In place of the Off Topic post tonight, I thought I'd post this music. I was reminded of this excellent theme when watching those GamePro TV episodes from earlier. Man, I loved the theme to the first Tomb Raider. Listening to this was an extreme nostalgia trip.
What other 90s games had menu music that you loved? Do you think the rest of the music in Tomb Raider as good as the main menu music? Talk about music, 90s games, or anything else, here or over in the Talk Amongst Yourselves forum. Have good chatting, and watch out for that T-Rex.
You've seen the front, of course, but here's what a tipster says is the back.
As you could probably guess from the piratical theme, the image would suggest the game is set in the Caribbean, though interestingly this map shows only the Western half, incorporating what's today known as Cuba, the southern tip of Florida and Jamaica.
Ubisoft hasn't formally spoken about the next Assassin's Creed just yet, aside from the fact that it will star a new character and feature a new setting, and also that it will be out next fiscal year.
Here's ReallyFreakinClever with an earnest video about the merits of Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. You may not agree with all of it; I didn't. But I think he's on-point when he lauds the accessibility of the franchise, particularly when compared to the fighting game genre as a whole (though that's improving nowadays).
Then again, I do wish that the conversation about Smash Bros. as/not as a fighting game would die, because the game doesn't need that validation, never mind the fact that imbalanced games can be perfectly fun still.
As I said: it's a grand game regardless of whether you deem it a fighting game/a good fighting game. Still, here we are. It's kind of impossible not to talk about it in that context.
Now the real question is: when the heck does the next Smash Bros. drop?
The constant progression of annual sport titles has another advantage besides the games getting more and more realistic every year. It creates moments where the players go nuts—suddenly, our ordinary game turns itself into Dragon Ball Z or Super Smash TV. We selected below a few of these from the last few years' FIFA, NHL and NBA titles.
It might take a few seconds for the images to load.
Don't forget to submit your own picks in the comments below—the more glitched out, the better. Other sport titles are welcome, too.
The series up for grabs include Darksiders, Homeworld, Red Faction and Destroy All Humans!
Final bids for the properties are due on April 15. THQ says it has already received over "100 expressions of interest" regarding "various titles" still left in its vaults.
There will be six items in total for sale, four properties available individually and two "bundle" deals, one for internal properties, the other for licensed IP.
Darksiders, Red Faction, Homeworld and MX will be sold separately. Big Beach Sports, Destroy All Humans!, Summoner and "more" are included in the internal bundle, while Marvel Super Hero, Supreme Commander, Worms and "more" make up the licensed pack.
If anyone would like to join me in buying Homeworld, here's the relevant information you need to know:
Interested bidders must provide: 1) complete identification, including the names of corporate officers or those authorized to act on the bidder's behalf; 2) written evidence of authority to enter into the anticipated transaction; and 3) proof of financial ability to perform the contemplated transaction. Only those bidders who meet all three requirements will be provided access to confidential information about each lot of titles once a non-disclosure agreement has been executed. Documentation meeting these three requirements should be sent to auction@thq.com.
Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, the second-second game in Atlus's twisted demonic series, is out on the PlayStation Network today.
A brief explanation: Persona 2 is actually two games: Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment. Both were released on PlayStation, then re-released for the PSP. While the PSP remake of Innocent Sin was brought to North America, Eternal Punishment's PSP version never made it here.
But you can still play it today! Atlus has just released the PlayStation version of Eternal Punishment on PSN, and you can buy it on PS1 Classics for $10. Cheers for digital distribution!
So what happened to the PSP remake? When I asked Atlus about it a few months ago, they wouldn't comment. And in a post on the PlayStation Blog today, Atlus editor Nich Maragos says they couldn't release it because of "unusual circumstances."
Strange. Maybe one day we'll find out what happened. For now, Atlus has got more story details up at the PlayStation Blog, so head over there if you want to hear more on Persona 2: Eternal Punishment.
Correction: An original version of this article (with the headline "The Only Persona Game Never To Come To The U.S. Is Here Today") mistakenly said that Eternal Punishment had not been released in the United States. It actually came out here on PlayStation in 2000. I apologize for the error.
Well, actually not the future. The present. See, when first they announced the Oculus Rift VR headset, I thought, "Oh, virtual reality. I liked The Lawnmower Man. This should be weird."
