Video Game News at giantbomb.com

Whatcha Playing This Weekend? Independence Day Edition

Brad — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:00:00 -0700

Wizard needs gamepad badly!

It's a longish weekend for those of us in the U.S. this week as the date of our independence draws nigh. And besides visiting dueling barbecues for a time on Saturday to compare the relative merits of their beef ribs, I'll be spending the next few days doing what many of you are probably also doing: staying in the house playing games. Here's what's on my short list. What's on yours?

Trine

Well, I gotta review it next week. But more to the point, it looks super slick, with beautiful visuals and what looks like unique aiming and platform mechanics, and a whole lot of physics, from the little bit I tried so far. Who else is digging into this one after yesterday's early release?

Professor Layton

Nearly finished climbing the tower! St. Mystere's dark secrets are almost known to me--plus, I need to finish it before the new one comes out. This copy's going to my mom when I'm done with it.

Gears of War 2 or Grand Theft Auto IV?

My pile of shame is a mile high (Fallout 3 and Fable II yet remain essentially untouched) but I've played enough of these two games that the idea of finishing them is at least approachable. But I can't decide! One of them has a thin enough storyline that I can probably get back into it after a few months away from it, but then, the other one was our Game of the Year last year. OK, you guys tell me which of these to play.

More importantly, tell me what you're playing this weekend to fill the time between setting off illegal fireworks and cramming processed meat products down your gullets. For bonus points, discuss your preferred brand of hot dogs, and why. Happy eating! I mean, playing! Both! Whatever!

Your Most Wanted Achievements

Jeff — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:00:00 -0700

POOOOOINTS!

The achievement tracking feature we rolled out back in May has proven to be pretty popular with you guys. It's probably one of my favorite things about Giant Bomb, and it's only gotten better over time. In addition to tracking your Xbox 360 profiles and World of Warcraft accounts, we're now keeping stats on PC games that use Steam to offer achievements. And I'm hoping that we'll be able to get PlayStation 3 trophies in the mix in the relatively near future. All of this gives us a great deal of data to play with, and we're thinking about different ways to let you play with it down the line.

So I figured I'd share some statistics with you that I found pretty interesting. These figures cover data that goes all the way back to the mid-May launch of our achievement stuff. In the future, I'll be limiting the data to shorter timeframes so we can all see how it changes from week to week.

For starters, here are the top five achievement lists on Giant Bomb. Whether people are searching on Google or just navigating the site directly, these are the five full achievement lists that you've been asking for more than any others.

Considering how well UFC seems to have been selling, I can't say I'm too surprised to see it up there. Also, it might say good things about Red Faction: Guerrilla's sales that it's already ahead of UFC, even though it hasn't been out for as long. After seeing the above list, I'm not too surprised to see achievements from some of those games on the most popular achievements list. Oh, and keep in mind that we've yet to build in proper support for secret achievements, which may skew the data a bit.

With that, these are the ten most popular individual achievements on Giant Bomb.

Another DID YOU KNOW moment here. DID YOU KNOW that we allow people to comment on individual achievements? It's true! We've done this so that people can get in there and help each other out. So if you're working on The Fowl Player in Fable and can't figure out how to get the chicken suit, well, our achievement page happens to already have the answer. So sync up your accounts today, and if you've been waiting to get your PSN account and trophies up in there, hang tight. Hopefully we'll be able to have something for you before too long.

The Best Possible News About Tekken 6: No Character Unlocks

Brad — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:00:00 -0700

See ya soon, you crotchety old bastard.

Heihachi be praised, Namco has seen the light!

There's a time-honored tradition among fighting games of forcing you to play through the arcade mode--against the boring AI, naturally--over and over ad nauseam to open up access to all the playable characters. Thankfully, it's a tradition Namco Bandai is finally casting off with Tekken 6, according to an interview on VideoGamer.com with director Katsuhiro Harada (saw this on 1UP). Good news; in my view, Tekken has generally been the most egregious offender in this category.

Why we locked the characters originally was that in the arcades, it was kind of to extend the life of the game by gradually unlocking characters. And also with the home versions as well, because you can rent games or whatever, it was to protect us against that.

