Nov 7, 2010

Interactive Comic Will Set Up Mass Effect 2 For PS3 [Update]

Mass Effect (2007)

Mass Effect 2 is coming to the PS3; Mass Effect 1 is not. As the sequel can account for consequences of choices you made in the original, some were wondering how this will be addressed on the PS3.

The answer, according to a BioWare producer in the print edition of the German magazine Play3, is an interactive comic by Dark Horse that will establish the continuity of the first game and allow readers to make some choices to affect its outcome.

That's not all; in announcing Mass Effect 2 for the PS3 at GamesCom, Electronic Arts said it would feature "hours of bonus content." So in addition to the interactive comic, PS3 players will get all three previously released DLC extensions, plus the one-use code that gives access to the Cerberus Network.

This info comes over a German-language Mass Effect 2 forum, but it's from a community moderator and it's attributed to BioWare's Casey Hudson. Nonetheless, we've sent off an email to an EA publicist just in case things are different for users in other regions.

Update: An Electronic Arts representative contacted Kotaku to say that the interactive comic news is accurate, but there is no PS3-specific new mission. "Something got lost in the translation." We've been referred to this BioWare forum post clarifying the report. It also says that the interactive comic's "initial release will be exclusive to PS3 owners who would be otherwise unable to realize the full effect of choice in the Mass Effect universe, and will be included on the Cerberus Network."

An earlier version of this story referenced a PS3-specific mission for Mass Effect 2. The story above the update has been edited to remove that inaccuracy.

Update Zur Mass Effect 2 PlayStation 3 Version [BioWare Social Network via VG247]

Nov 7, 2010

Review: GoldenEye 007

Kotaku

The fat-chewing topic for hardcore gamers today who were the adolescents of the 1990s has been GoldenEye, the seminal Nintendo 64 shooter. Why can't they bring it to a modern console? Finally, "they" have. But it's neither reboot nor remake.

GoldenEye 007 is instead the "reimagining" of the 1997 classic, reconfiguring the story of the 1995 James Bond film to suit both modern times and the Bond persona of Daniel Craig, starring in place of Pierce Brosnan. At its heart, it's strong on the fundamentals of previous-generation shooters. That's not necessarily a bad thing.

Ideal Player

The Wii's underserved shooter population gets a breath of fresh air here, and James Bond diehards will want to see the new story play out. But anyone who came of age as first-person shooters came of age is in GoldenEye's wheelhouse.

Why You Should Care

Few games of GoldenEye's vintage maintain its level of relevance today. This is a chance for newer gamers to connect with that and for older gamers to revisit it in a new way. The original's strong multiplayer appeal now goes online, where there's no screen-looking.

How does it play next to the original? Loaded question, you're talking about two generations of game design, both behind the present state of the art. The levels are distinct but still larded with callbacks to the original game - but don't get any ideas about dual wielding. You may also expect QuickTime events that are a challenge only if you've checked out for the cutscene. GoldenEye 007 is a strong meat-and-potatoes shooter, but within the previous-gen confines of the Wii, that sometimes means it's a new game that, paradoxically, shows its age.

How so? Mostly in enemy AI and linear mission design. CPU opponents have straightforwardly aggressive flanking tactics. They also have a preternatural awareness of your position and ability to shoot through cover to pin you down. To help out, there's a half-measure cover mechanic - with auto lock-on enabled you can pop up and fire on-target when crouched behind a low wall or obstruction. These are markers of older shooters, but the good news is anyone with a survival instinct honed in them will do well here.

So it's boring? No, I didn't say that. It just means GoldenEye 007 is accessible to speedrunners and completionists alike. As a Bond game, you still have the option of patience, stealth, and silent sniping or takedowns through the majority of the game. While you can prevail in nearly all head-to-head firefights against superior numbers, the fun and challenge is in figuring out how to avoid or efficiently eliminate them. And if there was an indispensable holdover from the original GoldenEye, it was in the variable objectives that established your difficulty level (save hostages, find supply drops, gather evidence, etc.) rather than simply ramping up the firepower of the opposition. They're here as well to take you progressively deeper into the maps on successive replays. And for those who don't like the regenerating health of the new game and want to kick it old school, there's an exceptionally difficult "classic" mode that gives you a health-and-armor hud, but you won't recover from damage and you must find the body armor pickups, like the original.

Speaking of a challenge, what about the motion controls? There's a reason the game comes bundled with a Wii Classic Controller. First-person shooters on a console should be played with twin analog controls, the way God intended. GoldenEye is not a rails shooter (nor should it be) like Dead Space: Extraction, Eurocom's last project. The Remote/Nunchuk and Zapper configurations are tune-able but just not recommended, and I gave up on them rather quickly. They're not at all ergonomic for fast-twitch tasks like reloading, melee or grenades. On later levels, and in multiplayer, they're certainly not advantageous and I can't fathom how they're even useful.

