The Shoot: The Only Light Gun Game That Also Features Figure Skating
Written by from on March 11th, 2010 | 0 CommentsThe Shoot is a fairly standard arcade rail shooter, adopting the theme of a series of B-grade movie sets (hence the double meaning in the title). Its look is certainly different: the presentation features comic book-style harsh lines and dank colors, but with characters presented as cardboard cutouts — and often on strings. Again, The Shoot is a, “light gun” shooter at its core, so most gamers should know what to expect: move the cursor and push the trigger. The Move controller does serve a slightly greater purpose, as you can physically lean to the left or right to dodge enemy missiles and such; plus more moves like a slow-mo mode activated by turning yourself in a complete 360-degree spin (light gun meets figure skating?), or drawing the Move from your hip and shooting for a finishing move (which, admittedly, I never actually pulled off). So you’ll have to accept the fact that you will have to stand up and look silly at least once. In all fairness to the game and its genre, it’s nice to see some extra Time Crisis -style movement with your body, and the 360-degree move in particular is something the Wii Remote and its rail shooters just can’t accomplish.
SOCOM 4 Hands-On Preview
Written by from on March 11th, 2010 | 0 CommentsMany of us here in the office got our first hands-on with the new PlayStation Move today and its (somewhat necessary) add-on, the Sub Controller. There were a number of tech demos on display at the event (look for our video recap for more impressions), whereas the only “real” game on display working with the new Move was the recently announced SOCOM 4 . And while I personally won’t be hanging up my DualShock3 and trading it in for a Move after my first impressions with the product, it’s still an impressive display on what can be done with this new device: decent motion control for a hardcore game. The PlayStation Move controllers themselves are very similar to the current set-up of the Wii Remote and its Nunchuk: The right-hand controller controls your head/gun/firing while the left-hand controller handles your movement with an analog stick. Each controller has a trigger as well; the left-hand’s trigger operates as a “go-into-cover” function, while the right-hand’s trigger fires your selected weapon (for the sake of the demo we were only able to use a machine gun). There is even an “action” button in the middle of the Move that, when pressed, would have you look down the sight line of the rifle — making the motion sensitivity increase.
Scrap Metal Review
Written by from on March 10th, 2010 | 0 CommentsBanging things into other things has been a major form of entertainment since the pilot episode of “Caveman Jackass” back in 20,000 B.C. There’s just something endlessly appealing about controlled destruction. So, if you’re stupefied by slaughter, dumbfounded by demolition, and enthralled by evisceration, you’re sure to be tickled by Slick Entertainment’s new XBLA title, Scrap Metal . Sitting somewhere between a straight-up arcade action title and a lightweight racing sim, Scrap Metal has drawn comparisons to Rare’s R.C. Pro-Am — but the similarity to that old classic is mostly skin deep. Really, Scrap Metal’s casual-game veneer hides a robust (if somewhat overly sensitive) physics engine, more levels than a Byzantine ziggurat, and a grip of imaginative set pieces. Both multiplayer (Scrap Metal offers local and online) and single-player are challenging without being too intense, offer plenty of tweaking without being overly detailed, and feature charmingly over-the-top graphics.
Scrap Metal Review
Written by from on March 10th, 2010 | 0 CommentsBanging things into other things has been a major form of entertainment since the pilot episode of “Caveman Jackass” back in 20,000 B.C. There’s just something endlessly appealing about controlled destruction. So, if you’re stupefied by slaughter, dumbfounded by demolition, and enthralled by evisceration, you’re sure to be tickled by Slick Entertainment’s new XBLA title, Scrap Metal . Sitting somewhere between a straight-up arcade action title and a lightweight racing sim, Scrap Metal has drawn comparisons to Rare’s R.C. Pro-Am — but the similarity to that old classic is mostly skin deep. Really, Scrap Metal’s casual-game veneer hides a robust (if somewhat overly sensitive) physics engine, more levels than a Byzantine ziggurat, and a grip of imaginative set pieces. Both multiplayer (Scrap Metal offers local and online) and single-player are challenging without being too intense, offer plenty of tweaking without being overly detailed, and feature charmingly over-the-top graphics.
