by [name redacted]

Week seventeen of my ongoing, irreverent news column; originally posted at Next Generation

Monday, October 31st

Star Wars: Battlefront II
PSP/Xbox/PS2/PC
Pandemic Studios/LucasArts

I recall a day when LucasArts had something to show for itself aside from Star Wars. For the record, I have never been fond of Star Wars. And from the perspective of someone who is not particularly impressed with the ability to play as Yoda in a duel versus Darth Vader, it is exceedingly difficult to find useful information on this game. After twenty minutes of research I can’t even tell what genre it is, although people keep talking about a new “space battle” mode.

IGN spends three pages comparing the game to its predecessor and going into specific detail about exactly what every character in the game is able to do. GameSpy is able to tell me that the original Battlefront was the best-selling Star Wars game ever, which tells me exactly nothing, actually. The site does talk about “capture the flag” mode, which suggests to me this is a first-person shooter. It then goes into detail about all the mega-cool things the writer was able to do in the game. Finally, GameSpot tells me right up front that this is “an online multiplayer [first/third-person] shooter with new levels and reworked AI”. So there we are.

I think this exercise probably says more about the game and its market than anything I could add.

City of Villains
PC
Cryptic Studios/NCsoft

This is the companion piece to the recent City of Heroes MMO game, that lets you create pretty much any superhero you can dream up – even to the point of maybe infringing on Marvel’s trademarks, if you squint really hard. At the time of its release, Heroes was one of the more original and flexible online games available; City of Villains is exactly what it sounds like, and the natural next step. The game itself is pretty much the same, though it’s a clever and organic excuse for a retread.

Although Villains is a standalone game, it runs on the same subscription as Heroes. If you’re paying for one, you’re already paying for the other. Surely this will make future combo releases much easier. The other clever thing about this game is that although in effect it’s an expansion pack, in practice it isn’t – so even though everyone who owns Heroes will probably pick this up, it’s still accessible to newcomers. Something to think about.

Tuesday, November 1st

Mega Man Battle Network 5: Double Team
Nintendo DS
Capcom/Capcom

Double Team? Shouldn’t this be ” Squadron”? Or “Deluxe Special”? “Dingo Sugarcake”? Oh, they’re not even trying.

This sub-series started in 2001, and is about to hit its sixth chapter on the Game Boy Advance. This is a port of the GBA version released here this past June over two similar cartridges, and contains the content from both earlier iterations. The second screen is used mostly for maps and a status menu, and somehow yelling into the microphone will “power up” Mega Man during battle. Further, sticking any of the earlier GBA games into the extra slot on the DS will allow transfer of battle chips earned in those games.

Although I have not had the patience to play them for more than a few minutes, these games are purported to be good, with or without the Mega Man connection. And from what I understand, despite the rapidity of new releases Capcom has yet to run the series into the ground. I guess there’s a solid market here; it seems similar to the Pokemon crowd.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Mutant Nightmare
DS/GameCube/Xbox/PS2
Konami/Konami

Although I’ve managed to miss everything after the first season, the new Ninja Turtles cartoon actually isn’t half bad. It’s got more substance than the original cartoon did, and often plays on more than one level. The same, I can’t say of the videogames.

Konami had something… if not great, at least entertaining with the early ’90s Turtles games. They were some of the dumbest games Konami ever made, but they were joyous, dynamic, and fun, particularly if three other players were involved. The new games lack that spirit; the environments are sterile, the characters control terribly, there’s not much to actually do in the games, and generally they just feel like your archetypical licensed product. The first one didn’t even allow four players at once, I assume simply because it was a multi-platform game, and the PS2 doesn’t have four controller ports.

This new game tries to address some of the problems in the previous ones; it puts a big focus on teamwork and rewards for playing with others by allowing cooperative attacks. There’s an experience system (of all things) to reward the player for beating up enemies and exploring the levels fully. There are some driving and flying mini-games to break up the brawling. And the actual fighting has apparently been improved, with more combos and whatnot. At heart, though, it’s still the same game.

