Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Gaming Today

Gaming Today

Microsoft’s Tsunoda Says Kinect Is From the Future, and so Nobody Can Copy It

Posted: 07 Sep 2010 05:10 PM PDT

Kinect designer Kudo Tsunoda (pictured) to Eurogamer: “We have a good advantage at Microsoft because we have groups like our Microsoft Research department that not a lot of other companies have, and we’re able to solve some super-complicated technical problems in a short period of time.”

Well, yeah. I mean, you guys invented time travel.

More: “I think it’s going to be super-challenging for anybody else to solve those problems.”

The catch is that folks are going to be hard at work reverse engineering the thing as soon as they can get a hold of one. Of course, since the technology is from the future, it may end up being like the [NERD ALERT!] British engineers in Harry Turtledove’s WorldWar series trying to figure out how the alien tanks work. It was so outside their realm of understanding that couldn’t do much but figure out how to use it, and it was years before they could make their own versions of it.

I s’pose that’s what Tsunoda is counting on. To the future!

I am very proud of myself for not making any obvious and unfunny Back to the Future references in this post.

Rare Creative Director Says They Should Have Scrapped Kameo and Started Over

Posted: 07 Sep 2010 04:12 PM PDT

Back in the day, Nintendo owned Rare. And Rare did good work for them. (I mean, Donkey Kong Country, just to name one.) And, so, back in the day, when they first started working on Kameo: Elements of Power, they were prepping it for the Cube. And then, in 2002, Microsoft bought the company, and they switched to Xbox, and then it was later picked to be a 360 launch title. Switching from the Cube to the more hardcore-oriented Xbox meant some changes.

Here’s Rare creative director George Andreas, speaking int he latest issue of Edge: “We changed direction slightly because of the new audience we were trying to aim at. We called Kameo an elf, but really she was a fairy. We tried to disguise that a few times, but it didn’t really work out. It was a game with a fairy for an audience that likes shooting and killing things.

“In hindsight, it probably would have been best to scrap everything and start again. And then we jumped on 360 as a launch title. We weren’t far off finishing [when that happened].”

Oh well. No games, when they come out, are exactly where their developers want them to be, and Kameo sold pretty well and wasn’t a terrible game. But self-aware people are their own worst critics; fight on, Georgie.

via CVG

It Take 33 Hours On Average to Beat Mass Effect 2, and Other Fun Facts

Posted: 07 Sep 2010 03:25 PM PDT

OK, so Casey Hudson over at BioWare did an interview with IGN, and he spilled some fun beans for our consumption. They are in the image above, obviously. Take a gander at that for a second. It’s all very interesting, yes, but a couple of these items stand out to me.

Only half the people who played the game played it to the end? I’m disappointed in all of you. Also, only half of players imported a save from the first game? I can understand that maybe some folks lost their Mass Effect 1 save for whatever reason, but there’s no way that represents all of that number. I’m curious how many of those are also folks who didn’t finish ME2. I’m guessing the overlap is very high.

Moving on. It says 80% of players played as the male Shepard, but Hudson did not explain that stat to IGN. My question: Does that mean 80% of players only played as a male Shepard? I have two female playthroughs and three male playthroughs; where I do fit in this stat?

Last word from me: The average playthrough took 33 hours and the some players went upwards of 66 hours. My own five playthroughs varied wildly in terms of time it took to finish, ranging from 10 hours to 50. (The 10-hour playthrough was the one I ran through quickly without doing any loyalty missions so I could get my entire team killed at the end.) Interestingly, I did have one that was almost right at 33 hours.

That’s all the brilliant insight I have for you here. Head over to IGN for the full interview, which will enlighten you on what BioWare does with this data.

P.S. Don’t forget that Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC for Mass Effect 2 is out today. I stupidly already downloaded it even though I can’t play it until I finish working today.