That’s kind of outdated now though, especially with online play. If we were to have locked characters it would irritate a lot of people, to be playing against others online and to not have all the characters available. So I think it’s no longer useful.

'Tis music to mine ears, because, man, that is one outdated mechanic. I very grudgingly played through Street Fighter IV just enough times to get almost everyone, but I never did get around to unlocking Seth. There's no bigger bummer than getting a new fighting game and hopping online only to face characters you can't choose yourself, and I'm glad Namco's come around to that fact.

Gut check time: Who's still a Tekken fan around here? It's a big year for fighting games; is this your game? Here's a reminder of how it's shaping up.

Fez Confirmed For 2010 Xbox Live Arcade Release

Jeff — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:00:00 -0700

With a friendly graphic (seen below) and a headline screaming FEZ IS COMING TO XBOX LIVE ARCADE EARLY 2010, Polytron has finally confirmed release details for its upcoming puzzle/platformer/indie darling thing.

In the game, a little guy named Gomez will wear a fez and move between 2D and 3D for the purposes of puzzle solving. It won an Excellence In Visual Art award back at the 2008 Independent Games Festival and has been straight blowin' up ever since.

The 2010 date represents a bit of a delay, as it had been previously listed as a 2009 release.

I Got Next Gets Got

Ryan — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:00:00 -0700

I'm sure true appreciators of documentaries are irritated by this trend, but as someone who doesn't enjoy being bummed out for 90 minutes with depressing "messages," I'm all for the trend of documentaries that focus on the peculiar passions and infatuations of mundane or otherwise insignificant people. Spellbound, Wordplay, Scrabylon, and maybe most obviously, The King of Kong were all pretty fascinating to me, so it's of little surprise that I'm pretty intrigued by Ian Cofino's documentary about the people whose lives revolve around hardcore competitive fighting games, I Got Next.

What started as a short-form documentary senior project for Mr. Cofino has since turned into a feature-length documentary, though it looks more interesting than you typical student film. The focus of the documentary appears to be on the upper echelons of the professional US fighting game scene and the East Coast/West Coast rivalry that exists within it. He gets access to a number of the top players, most prominently Ryan "Gootecks" Gutierrez, and while I can't say I get much from the talking-head bits in the trailer, the combination of The Go! Team and rooms packed full of dudes ABSOLUTELY FLIPPING OUT over video games is enough to get me excited.

So how can you see I Got Next? Well, the film already had an online "premiere" on UFragTV earlier this week, though if you missed that, you'll be able to download it straight from the official I Got Next website in the near future.

Alpha Protocol Dated For October 6

Brad — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:00:00 -0700

Somebody at Sega pulled the big shiny lever marked "Release Alpha Protocol News!" today, repeatedly. First up, the game's release date: October 6. That covers releases on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. The game's been delayed pretty heavily, but then, what we saw of it at E3 looked like Obsidian has been spending the extra time polishing the game up, so maybe that's for the best.

Next up, the latest developer diary for the game, going into more detail about Michael Thorton's most dangerous mission.

Lastly, the box art! Obsidian informs us the official title is still just Alpha Protocol, with the "Espionage RPG" business constituting a tagline, not a subtitle. In case you were wondering!

Who among you is sold on Alpha Protocol already? It sounds ambitious to me, but I'm in kind of a wait-and-see mode before I get too hyped for it.

Midway/Warner Deal Approved

Jeff — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:00:00 -0700

If Warner's first move is to do a Sinistar sequel, then this will all have been worth it.

The Chicago Tribune is reporting that the objections standing in the way of the $33 million sale of Midway assets to Warner Bros. have been resolved, and a judge has approved the sale.

The objections came from companies like Tigon Studios, the Vin Diesel-founded company that's partially responsible for Wheelman. Another objection came from Threshold Entertainment, the company that produced the Mortal Kombat movies, TV shows, and other MK-related properties. The Threshold objection was especially crazy, as it asserted that the company had created the bulk of the Mortal Kombat series' fiction, going so far as to mention that having things like pallette-swapped ninjas meant that the game story was flat or non-existent or something. Do not get me started on the the deep history of strife between Sub-Zero and Scorpion. Back when the first few games were coming out, MK was noted for having significantly more lore than most of its fighting counterparts.

