

September 20, 2007

News / by Kathryn Bailey Make a comment! / Tweet it!

It’s been a difficult year for for Sony, the formerly dominating company being hammered on all sides by bad press, disappointing sales and stiff competition from Nintendo and Microsoft.

In his TGS keynote speech, Sony President Kaz Hirai largely abandoned lucid dreams for the kind rhetoric employed by losing NFL coaches – It’s time to get back to basics. Sony has decided that it’s now all about games and gamers, and to prove that they were serious, their first move was to finally unveil the Dual Shock 3 for long-suffering PS3 owners.

“We have received many opinions from our users, and one of the largest voices we heard is that they wanted the addition of vibration to the Sixaxis,” Hirai said, citing 2008 as the return of vibration for North American and European players.

Sony wasted no time getting the DS3 into the hands of players, with several games on the show floor utilizing the new controller, including the all-important Metal Gear Solid 4. There isn’t much to say about the controller itself save that it feels like a slightly heavier Sixaxis, a welcome improvement since the original Sixaxis felt far too light in my hands. Outside of that, it’s basically the same controller you’ve been using since roughly 1998, but it’s great to have what should have been there in the first place.

Other than the expected DS3 announcement, there was relatively little in the way of new information. The demo reel was largely underwhelming, mostly featuring games that have been around for months. New Home details were also lacking, with Kaz’s only comment being that he expected it to be a A

TGS 07: Nights: Journey of Dreams (Wii) Hands-On

September 20, 2007

News / by Kathryn Bailey Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Nights into Dreams was one of the most popular games on the Sega Saturn, but for that reason alone I’m willing to bet that more than a few gamers have never heard of it before the Wii sequel was announced. For those who don’t know, the series centers around the sensation of flight, with boys and girls banishing their nightmares by taking control of a jester-like creature called Nights.

I know about Nights, but this is my first time actually playing it. As such, I didn’t really know what to expect until I picked up the Wiimote and got started. Like most Wii games, the graphics are certainly nothing to write home about, though they are definitely colorful and interesting to look at. They do a good job of leaving the impression of a dream world, which I imagine was the designer’s goal.

The camera remains fixed at a somewhat awkward isometric view, only periodically moving behind Nights as she flies around the stage. For the purposes of the demonstration, I was directed to the dream park stage, where I floated around collecting jewels and other objects for a while amid the foresty green. Flight feels like its on rails – Your character is always moving forward, with an occasional burst of acceleration used to catch up to targets.

It took a while getting used to the controls. I kept wanting to push forward to make Nights fly ahead (intuitive, no?), but I kept doing backwards. Finally, after much prodding from my Japanese assistant, I realized that I actually had to press right to move forward, which felt wrong from that perspective. I was eventually able to get used to it though, snagging all three birds in the stage and grabbing the keys they were carrying.

Once I cleared the first stage, it was on to the boss, a large, floating beach ball-like clown creature that mostly floated about the stage harmlessly. My goal was to push it all the way to the top of the stage, but it was difficult as the perspective kept shifting. I was finally on my way up, but alas, I ran out time and my dream was over.

Anticipated as this game is by some, I was left feeling underwhelmed by the demonstration. With so many AAA games hitting the market soon, it’s difficult for me to recommend what felt like a relatively simple game with somewhat confusing controls. No doubt fans who remember the Saturn will pick this one up, and there are indeed some things to recommend it, including the use of different masks to change speeds and the use of the Forecast Channel for various features. As for me, if I want a starry platformer-like game, I may just stick with Mario Galaxy.

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