PAX 2010: Dragon Age 2 Hands-On

Posted: 07 Sep 2010 12:50 PM PDT

I pretty much made a beeline straight for BioWare’s Dragon Age 2 booth today. David Silverman gave us a brief introduction of what’s new in Dragon Age 2, and then I got the chance to go hands-on with the very beginning of the game.

So, what’s new in Dragon Age 2?

After Dragon Age: Origins was released, BioWare took a hard look at their community forums and at reviews, and they put all criticism the game received into three buckets:

1. Graphics:
BioWare is paying a lot of attention to this. The PC version of Dragon Age: Origins looked pretty good, but the console versions were bad. Silverman actually said that we would be “blown away” at how good the console versions look now. And I totally was (more on that later).

2. Combat:
Pausing combat in Dragon Age: Origins let you command your party “like a general,” but when you unpaused the game, you kind of became a spectator. Silverman admitted that DA: O players actually used the unpaused gameplay times to “go to the bathroom.”

In Dragon Age: 2, when you unpause, you still have complete combat control of your character. You can manually swing your sword and “fight like a Spartan.” Nice.

3. Story:
People generally loved the story in DA: O, so in Dragon Age 2 BioWare is getting fancy. The game will have what’s being described as a “Framed Narrative,” or in other words, a story-within-a-story. This will allow the game’s story to span 10 years, instead of just one year. Silverman used the Hollywood examples Usual Suspects, and Princess Bride.

So, the story you play in Dragon Age 2 is being “acted out,” while another group of characters are one layer above, telling the story as you play it.

On to the hands-on part for god’s sake.

BioWare had both the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game on hand. I went for the 360 version, since that’s the version I played of DA: O.

So, wow, the graphics. It’s such a huge improvement it’s kind of funny. “Crisp” is the word I would use. Everything is so much crisper, from the new explosive Talent animations for warriors, to the particulate splattering of blood, to facial animations during cutscenes. Dragon Age 2 is beautiful, and it’s a welcome change.

New Female Warrior Class

I chose to play as the new female Warrior class, to see just how tough she really is.

A cutscene informs me that I am being besieged by a bunch of demonic looking enemies. Right away, it’s time to fight.

On the surface, combat works very similarly to DO: A. You push “A” to attack, “X,” “Y” and “B” for Talent hotkeys, and you can pull RT to bring up your secondary menu of talents. As always, hold LT to pause the game and micromanage your approach.

What’s different? Well, it basically just feels like you’re kicking way more ass when you fight. Dragon Age 2 has been given a dose of God of War, so to speak. You can manually attack with “A,” which is much more visceral.

Talents

In DA: O, when you queued up a Talent/spell whatever, you kind of had to sit there for a while and wait for it to fire off. It was kind of the medieval KoTOR, so to speak. In Dragon Age 2, Talents fire off like a bat out of hell, right away. The responsiveness is a very welcome change here.

Another welcome change is the badassery that you can unleash with talents. In this section of the game (we were told it was the very beginning, actually), your female is quite a powerful lady indeed. We had access to a brutal arsenal of Talents. You’ll recognize these from DO: A, but they’ve overhauled in the sequel.

One standout Talent was Whirlwind, which is exactly what it sounds like. When triggered, my warrior lady would spin a’slashing, chopping up enemies foolish enough to get too close. The blood here kind of struck me. It looks…bloodier, somehow. More splattery than DA: O.

Another Talent was called Charge, in which you launch forward extremely fast and impale enemies. Finally, there was Mighty Blow, a jumping, brutal downward smite sword attack. Even though this was essentially the beginning of the game, these are very advanced, powerful talents. The reason for that is made more clear in the next section, and has to do with the framed narrative.

Framed Narrative

Right as my warrior lady was getting into a fight with a LARGE demon, a cut-scene interrupted the fight.

The narrative zoomed out one layer up, to two people–a man and a woman, both of whom look like they’d seen battle in their years–and it became clear that the man was actually telling the story of me fighting the demons.

The woman said, “Bullshit, that’s not what happened!” The two debated my past, my whereabouts, etc. When they were finished, my story resumed.