Meanwhile, there are a pair of studios that weren't included in the sale to Warner. Midway's San Diego and Newcastle studios will be open for 60 days, according to a report from Joystiq. Provided that no one comes in to buy them from Midway, they'll close at the end of that period.

Newcastle, you might remember, recently started showing off its latest production, Necessary Force. Midway San Diego was most recently the home of TNA Impact! 2. It also happens to be the home of some of the guys that worked on Midway's other sports games, like NBA Jam and NFL Blitz, which may explain why I had a dream last night in which basketball was played while longtime Midway announcer, Tim Kitzrow, provided commentary. My mind's weird sometimes.

Battlefield 1943 (Finally) Dated, Out Next Week

Brad — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:00:00 -0700

After what seemed like a few false starts, EA has announced that DICE's Battlefield revival 1943 will finally be hitting Xbox Live Arcade next Tuesday (I mean, uh, Wednesday), July 8, with the PlayStation Network version following one day later on July 9. Both versions will run you around $15.

We got some serious quick look time with '43 recently, and you can also take a gander at this new trailer.

Lastly, EA sent out "box" art for the game, including a PC version, as if to remind you that the PC version is in fact still coming. But not until September, don't forget.

Asteroids Smashing Into Theaters

Ryan — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:00:00 -0700

Drama! Excitement!

Even though no one has really cracked the code yet on making a video-game movie adaptation that's, well, watchable, there are certain games that are either archetypal enough in setting or rely on the familiar kinds of dramatic beats that an adaptation makes a certain amount of sense. When you tell me that BioShock or Uncharted or Gears of War is being made into a movie, I say "OK, sure, I can see that." But when The Hollywood Reporter, uh, reported this morning that Universal had picked up the rights to produce a movie based on the classic vector-based arcade game Asteroids--following an apparently heated four-studio bidding war, no less--I have to wonder just what in the holy hot hell is going on in Hollywood.

There's no story, casting, or title news at the moment, though Asteroids is being produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura, whose most recent work includes Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, with Matthew Lopez, screenwriter on Bedtime Stories and Race to Witch Mountain, attached to write it. So, I guess expect a family-friendly PG adventure featuring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and eye-gouging CG effects?

As THP itself points out, there's no real story or characters or anything to Asteroids, though that's not stopping the development of movies based on the board games Battleship and Candyland either. Unless the producers are pursuing some kind of self-reflexive Tron-style meta-reality, I'm not sure how you specifically evoke Asteroids in a movie. I mean, yeah, it'll probably take place in space, and there goddamn well better be some giant space rocks, but at that point you're just kind of just paying for the name, which feels pretty dated as the name of a video game, and outright absurd as a movie. I'd be surprised if they leave the title alone, and while I'd like them to embrace the goofiness with something like Asteroids! I fully expect them to go with something more like Asteroids: The Battle for Infinity.

On the off chance that a person of influence is reading this, here's the best scene in a movie to feature asteroids. Take note!

Trine Out Early, Available Now On Steam

Brad — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:00:00 -0700

Frozenbyte's medieval 2D/3D platformer Trine, which lets you swap between three character classes on the fly to solve environmental puzzles and looks pretty sweet doing it, is suddenly available now on Steam. The game had been expected to release on PC as late as July 10, but forget about all that now. There's also a PSN version in the works, but we're currently awaiting word about exactly when that version will go up. You can nab the PC version for $29.99 now, or wait it out to get the PlayStation 3 version for 10 bones cheaper at $19.99.

(The game is published by SouthPeak on the PC, and Nobilis on the PS3. If that weren't confusing enough, Atlus has recently announced it will release the game on Xbox Live Arcade, though that version is said to be several months away.)

Here's a trailer to give you an idea of what Trine is about--or, you know, you could just go download the demo and try it for yourself. For the squeamish among you, we'll be back with a review of the full version soon.

Anybody already grab the full version? What do you think of it so far?