True Crime: What Happens When A Developer Wants To Make The Departed Into A Game
Written by from on March 10th, 2010 | 0 CommentsThere’s a pretty bizarre moment in the original True Crime: Streets of LA where it transforms from an expected hip-hop laden urban crime game into a poor knockoff of Big Trouble In Little China. Instead of remaining consistent, the game decided to stop having you take on thugs, and started having you fight zombies, dragons, and flying skulls. Well, I can safely say that even though I’ve only seen a small snippet of the upcoming (and subtitle-less) True Crime , from the way executive producer Stephen van der Mescht describes it, there won’t be a crazy “why did I go from shooting guys to punching dragons?” moment in this next installment. In fact, True Crime is a complete reboot. Not only is it an entirely new game and locale (not an unfamiliar thing, since the previous two games changed main characters and switched from Los Angeles to New York), but an entirely different developer, United Front Games (the studio behind the upcoming
God of War 3 Review
Written by from on March 8th, 2010 | 0 CommentsDebates over its final boss fight aside, God of War 2 ’s ending made for good theater: Greek Kratos rode on the titan Gaia’s back as she scaled Mount Olympus in pursuit of a gods vs. titans face-off with Zeus and friends. It served as a big cliffhanger — literally or not, depending on your taste for puns — which set up God of War 3 as the final game in the trilogy. Looking back on that ending now, it seems clear that the developers knew what they had in mind for the third game all along, but at the time it left a lot open to interpretation. Would it be an entire game on the side of the mountain? Or might Kratos participate in some kind of War of the Monsters -style spin-off?
Resonance of Fate Is Secretly A Tactical RPG
Written by from on March 5th, 2010 | 0 CommentsResonance of Fate would like you to believe that it’s a conventional roleplaying game. The exploration elements are there, and so is a degree of dungeon crawling; but a certain degree of freedom doesn’t change the fact that tri-Ace has apparently crafted a cleverly disguised tactical-roleplaying game. It certainly isn’t Final Fantasy Tactics , but I would say that it has more in common with the likes of Valkyria Chronicles than it does Final Fantasy XIII . These feelings echo some of the sentiments I expressed after my last hands-on experience with Resonance of Fate during TGS 2009. At that time, I also expressed concern over what appeared to be bland art design and featureless dungeons. Following Sega and tri-Ace’s most recent visit to the 1UP offices though, I feel confident in saying that Resonance of Fate has established a unique identity for itself — in particular, it seems to have much more of a sense of style and humor than I was previously lead to believe.
Shoot 1UP Review
Written by from on March 5th, 2010 | 0 CommentsShoot 1UP is described by Mommy’s Best Games as a shoot-em-up for “normal gamers,” but “normal” is not a term I’d quickly associate with the developer’s output. After all, its first Xbox Live Indie release was Weapon of Choice , an over-the-top, Contra -like shooter pumped full of gore, outlandish weaponry, and heavy metal music. And Shoot 1UP, with hand-drawn tapestries populated by pies, beached whales, and a large robotic woman with metallic, projectile breasts that fire waves of glowing bullets, strays just as far from the ordinary. In a genre notoriously targeted at the hardest of hardcore, Shoot 1UP is an anomaly. Sure, you can recreate the traditional “bullet hell” experience — just select Serious difficulty, kick the game speed up to 200%, and go hog wild. But for those of us without the patience or skill set to endure even relatively mild shmups, Shoot 1UP presents something fresh — a more action-packed entry that scales wonderfully between casual observers and aficionados.
Vanquish: Our Report From Japan
Written by from on March 4th, 2010 | 0 CommentsJust to make sure there would be no confusion, the developers at Platinum Games kicked off their recent Vanquish press conference with a bit of preemptive damage control. “It’s a brand new type of shooting game that’s got incredibly high-paced action and is incredibly intense,” began producer Atsushi Inaba. “Because of the intense action that we’re going for with Vanquish, we’re looking forward to focusing purely on the single-player experience.”
Toy Soldiers Review
Written by from on March 3rd, 2010 | 0 CommentsTower defense games can be frustrating. No matter how well the game’s defensive structures perform, I find it hard not to feel that they could do better — fire faster or aim more accurately. Toy Soldiers is ostensibly a tower defense game, but it solves this genre-entrenched problem by allowing you to jump directly into any of your defensive units at any time. What a difference this small addition makes; it changes Toy Soldiers from another, simple tower defense title to a strategy/action hybrid. And manning the guns personally always feels rewarding. The titular Toy Soldiers are of the Great War — World War I. It recalls the broad strokes from the heady days of history class, without the oversaturated familiarity that comes with a World War II theme. The story itself is kept simple, using slide show vignettes to recount important battles. But as the name implies, these are toys through and through. The game doesn’t recreate actual battles; instead, it’s presents the war from a child’s perspective: a youngster racing home from school to play with his tin, fighting forces in a diorama-style set. The result is a nostalgic motif that recalls how kids may have played war games before words like “headshot” entered the vernacular.