I suppose these still aren’t as bad as most licensed games. And I guess they must be selling if Konami keeps putting them out. I can’t see anyone really serious about videogames buying this, though – which makes the inclusion of Konami’s old TMNT II: Turtles in Time a little perplexing. Surely it can’t be intended for the same kids as the main feature is. It’s not even based on the current Turtles series; the tone and mythology are all different. The Turtles don’t even look the same. Its being here tells me that Konami really doesn’t know what it’s doing with these games anymore.

Call of Duty 2: Big Red One
GameCube/Xbox/PS2
Treyarch, Grey Matter/Activision

This is actually a completely different game from the “real” Call of Duty 2 released last week for PC and later this month for Xbox 360; this one’s made by Die By the Sword developer Treyarch and Return to Castle Wolfenstein’s Grey Matter; a sort of curious team, though appropriate in a few ways. Treyarch in particular is experienced with taking over existing series (Spider-Man, Tony Hawk) and either bringing them in new directions or at least porting them with as much care as anyone. For Grey Matter’s part, I suppose it’s not that much of a leap from Wolfenstein to a more serious WWII adventure.

Like Infinity Ward’s game, Big Red One sets itself apart from the original Call of Duty by focusing more on urban warfare; unlike the other game, Big Red One follows a single soldier from beginning to end. A major goal seems to be emphasizing the personal side to war; the game pushes emotional bonds early on, for later payoff when the things that happen in wars happen to the player, and the people around him.

This seems like a perfectly good sequel, if not as ambitious Infinity Ward’s follow-up. I imagine it should actually sell a little better, as pretty much anyone who wants to can just go and play it now. The 360 isn’t going to have much of an install base for a while yet, and outside of the hardcore who really keeps his PC updated for gaming anymore?

Castlevania: Curse of Darkness
Xbox/PS2
KCE Tyo/Konami

Koji Igarashi has made no secret that his favorite game is Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse. He’s made reference to it in every game he’s produced, from Symphony of the Night to Harmony of Dissonance to the Sorrow games. Even Lament of Innocence was an attempt to outdo Dracula’s Curse as an origin story. For his second PS2 game, what Igarashi really wanted was to remake Dracula’s Curse with all the modern technology available. He wasn’t allowed to, so the next best thing was to make a sequel.

The game can’t star Dracula without screwing up the timeline Igarashi has put so much effort into, and without Dracula there’s no need for a Belmont as a protagonist. That leaves Igarashi free to make whatever kind of hero he likes. Since Aria of Sorrow was such a big success (at least critically), Igarashi made a similar hero; one who again can manipulate Dracula’s monsters. Since he didn’t get to do what he wanted with Lament of Innocence and it turned out poorly for the interference, Igarashi has planned Curse of Darkness as a free-roaming adventure from the outset. There was never anything wrong with the underlying engine to Lament, so that’s been carried over. In theory, Igarashi has all his hens in a row to make the first really good 3D iteration of Castlevania.

Of course, that’s what I said last time. And it’s true; in its purest form, before someone freaked out that it was too linear and shoved a bunch of stupid backtracking into the game, Lament was a darned good 3D brawler. Mindless, but hey, why not. Then, someone lost focus halfway through production.

Same with Dawn of Sorrow. There are some excellent parts to the game; the whole middle section of the game is just monsters on shelves, that you slice through to get to the next room. Again, it feels like Igarashi had everything set up, then someone fell asleep.

So forgive me if I’m apprehensive about Curse of Darkness. I played it at E3, and I played it again at the Tokyo Game Show – and it gave me the same feeling I got from Lament a couple of years earlier: if nobody screws this up, it’s got the potential to be really good. The problem is, I saw no particular sign that the game would be handled any better than the last few Castlevanias.

It’s maddening, because Igarashi so clearly loves this series, and every now and then he gives a hint that he might know what he’s doing with it; I’m just not so sure how hot he is as a game designer. I keep thinking maybe he should work with the Silent Hill or the Metal Gear team on a future game; someone with more perspective, and more experience with a wider range of game styles.