Well whatever the control, this better have done multiplayer right. Right? This wouldn't be GoldenEye without split-screen multiplayer, and it has it, but this is 2010, so you're more likely to take this online. Even for the Wii's tragically underserved online multiplayer there were plenty of matches to be found in the first week of release, likely owing to GoldenEye's strong multiplayer cred. The maps are not exact matches from their 1997 counterparts, but that's probably because everyone figured out how to exploit them in the interceding 12 years. Especially if someone can't look at your half of the screen. Talents and gadgets become unlockable with the experience you require, as do weapons in custom loadouts. But each match begins with four standard loadout options, (packages include close quarters, sniper and assault) replacing the old pick-up system and providing some structure. Lacking Wii Speak support, you can't make them up as you go along like the old dorm room days, but team modes like Team Conflict, Black Box and GoldenEye are more of a challenge without voice.

So it sounds like a sturdy FPS, but why go to all this trouble if the original, downloadable on a current console will do? The tripartite entanglements of Nintendo, the original developer, Rare, now a subsidiary of Microsoft, make that a pipe dream. But even against the ideal, there's a strong enough case for GoldenEye 007 on the Wii. Clearly it's a much more cinematic game, not just in the visuals. The story is more discernable if you saw the original movie, but it's deftly reorganized and has some genuinely admirable flourishes. Bond's one-liner for Xenia Onatopp's revised demise was pitch-perfect, and Trevelyan's heist motive is updated to the uncertainty of the modern economic times. Judi Dench is in your earpiece as M, and Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger supplies a cover of the 15-year-old title theme in an opening montage worthy of any theatrical release. Craig's utilitarian, antiheroic Bond remains controversial to some, but this is a story attenuated to his reign over the continuity, well written and well acted.

GoldenEye 007 In Action

The Bottom Line

Context counts. If this didn't have the Bond name - if it didn't have the GoldenEye name - one might find it bland among modern shooters, though it's best-in-class on the Wii (admittedly a small population). But the structure of current-gen shooters, especially those with a narrative, is very judgmental: Do this right, and do it right the first time. For all of its modern polish, GoldenEye 007 still harkens back to the wild west days of FPSes, before they demanded or even established fundamental skills, instead inviting you to do it over and over again and discover what's right through repetition. GoldenEye 007 invokes a strong sense of nostalgia just as much in the game as it does in the name.

GoldenEye 007 was developed by Eurocom and published by Activision for the Wii, released on Nov. 2. Retails for $49.99 ($69.99 with the bundled Classic Controller). A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Completed singleplayer campaign mode and played several multiplayer matches, all online.

Nov 6, 2010

Kotaku 'Shop Contest: Politics As Usual Winners

Kotaku

Tuesday's elections in the United States provided the grist for our two-week shop contest, imagining, examing and implementing political motives in video games and their characters. We've rounded up the 20 best in this gallery. E pluribus funny!

adventlife (1), DEVOlutionSpud (5), HobbitGamer (11) and Snufkin (18) all made political hay out of the Obama Hope poster; xerokitsune (20) took his inspiration from an Eisenhower/Nixon poster. WalnutSoap (19) went well outside the box for a jab at Palin, now hunting penguins instead of wolves. Futhark (8) and ilikejelly (12) both did justice to Jimmy McMillan of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party.

bowen13 (3) had a sly take on a polarizing billboard; sensai.gamer's Kennedy-In-The-VATS 'shop is so, so wrong ... Any other week, and HappyGamer (10) probably would take home No. 1. But PoopMcGreeley (15) is my personal favorite and the winner. Triumph the Insult Comic Dog is at his best when he skewers an overexposed celebrity, and Guitar Hero provided more than enough funny fodder. For me to poop on!

See you all in here tomorrow.

Kotaku 'Shop Contest: Politics As Usual Winners adventlife
ARYXANDRE
bowen13
deafblindmute
DEVOlutionSpud
DJEsch
Eight_Bit_Remix
Futhark
G-PoNg
HappyGamer
HobbitGamer
ilikejelly
jojo1288
Nava707
PoopMcGreeley
red_dragon_jpn
sensai.gamer
Snufkin
WalnutSoap
xerokitsune

Nov 6, 2010

Far Too Soon For EA Sports To Tap Out

Kotaku

It was little coincidence that THQ and Ultimate Fighting Championship waited until Oct. 19 to announce an eight year extension to their exclusive video game pact. That was the day EA Sports MMA released.