Then, modder Nathan Andrews got the headset working with Half-Life 2, and I thought, "Oh, wow. Okay. I'd love to use this thing." Now he's done the same thing with the original Crysis, and watching the above video, my feelings are somewhat more refined: "Yep, I still want to play this thing. Also, I miss the first Crysis."
Behold, independent head and arm movement. Nifty. Andrews notes that he hasn't yet modded the crosshairs to track properly, which is why his aiming is a bit off. He's using a Mag II gun controller, which he says works well. If you want to see what it looks like with him wearing it, check out the Half-Life 2 video linked above.
So how far would you guys say we are from full-on Far Cry 3 cybersex here? A month? A couple months? Like, four months?
Last year, Alice Finch won "best in show" at BrickCon for her enormous recreation of Harry Potter's Hogwarts. As she should have. Because it might be the most impressive LEGO construction ever made by a single person.
The exterior shot you see above is good enough, but it's when you open it up and see that she designed and built the guts of the school as well that your jaw smashes through the floor.
Made of over 400,000 bricks, the coolest part is that now that it's won awards and internet applause, it's not being dismantled. Alice's son is a huge Harry Potter fan, so she's leaving it up so he can play with it. Making him instantly the coolest damn kid at his school.
Those of us who got Wii U systems last November were supposed to reach an oasis today in our crawl through the machine's oh-so-typical year-one software desert. We were supposed to be playing the sidescroller Rayman: Legends right now.
If it reduces the sting at all, folks, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot at least told me that the game is still being worked on. He says it's not, as some feared, sitting somewhere entirely finished and just waiting for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions to be made. "The Wii U the team is working hard on the Wii U [version] to make sure it continues to improve, so it can become one of the best Wii U games," he told me at last Wednesday's PlayStation 4 kick-off event, after we chatted about Sony's new console. "We hope it can be one of the top games Ubisoft creates."
The game's recent delay infuriated Wii U fans who wanted what they hoped would be a very good game during an otherwise very slow time for the new console. Many fans assumed the game was done and Ubisoft hasn't tried very hard to counter that impression. The idea that a possibly-finished game might be held back made things worse, sparking online protests and even an in-person one at the game's Ubisoft studio in France. The publisher eventually extended an olive branch, offering a free online version of the game—its "challenge" mode—for Wii U owners for release this April. "I think the free version will just be amazing," Guillemot told me, saying it will have "very social gameplay that I think people will love."
It's still not clear what triggered the delay, and Guillemot didn't clearly state to me that the game couldn't have come out for Wii U right now. Rather, he made it sound like, regardless of the reason for delay, that the game would improve.
"What's very important to consider is that," he said, "when a team has more time, they are able to continue to improve the quality of the game. When we saw we had more time, we saw all of the possibilities. Some of the possibilities are the social features that we are seeing today, but also new bosses, new possibilities that will take the game to a level that people will love." Why he referenced social features shown "today"—the day of the Sony press conference—for the PS4, when we were ostensibly discussing a Wii U game, is unclear to me. The sense I got was that he was referring to the basic idea of making games more connected, something Ubisoft did superbly with their Wii U launch game ZombiU—not that he was alluding to a possible PS4 version of Legends.
I think some Wii U fans might prefer to have even a half-decent version of Legends now instead of nothing. Year one of owning a new console... it ain't a picnic.
E3 is never a time for social calls. It's nonstop work. Last June, the only developer I met with outside the walls of the L.A. Convention Center was over drinks with Zen Studios' U.S. staff at the J.W. Marriott.
They'd built a great name for themselves with Pinball FX2, and their profile shot through the roof in 2011 with Marvel's license on their series of virtual pinball tables. "Where do you go from here? What's coming up next?" I asked.
"We have some ideas, and some big things we can't talk about right now," was the reply, with a knowing glance.
"Oh, shit," I said, "You got Star Wars."
I've long known this was an ambition for Neil Sorens, Zen's creative director, and all of the Zen team, here and in Hungary—indeed, there are 10 tables coming, and everyone on the development staff was given a crack at one. The fruits of that labor began releasing today, with three tables for Zen's platform on Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network, as well as for Android and iOS mobile devices.