Castlevania hasn’t really been a selling franchise for Konami for a long time; they keep being published mostly because, hey, it’s Castlevania. It’s to keep people happy; Konami ain’t making zilch here. This game, though – it’s for the PS2 and Xbox. So in theory, this is it. How well this game fares relates directly to how well it’s reviewed. So far it’s getting somewhere between sevens and nines, according to GameRankings.com. Nothing Earth-shattering, though solid. Seems like Castlevania’s staying in its niche for a while to come.

From Russia With Love
Xbox/PS2
Electronic Arts/Electronic Arts

I’m not sure if it’s fun or tedious to work out the logic of the typical EA release. By now we all know how EA operates; representatives have said plainly, publicly, and in as many words that EA is simply not interested in making excellent games; its goal is to publish adequate games that sell a bunch, in a timely manner. This stands in contrast with developers like Capcom; Capcom encouraged the development of killer7, even though it knew the game wouldn’t sell; to make up for the imbalance, a surefire hit (in Sengoku Basara) was contrived. Capcom is no stranger to milking a property for all it’s worth (Resident Evil, Mega Man, Street Fighter), yet it’s wealthy in original ideas. And hey, Capcom’s one of the top game publishers in Japan. Imagine that.

Since EA acquired the James Bond license a few years ago, it has become just one more cog in the sequel machine. Every new year spells a new Bond game, come Hell or high water. Since there haven’t been any Bond movies for a while, last year EA resorted to making up its own storyline. That, and basing a game on the wretched 1995 film Goldeneye, for no apparent reason other than to feed off the haloed reputation of Rare’s earlier game, for the N64. Now that Pierce Brosnan has left the role, EA doesn’t even have a current face for the character. Hey, though; EA’s already working on a Godfather game – so clearly the past is free for the picking. And How cool would it be to play as Sean Connery, anyway!

How cool would it be, indeed. I suppose that’s the theme for this week’s column.

This year’s game is by the Return of the King team in Redwood City (not to be confused with EA’s other Lord of the Rings teams). They’ve based the game on both the movie and the original book, and have expanded on the property even further, adding a new start, a new end, and altering a number of things in the middle – like a jet pack, which, yes, is there because how cool would it be to play as Sean Connery… in a Jetpack!? As GameSpot says, “once you start zipping around and blowing things up, we doubt anyone’s going to complain.”

And you know, they’re probably right.

Without Warning
Xbox/PS2
CiRCLE/Capcom

This release borders on the inscrutable. First, although Capcom is known to publish Western titles (like Grand Theft Auto and Tomb Raider) in Japan, that is rarely its role in the US. Next, a third-person spec ops shooter doesn’t sound like Capcom’s normal cup of tea. And then there’s the developer.

CiRCLE doesn’t show up on Mobygames, and digging up the company website reveals that Without Warning is, in fact, the first actual videogame developed by CiRCLE; the company’s only other release to date is an interactive DVD titled “NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL A MUSIC QUIZ”. Some more detective work reveals that the company was founded by Jeremy Heath-Smith, the founder of Tomb Raider developer Core. That would explain a lot.

In an interview with GameDaily, Heath-Smith comments on the freedom he and his team feel, now unburdened from the Tomb Raider license. “This office is a flow with creativity. If you can imagine, the guys who were on the Tomb Raider team, they just want to get out of their system all this other stuff that’s building up for the last four years.” Which, apparently, means making a spec ops shooter.

The game itself covers a military response to a terrorist attack on a US-based chemical plant. The player jumps amongst six different perspectives, as the game progresses, and the game is purported to be filled with as many puzzles as gunfights. The visual style is bland. The characters are not particularly intriguing. Gamerankings gives the Xbox version a 40% and the PS2 version a 46%. Offficial Xbox Magazine gave it a 1.5 out of 10.

So how about those creative energies, huh.

Guitar Hero
PlayStation 2
Harmonix Musc Systems/RedOctane

A seventy-dollar music game made by the Karaoke Revolution people that comes with a plastic guitar shaped like a Gibson SG. The controller actually seems to support some sophisticated mechanics, not all of which I understand since even holding a guitar causes me to shriek with pain. The music includes most of the standbys you’d expect: ZZ Top, Black Sabbath, Jimmi Hendrix, Megadeth, Deep Purple, Cream, the Ramones, etcetea. Nothing surprising, though that’s probably appropriate. Better than contemporary music, at any rate. There’s a career mode, where you start in small clubs and, as you improve, work your way up to stadiums and arenas.