EA Sports MMA and UFC Undisputed are a rare pairing, being directly competing licensed sports titles with different ship dates. So you had to figure EA's coming-out party meant open season to its nemesis. And the announcement fit the character of the rivalry well; Dana White, the voluble president of the UFC, has chosen to publicly nurse a grudge with EA Sports, going back to a slight he says the publisher gave the emerging fight promotion when it sought to do a video game earlier in the decade.

So there was EA Sports MMA on stage, smiling and waving to the prom, with that exclusive UFC pact up in the rafters like the bucket of pig's blood in Carrie.

In the two weeks since, some have been quick to bury EA Sports MMA as a one-and-done experiment. The UFC is the top-of-mind brand in mixed martial arts, and where EA Sports MMA's combat and career system was praised, it brought in fewer real-world fighters (60) than UFC Undisputed 2010 (99), many of them much less visible.

The game, like its Fight Night cousin, is at its strongest when you're creating a fighter and taking him through a career, or fighting with him in EA Sports MMA's innovative online modes. That's a longer and more nuanced sales pitch than something that says the game has the biggest stars, which conveys authority. Unsurprisingly, sales were not eye-popping. That didn't stop one analyst from writing EA Sports MMA's obituary not even a week after it was born.

Far Too Soon For EA Sports To Tap Out "EA's recently released 'MMA' appears to be more or less DOA at retail, while UFC recently announced an extension of its license with THQ, likely putting an end to EA's efforts to expand into the mixed martial arts genre," wrote an analyst for Cowen & Company in a research note Oct. 25.

That struck me as premature and shortsighted, even if I had read it among the freelance noise offered by enthusiasts in comment boards. This isn't Facebreaker. EA Sports gave up its NASCAR product and rededicated some of those developers to building a game from scratch over the past two years. The largest chunk of its investment, that development cost, has been spent. Sure, it'd be foolish to chase a big pot with a bad hand just because you put a ton of money in, but EA Sports is hardly holding crap cards. It's not holding a pair of kings, either, but it does have something with a potential to pay out down the line.

Let's not forget that UFC Undisputed is on its second title, and its third is coming in 2012. It's a head start, but one that can be caught. And mixed martial arts is not like the NFL or Major League Baseball. It's an emerging sport in which the UFC is a huge player, but not the only one. The potential to win new fans across all age ranges is much stronger than the establishment sports. Many of these new fans may not know or care who the top stars are and to those, the EA Sports nameplate may be just as legitimizing as the UFC's.

If EA Sports is looking to get rid of an underperforming licensed title, it'd have more reason to sack its NBA franchise, which is a more expensive license, will take more work to get into fighting shape, and after its embarrassing cancellation is now damaged goods in the eyes of most everyone - and all that's without NBA 2K, a product much further ahead of its competition than UFC Undisputed is from its.

Far Too Soon For EA Sports To Tap Out In fact, NBA Elite, or whatever it will be renamed, may do more to slow or stop EA Sports MMA's next offering than UFC Undisputed. That project has been shipped to MMA's home turf of EA Sports Tiburon, where NCAA Football and Madden also are made. Though manpower fluctuates and Electronic Arts gave a boilerplate statement that it's looking to hire, it's still a lot under one roof.

But I hope EA Sports MMA hangs in for another round, and I think it will. The general mood, one I endorse, is that its grappling system is more simplified and intuitive than UFC Undisputed - though for some UFC has a stronger strike mechanic. That's fine, but the clinch and ground game - especially submissions - are what separate mixed martial arts from boxing. The consensus also seems to be EA Sports MMA's submission gameplay is better than Undisputed's, which this year ditched button-mashing for a "shine system," that didn't appeal to many.

A competitor in the mix has already pushed UFC Undisputed to a two-year development cycle. Its next set of improvements will no doubt answer what EA Sports MMA did well. Sports gamers need alternatives. But they are especially important to an emerging sport with a young console history. It's ironic that EA Sports - whose exclusive license agreements have long made it cartoonishly portrayed as a brake on innovation - is in the role of providing it here.

Correction: An earlier version incorrectly identified Fight Night's studio. It is made at EA Sports Canada.

Stick Jockey is Kotaku's column on sports video games. It appears Saturdays at 2 p.m. U.S. Mountain time.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Features

The Future of Kinect: How Microsoft Plans To Put A Video Game Controller In Everything

INDEX

Reviews

Previews & Impressions

Columns

Ideal Player

Why You Should Care

GoldenEye 007 In Action

The Bottom Line

Awkward Zombie

Nerf NOW!!

Penny Arcade

Manly Guys Doing Manly Things

Rooster Teeth

Brawl In The Family

Virtual Shackles

Dueling Analogs

Another Videogame Webcomic

ActionTrip