Final Fantasy Gaiden: Four Warriors Of Light Headed To DS

Brad — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:00:00 -0700

Until today, the following image from a teaser site was the only indication that Square Enix was on the verge of announcing a new game, and forget about trying to actually figure out what that game is. Little kids, swords, dragons... It's Square we're talking about. That could be anything.

Today, via some scans of Jump magazine on Joystiq, we know a whole lot more. Seems this is a new Final Fantasy game for the DS, full title Final Fantasy Gaiden: The Warriors of Light. I'm all for what Square's been doing with Final Fantasy games on the DS, and I must admit the idea of a brand new FF game in that style is only slightly less intoxicating than a DS remake of my beloved Final Fantasy VI, which is something I'm totally still hoping for.

You can head over to the Joystiq story to see the scan with some screenshots, and a tiny shred of information translated from the magazine article. Apparently you'll be fighting a witch!

Crap. Does this mean I need to get the remake of Final Fantasy IV reviewed sometime before this comes out? I'm afraid it may.

StarCraft, Brood War, Blizzard Entertainment

Ryan — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:00:00 -0700

There's certainly been a lot of talk about StarCraft lately, and with Blizzard 's plans to release StarCraft II in three , separate packages over the next few years, it probably won't let up anytime soon. But, as someone who has never played any StarCraft--I gave up on RTS games years ago, and before that I was more of a C&C man anyway--my sole connection to the Korean national pastime was this show-stopping, hard-hitting, touchdown-from-all-angles, slam-dunk of a rap song about one man's passion for, and proficiency at, playing StarCraft.

So, a little history here. Several incarnations ago, MP3.com existed as a way for independent musical acts to showcase their wares. There were charts for different musical genres, and as someone who had some of my own ill-considered suburban joke-rap up there, I was constantly checking the hip-hop chart , which is where I first encountered UhMer 's white-hot club banger, StarCraft: BroodWar. To give you some perspective on the baseline of quality of the music being posted on MP3.com, this song was #1 on the hip-hop chart for the majority of 1999. Needless to say, the internet was a lot smaller back then. Despite how much the game has changed, I'd really love to hear what UhMer has to say about StarCraft II, and I fully expect him to resurface with a sweepingly epic hip-hopera in three parts starting shortly after the release of Wings of Liberty .

Ben Heck's New C64 Laptop

Ryan — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:00:00 -0700

Benjamin J Heckendorn is a villainous individual. From where I'm sitting, it would seem that his purpose in this life is to craft gorgeous-looking and highly covetable custom video-game hardware that is both too rare and too expensive for me to actually own, while also providing a near-pornographic level of detail into the build process. I don't think I can quite articulate how badly I want one of his Xbox 360 laptops to call my own. Actually, I suppose I can: badly, but not badly enough to pull together Heck's regular asking price of $5k. That's how much I paid for my car , and that was nearly a decade ago. I haven't got a DIY bone in my body, so even in my imagination, the premise of me building one of my own results in either electrocution, hundreds of dollars in broken, disassembled electronics, or some combination of the two.

Heckendorn continues to taunt me with his latest , a second revision on his existing design for a Commodore 64 laptop. Beyond just shrinking the C64 into a "portable" form-factor, this thing has got some modern technology that you won't find in a stock Commodore, including an SD-based storage solution, as well as USB and Ethernet ports. While the majority of Ben Heck's custom work is done on commission these days, this particular project is going to be auctioned off for charity. It's hard to badmouth a charitable cause without coming off like a complete jerkburger, but it digs at my covetous brain to know that this sweet piece of business will likely end up costing more than it would normally. Does that make me a bad person? Most probably, yeah.

Bit.Trip Core: Even Bit.Trippier Than The Last One

Brad — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:00:00 -0700

I can see through time, man.

When Gaijin Games' Alex Neuse talks about his company's WiiWare series Bit.Trip, he doesn't just speak in terms of intense rhythm action with a pixel-art style. That's what the average player is likely to see when they first put their hands on a Bit.Trip game, but Neuse will tell you there's a lot more going on under the hood.