There’s no reason why this shouldn’t sell as well as any other peripheral-based music game with a forbidding price. It’s got some good word behind it, and since it’s been a long time since we’ve seen a guitar game, it’s got its own little niche.

Trapt
PlayStation 2
Tecmo/Tecmo

For those familiar with it, this is the fourth game in the nine-year-old Deception series; the Japanese name is Kagero II: Dark Illusion. For everyone else, Deception is not unlike a perverse Japanese version of Dungeon Keeper. You set traps within your dominion (usually a dungeon or castle of some sort) with the goal of mutilating and killing invaders. It’s sadistic and kind of disturbing, and it’s obscure enough to make friends of any two people who have played the games.

As the series has progressed, it has tried to divert guilt by giving the player an avatar, to accept blame for all of the behavior, and making up stories that kind of excuse some of the mayhem, if you look at them from the right perspective. Trapt seems to have the best excuse so far, with the player’s character actually a victim of a huge plot against her.

The underlying game is pretty much the same, with the goal on setting up combos to do as much damage as possible to your prey. As GameSpot details it, “you’ll lay a bear trap to hold the enemy in place long enough to trigger a massive razor-sharp pendulum that will send your foe into the path of a falling boulder.” Fun!

With the new name and an upgrade in style, combined with the higher profile Tecmo has these days and the bigger market for “quirky” games in the wake of Katamari Damacy and the Nintendo DS, Trapt might actually do okay, for what it is. The only problem is letting fans of the earlier games know it exists.

Irth Online
PC
Magic Hat Software/Magic Hat Software

Magic Hat’s first game is very low on the radar. The most information available appears to be at the company’s own website, which doesn’t even bother to describe Irth Online in a general sense, figuring that anyone who’s interested is already following the project (although an overview is pending).

Irth is, in sum, another MMORPG; the things that distinguish it seem like they’re mostly on the technological end. Magic Hat seems very proud of its “SpeedTree” foliage system, and purports visibility of up to ten miles in Irth. Beyond this, Magic Hat promises an “open skill system” (with no restrictions based on race), no level grinding, and an in-game house for every account. Probably the biggest appeal is the community, which is small and very supportive. The whole deal has the ambiance of a pet project that maybe, eventually, Magic Hat wouldn’t mind if a few people subscribed to.

Pac-Man World 3
PC
Blitz Games/Namco

The Pac-Man World games actually aren’t as bad as you’d think. They’re simple, and the concept of anthropomorphizing Pac-Man (if nothing new) is dumb beyond description; still, as platformers they’re well-built, well-presented, and they’re pretty respectful of the Pac-Man license. They also seem to sell well – both to kids and, actually, to some adult women I know. Makes sense; the games are kind of endearing.

This would be basically just another Pac-Man World game, were it not for two curious details. For one, the player can now control two of the ghosts, Pinky and Clyde, for at least short periods. Then there’s the issue of Pac-Man’s voice.

As you might have read, since Namco is making an awful lot of noise in light of the character’s 25th anniversary, Pac-Man will, for the first time since his 1982 cartoon, speak. His voice will be provided by a certain Martin T. Sherman; not a particularly known voice actor, though he has done some recent videogame work for Driv3r, Timesplitters: Future Perfect, and Conflict: Desert Storm II. He also appears in what looks like a small role in the recent Elijah Wood movie, Hooligans.

Oddly, in Namco’s press release, voice director Mark Estdale describes how thrilled he is with the game’s dialog. “I was expecting to just deal with his half eaten cheesiness, ‘wocka wocka’ … but thankfully we were given a well-written and crafted script with lots of character to base the casting on.”

The console versions will ship in about two weeks.

* * *

In the calm before the Microstorm, expect new instances of Mario Party and Fatal Frame, and strategic approaches to Suikoden and Lord of the Rings, and a fighting game based on Viewtiful Joe. Not much else; that’s all sort of interesting, though. Certainly worth coming back next week for, at least!