Pandemic’s Star Wars: Battlefront franchise has been successful enough to spawn a couple of sequels across multiple platforms.
The game has an arcadelike feel that puts players in the midst of large battles. They pick from different classes and try to turn the tide of the fight. It has been a formula that worked in the past. So what does Pandemic Studios do for an encore?
Well, the Los Angeles studio has decided to take the gameplay from the sucessful Star Wars series and transfers it to the Lord of the Rings world. What we get is Lord of the Rings: Conquest, a hack-and-slash game that tries to capture the epic battles from the films.
A few weeks ago, CEO John Riccitiello had a mea culpa. He said Electronic Arts was torturing the folks at EA Black Box with a 12-month development cycle. Basically, the studio there had to produce a new Need for Speed every year, and the rigorous schedule was taking its toll.
Acknowledging this, he decided to make a change, according to GameIndustry.biz. EA split the dev teams and gave them more time to work on games. As EA Black Box transitioned to this plan, they also made another title in that span. It took about 16 months, it stars Maggie Q ,and it doesn’t look half bad.
As an undercover officer, players enter the world of underground street racing and try to find the criminals responsible for making the fictional Try-City Bay Area a dump. The game is spread out over three regions: Palm Harbor, Port Crescent and Sunset Hills.
Each area has its own characteristics, but overall, they’re connected by miles of freeways. How big is the game? I asked Justin Oliverares, the product manager, and he said that it takes about 10 to 12 minutes to circle the beltway around the game.
From the screenshots, Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure seems confusing. The puzzle-platformer appears to be two games at once. On the top screen, there’s a platformer. At the bottom, there’s a match-three puzzle game similar to Bejeweled.
But somehow designer Kyle Gray manages to fuse the two genres together. In Henry Hatsworth, players control the titular character. The controls are fairly standard. He moves with the directional pad. He can strike enemies in different directions using the Y button. He can shoot them from a far by pressing the A button. Players jump across chasms and onto platforms with the B button.
Where the game becomes interesting is when players hit the X button. This freezes the top screen and moves the action below. The game becomes a puzzle as players have to match three blocks by moving them horizontally.
Players can use the buttons or they can fiddle with the stylus. Gray, the developer, was an expert and his fingers moved so fast that the puzzle-solving seemed instant. But speed is necessary in this part of the game because the blocks are actually Hatsworth’s fallen foes.
In the game, whenever Hatsworth defeats an enemy he falls into the puzzle as a piece. The screen inches up from the bottom, and if the blocks reach high enough, these enemies are resurrected and come back to haunt Hatsworth.
Like Danny and a lot of folks, I was stunned to hear that Electronic Arts was making Celebrity Sports Showdown. I mean, really, how can a game like this exist? Why would it exist? What would possess Fergie and Nelly Furtado, pictured above, to lend their likeness to a game like this?
I swear they must have gotten a sweet deal. EA must have tossed around a lot of money. But after playing the title at the EA Studio Showcase. I can see the reason for the celebrities though I remain skeptical of the game.
Sports Showdown is a Wii party title in the best sense of the word. It pits rocks vs. jocks (and some other EA alumni) in 12 events that are easy to play with simple motions. The style is simple and fun, but it’s nothing revolutionary for the genre.
Last year, skate. was a revelation. It brought a new control scheme that made the skateboarding genre accessible to newbies while being deep enough to give hardcore fans a challenge. Instead of mashing buttons, players had to flick the right analog stick to ollie, nollie and perform other tricks.
Other than the analog stick, players used only one other button — which was for pushing off the ground and gaining speed.
With the sequel, Skate 2 adds three more inputs that give a new set of moves to the franchise, but unfortunately, it also slightly complicates the controls. The hardcore will love being able to do things like jump off their skateboards and move pipes and picnic tables around a skatepark.
But fans used to the old layout may not be too keen on learning a new set of motions and button presses. Things can get a little confusing when players sky and perform grab tricks. And they may spend hours adjusting to the new moves.