The six-episode series, about to get its second installment next Monday in Bit.Trip Core, actually tells a continuous storyline about a nebulous but excellently named figure, Commander Video. Talking to Neuse made me think of Bit.Trip as a concept album, the way a record like Pink Floyd's The Wall tells a story with music rather than more conventional narrative means. It seems like Gaijin is trying to do the same thing here--only they've got trippy retro visuals and twitchy rhythmic gameplay to act as storytelling tools along with the music.

You'd know about all this if Neuse explained it to you over a conference-room table, as he did for me. But you might miss Bit.Trip Core's narrative elements if you came to the game with no prior information. Some of you may be so harried by the gameplay's frantic demands that you won't even notice whatever thematic elements have been tucked subtly away beneath the thumping beats and day-glo light show. Luckily, you don't have to find them; Neuse allows that if the game weren't still fun when stripped of its peripheral elements it would constitute a failure of his game design.

Look, a storyline!

Others of you are right now rolling your eyes at all this art-house stuff, saying "just get to the game already." And so I shall. Unlike Bit.Trip Beat 's motion-analog control, Core has moved on to the d-pad and a single button--and just like the controls, the concept of the action couldn't be simpler. There's a plus sign in the middle of the screen. You can shoot a beam from each end of it. Dots are swirling around the plus, and you have to hit them with the appropriate beam when they pass by. Each dot makes a note when you hit it, so hitting enough of them will make a song. Easy peasy.

Of course it's not really that easy, since it's about halfway through the first level before the dots come at you fast enough to fluster you, and then maybe a few more minutes before you're scrambling to even keep up with them at all. The game kicks into a great effect when you're on the verge of losing: it drops its Rez-like crazy backgrounds, goes completely black and white, and plays all of the (reduced) music and sounds through the Wii-mote speaker.

You can get a basic sense of how the game plays from this trailer, though it does get way harder than this.

The dot patterns are the same every time, so part of playing Core well is simple memorization. Many of the dots cross more than one of the four cardinal directions as they arc around, though, so you can vary up the songs a little by choosing which beam to hit a dot with--which will in turn change up the melody a bit. There's an occasional power-up that gives you a two-way beam, but also a power-down that turns your plus (and your controls) 90 degrees. In gameplay terms, the appeal here seems to be along the lines of the Guitar Hero school of rhythm design, with an emphasis on practice and repetition in order to achieve perfect playing that in turn creates the best possible musical experience.

The Wii seems to have found its answer to Art Style or PixelJunk with the Bit.Trip games, whether you come to them looking for high-concept storytelling or just good, clean rhythm action. Given the combination of aesthetic consistency and gameplay variation between Beat and Core so far, it'll be interesting to see what directions Gaijin pursue with the remaining four installments. Check out our video interview with Neuse for a little more insight into where the series is going.

"Authentic" StarCraft Lessons: $25 An Hour

Brad — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:00:00 -0700

Apparently it's all StarCraft, all the time this week. I just caught sight of an amazing listing on Craigslist (San Francisco Bay Area edition) from a guy named ByunTae offering by-the-hour StarCraft lessons. He sure isn't shy about offering his qualifications:

I have advised and coached many professional gamers such as Im Jae Dong, Park Myung Soo, Ma Jae Yoon, and more. Boxer and I were great friends until he started using my dropships to gain his fame. I started training other players to be on par with Boxer and eventually surpassing Boxer. He is no longer the best player thanks to my contribution to rest of the players.

Um, yeah. OK! So what will your $25/hour (or $35 for advanced lessons) get you? Here's what ByunTae will be teaching.

Micro management (unit management)

Macro management (unit production and economy)

Map specific strategies

Basic and Advanced strategies and build orders for all three races.

In-game bugs to be used to your advantage such as unit stack, stop lurkers, etc.

Counter strategies and perfect attack timings.

Learn Korean lango, like "chobo" "gosu" "ww" etc

Basic Korean to communicate with Koreans on battle.net

Unit details, their size and their pros/cons against other units

My signature cannon rush along with my signature cheese rush (boxer learned it from me)

Oh yeah, there's always the "Chance to become a professional gamer in Korea - Celebrity status, especially for foreigners." Don't forget about that part. Then again, with madness like this to look forward to, maybe you could stand to brush up on your skills.