I was now with my mother, right after our village had been destroyed and our lives ruined. I was much less powerful now, much younger.

Rob Gale, the writer of the original Dragon Age, and the main writer for Dragon Age 2, explained what was happening here:

“The framed narrative allows us to zoom in and out of different times in the hero’s life. We can jump around in the timeline, and give you a variety of skill levels to play with.”

Final Word

So far, Dragon Age 2 is a better looking, better playing, more exciting game to play than its predecessor. It’s just sad we have to wait until March 2011 for the game to hit store shelves.


ORIGIN Announces Big O PC/Xbox 360 Hybrid System

Posted: 07 Sep 2010 09:50 AM PDT

The argument over PC vs. Console gaming can now be resolved. ORIGIN, a custom PC maker just announced a system that includes not only a pretty hefty Gaming PC but also a system with an integrated Xbox 360. Sound interesting? Well the system, called Big O is a mean competitor with Dual Liquid Cooled Xeon x5680′s overclocked to 4.3Ghz on each of 6 cores. (You can get a measly 4 Ghz Core i7 930 as well), dual Nvidia GTX 480 cards (also liquid cooled), 6GB of RAM, 2TB of Raid 0 storage and oh yeah, an Xbox 360 built in.

A PC this monstrous also deserves a ginormous case, so the system ships in a Danger Den Tower 21 Double Wide and 1500Watt or dual 1 kW PSUs.

In case you’re considering this purchase, the base model will set you back around $7700, with customization as an option that can max out the system at closer to $17,000.  You can read the mind-blowing specs at the Big O product page.

So, anyone in the mood to pony up the payola for this rig? Pardon me while I take out a second mortgage on my house for this.

Activision Announces Voice Talent for Call of Duty: Black Ops

Posted: 07 Sep 2010 08:17 AM PDT

Voice talent has become a huge part of video games. Some actors have made entire careers out of nothing else. Others make voice acting a huge part of their resume, and some even seek out parts in games they find interesting.

The Call of Duty series is obviously one of the biggest series of all time, and it’s garnered some nice voice talent in the past. Accordingly, it draws some major voice talent. Activision has rolled out a list of some of the voice actors for Call of Duty: Black Ops, and it’s impressive.

Gary Oldman, who voiced Russian soldier Viktor Reznov, will be returning for Black Ops. Also joining the cast is heralded actor Ed Harris, who will provide the voice for one of the main characters, CIA agent Jason Hudson.

What’s even more interesting is this: they’ve hired David Goyer to “provide script consultation and story development support.” On the off chance you’ve never heard of Goyer, let me explain why this is such a big deal. He wrote the script for a little movie you may have heard of called The Dark Knight, which grossed over a billion dollars.

I have to admit, from what I saw at E3, and what I’ve seen since, it looks like Treyarch is going all out to make Black Ops a fitting member of the Call of Duty family. We’ll find out for sure when the game releases November 9 on Nintendo DS, PC, PlayStation 3, Wii, and XBox 360.

New Shogun 2: Total War Screens from PAX 2010

Posted: 07 Sep 2010 07:12 AM PDT

The Total War series of games has a special place in my heart. Sure, playing a game takes hours, and you’ve got to have the micromanagement skills of an obsessive-compulsive on speed to be victorious, but I still love it.

The next game in the series is recalling the first: Shogun 2: Total War. Ten years after the launch of the original, Shogun 2 : Total War will return us to 16th century feudal Japan.

The feudal Japan setting was what drew me to this series in the first place, so it’s no surprise I’m stoked for this one. Shogun 2: Total War is coming to PC in 2011, but until then, you can get your fix on these awesome screenshots from PAX.

Dolby Axon Voice Chat Review

Posted: 06 Sep 2010 10:13 AM PDT

Ventrilo, Skype, Team Speak, or built-in voice chat, no matter what your preferred flavor it never quite replicates the feel of sharing a room or sitting on the couch next to your partners and opponents. Dolby’s Axon offers a different approach and a unique solution to the multi-person game chat problem.