The gap betweenNBA Live and NBA 2K franchises is closing. In past years, the 2K Sports games had the edge in terms of control and gameplay, but with the team DNA and Dynamic DNA feature, NBA Live 09 could turn that around.
I had a chance to play the game with my dominant Los Angeles Lakers (or at least they will be next season with Andrew Bynum back). I was up against Matt Lafreniere, an associate producer at EA Canada, who chose the Boston Celtics. As seen above, the Oklahoma City team formerly known as the Seattle Sonics don’t have a name yet, but we’ve heard it’s Thunder.
The most obvious change is that the game is focused around the concept of player DNA. Working with Synergy Sports Technologies, the game updates every day and changes player stats based on how he’s doing in real life.
For example, if Pau Gasol develops a 3-point shot, then it’ll be reflected next season and he’ll be more likely to nail those treys. If Kobe gets hot and has a string of 40 point games as he did in January 2006, then he’ll be that unstoppable in NBA Live 09.
On the other hand, when dealing with rookies who have no statistical NBA history, the team at EA Canada is adding in player DNA states based on position. So Michael Beasley will be treated just like forward with no discernable tendencies when players get a crack at the game later this year.
Over the past three years, I’ve managed to avoid the whole brouhaha over Killzone 2. I’m blissfully unaware of the whole controversy over the 2005 E3 footage. I’ve never bothered to see the video.
And the only footage I’ve seen was of a mission where the player had to take down a weird super gun. But other than that, I went into the Killzone 2 demo as a blank slate not swayed one way or another of the title’s past.
Kyle Shubel, the manager producer for the game, gave me a tour of the game before handing over the controller. The game is divided up into eight levels with about six subchapters in the level. Overall, he said there’s about 12 hours of gameplay.
Right off the bat, I’m thrust into the gameplay. I’m in a war zone that reminds me of World War II except there’s a bit of a sci-fi twist. The soldiers look like Karl Ruprecht Kroenen from Hellboy.
It’s hard to belive this is a PlayStation Portable game. When Sony introduced Resistance: Retribution at its media briefing, I was skeptical.
How would a PlayStation 3 title translate on a lesser-powered portable? More importantly, how would a shooter translate on a hand-held that has no second analog stick?
But when I get my hands on the game at E3, my questions were answered and fears were assuaged. Retribution, a third-person shooter, is made by Sony Bend, the team that brought Syphon Filter on the PSP. The studio is adept at third-person shooters and that works shows.
To solve the dual analog problem, Bend let players move the protagonist James Grayson the analog nub and they used the faced buttons as the look buttons. It works for the most part. To help players out, the look buttons have an autolock and Grayson automatically takes cover behind ramparts and walls.
It’s an accessible control schem that lets the PSP do most of the work while players can concentrate on the action, which is mostly firing on Chimerans and tossing grenades.
After spending half an hour playing Fallout 3 yesterday I wish Vegas took bets on who will be Game of the Year. Even with powerhouses like Spore and Force Unleashed coming out around the same time I think Fallout 3 has it locked up.
To say it’s unlike anything you’ve seen before isn’t entirely fair. It has strong elements of games like the Elder Scrolls series, BioShock and of course Fallout. What’s new is how they come together to make an overall amazing experience.
After driving six hours and spend days running around Los Angeles in media briefings, there’s nothing that could keep me away from bed and sleep. Well, that’s almost true. I got invited to a little party at Ciudad Restaurant. The main course?
Hands-on with multiplayer Gears of War 2. If you’re a weary gamer, that’s something you can’t say no to. So I walked the mile or so down the Figueroa Street and got in.
They had two types of modes running. The first was called Guardian. It’s a five-on-five match with a team leader for each side. The object of the game is to kill the other time, but the only problem is that the team leader gets in the way.
As long as the team leader is alive, the rest of the team respawns. Kill the team leader and you win the game. It’s a great mode. As team leader, I hung in the middle of my team so they could defend and attack at the same time. Being the team leader can be a problem though because it puts a giant target on your back.