Star Wars Pinball shrewdly spreads out its appeal—there's The Empire Strikes Back for 40-year-old fogeys like me, The Clone Wars for younger fans, and Boba Fett, an intriguing themed table that bridges both audiences.
After playing this set for a week, I can sense that their difficulty has a similar spread. Clone Wars was the easiest and highest-scoring table for me; Boba Fett will require the most accuracy to reach eye-popping points totals. Touching both is Empire Strikes Back. Though it regularly rewards a player with big eight-figure numbers, the main objective—to replay what is, basically, the entire movie, through a series of timed pinball missions—is tougher than anything I've faced in Zen Pinball's 41 tables.
Empire gives you a series of five "scenes" which come in the form of missions—a set of tasks to complete, usually hitting a target or a ramp. Triggering the scene/mission is simple enough—there's a three-paneled console at the center of the table, and lighting up all of its sides opens a trap door that, after rolling a ball into the trap, allows you to select a scene-mission for play, in or out of order. For beginners, I recommend Scene 3, the Asteroid Field, as it's the easiest and most points-rich.
Still, hopping the ball three times over a ramp to the back reaches of the table is only the beginning. Fortunately, completing any task (hitting a ramp or a target) usually delivers a million-point-bonus. But to truly drag out the toys, like an animated AT-AT in one of the Hoth sequences, requires a lot of persistence. Yes, there's a checkpoint mechanism, so if you finish one stage of a scene, then lose a ball, you can pick up from where you left off later. But the time given to complete any of these sequences is preciously short and tolerates one, maybe two mistakes at the most. Hitting the wrong ramp ends in an agonizing, time-sucking loss.
As the missions go further, accuracy becomes a higher priority, as does transferring the ball from one flipper to the other. Boba Fett places the highest priority on this, with its swooping ramps (symbolizing jetpack flight) that often end up returning the ball to the side you wanted to avoid. Missions in Boba Fett aren't cinematic—they're cash-on-the-barrelhead rewards you can unlock after lighting the EMPIRE or HUTTS lane. Each mission brings out Darth or Jabba to instruct you (or reprimand you, if you failed the past try). Even though EMPIRE was one more letter, I found it easier to trigger. Once a bounty is acquired, you have to hit all of the board's lanes (there are seven) to win its jackpot. The good news is, hitting any lane awards 1 million points.
So even if seeing missions through to the end is very difficult, Star Wars Pinball does offers a means of strategically failing them in order to plunder the instances for points (Scene 3 in Empire is useful, plus anything in Fett.) In The Clone Wars, I advise taking the mission "The Monster" once you unlock the Council (by hitting two ramps a total of eight times.) Hitting Maul's hover-thing returns a million each time you strike it and is much easier than "Attack on Kamino."
There is still a lot on the board that I've yet to discover, or have only seen once or a few times. (I made the Slave 1 fly into Boba Fett only once). There's an instance in Empire that sends you into a wild first-person combat mode where you block laser stings from a training drone (never mind that's from Episode IV, it's still rad). Boba Fett's skillshot feels arbitrarily awarded but it brings up a nice minigame on the main display. To reach the epic Luke vs. Vader showdown will take extraordinary persistence and accuracy. These tables are marketed for everyone, but very, very few, I think, will watch all of The Empire Strikes Back on its dot matrix board.
That's how I recall the great movie adaptations on pinball machines—adaptations which precede arcade or console games. There was always something lurking deep in the game, and there was always some kid or, more likely, the older brother of some kid, who could make the big secret come to life. It'll cost $10, not a thousand quarters, to make everything happen, but the challenge is still pizza-parlor authentic.
I was able to get myself past 25 million on Clone and Empire after getting the series on Thursday, and hit 13 million on Fett. There's a lot more to discover.
But if you ask me what I think of Zen's effort so far, I'm brought back to my first thought: Oh shit. They got Star Wars.
Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, the second-second game in Atlus's twisted demonic series, is out on the PlayStation Network today.
E3 is never a time for social calls. It's nonstop work. Last June, the only developer I met with outside the walls of the L.A. Convention Center was over drinks with Zen Studios' U.S. staff at the J.W. Marriott.