When playing online with friends it is often very difficult to discern who is talking, and in many voice chat programs the lack of discrete sound segregation often leads to a muddled mess of chatter. Players talk over one another and in the midst of combat the tool meant to make your gaming more efficient ends up just making things worse.

Dolby’s Axon addresses this problem by offering a chat service built with gamers in mind. Axon includes features that allow players to more realistically reproduce that LAN party feel or the effect of a crowded room. Thanks to the use of simulated positioning, it is now possible to converse with buddies and actually hold multiple conversations on the same chat channel.

The Axon client is a free download and creating a user account is also free. The software runs in Windows and supports common headsets and microphones. Once users have a Dolby login it’s a pretty simple process of adding friends and creating a dedicated voice channel for your friends.

Once you have chosen a chat partner or partners, you’ll find that unlike other clients, there is a very important visual piece to the Dolby Axon interaction. Users in a shared channel see themselves represented visually on a grid. This is the most literal version of a chat room you’re likely to experience. The user icons represent the player’s place in the room as well as their virtual facing. Adjusting your positioning affects sound delivered to that user’s headset when someone else speaks.

The Axon chat uses these locations to simulate speaking in an open space that is very unlike the telephone-like performance of other voice services. Position also becomes a way to filter or focus conversations and interactions with other players.

Imagine positioning the scouts on your Modern Warfare team in front with the support folks in the back while the commander or leader sits square in the middle. Everyone can hear the conversations around them, but the program gives preference or emphasis to those nearest or facing toward you. Additionally, the chat creator can create subdivisions of the room to allow private conversations where only a few team members could plan or blather on.

Users can also set up permanent chats. These channels become persistent across sessions and are ideal for weekly clan matches or raid communications with a floating attendance list. All chats using the client are invite only, so it’s not like anyone can wander in. Chat  creators can give invite power to assigned friends for those occasions when they aren’t around.

During testing of the product the positional effects were quite impressive. Even with three people in the same room talking at once it is fairly simple to move your icon and in real-time have the positional bias change to suit your needs.

You might wonder why Dolby would be offering this service for free. There has to be a catch, right? The catch is that while the core of Axon’s features are available for free users, the company offers a $19.99 yearly subscription called "Surround Pass." This subscription allows users to set up 5 "permanent chat" channels (Free players cannot make permanent chats) Positional sound is also a subscription feature, but it’s enabled during new users first 30 days.

Surround Pass subscriber chat rooms support up to 50 users and allows you to partition the room into sections. One of the best parts of the subscription model is that once a subscriber enters a chat room, all users in the room can take advantage of the enhanced features while in that room. Similar voice clients charge considerably more for similar hosting and features.

While testing the Axon client we tested the positioning and room division features and found them to live up to expectations. Moving your icon is simple, the sound changes rapidly, representing your new location compared to the speaker and using rooms to chat allowed us to focus the conversation and filter from a more general conversation.

The only real quirk we experienced was that while in the large room the sound often felt "too roomy." Sounds were more expanded than with normal headset conversations. Moving into the divided room however had a noticeable effect as did positioning speakers closer together and with the correct "facing."

Considering this is actually one of the features of the software and not a sound bug, we chalked it up more to us needing to adjust to a voice chat system that really replicated a space for our voices to fill. Those who find it too distracting can always create a smaller room and the results will sound more "normal."

Dolby is offering the Axon API to developers, so it’s likely that in the near future games will natively support these features.

Dolby Axon is a free download. Users are required to register and create an account to use the software. An upgraded subscription service is available for $19.99 a year. You can find more information online at http://axon.dolby.com

Pros:

  • True positional sound changes the way you chat
  • Ability to set up permanent chat channels for friends (with subscription)
  • Reasonable yearly subscription rate

Cons:

  • Takes a little getting used to the simulated room effect
  • Currently requires a desktop client running outside your games

The Verdict: 90/100

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