Captain Obvious RETURNS.

ONE MO' GAIN!

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Again, I'm just saying..

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...Goddammit, Ninja Theory.

Ninja Theory + DMC = (Stephen)Dorff May Cry?

Devil May C(ash in on current vampire marketing trends)?

No thanks. No really. I can appreciate the refusal to continue where DMC2 left off, but dammit, we can't keep making him younger. While I have no problem with yet another prequel, I have an issue with the way he looks. We went from the handsome boyish charm of DMC3 Dante, to this travesty? Brandon Lee is probably turning in his grave due to misappropriation of his likeness.

Seriously. He looks like something a Crow direct-to-DVD movie shat out while squatting in front of Hot Topic.



I'm looking at these screens, and I'm wondering what the hell happened here. As a fan of DMC since the beginning, I'm well aware that at the conclusion of DMC 3, Dante was around 19 years old. Just HOW much younger is he supposed to be here, and...why in the hell is his hair black?

I don't trust Ninja Theory. Enslaved looks really nice and everything, but after a track record that is literally limited to Kung Fu Chaos on the original Xbox, and Heavenly Sword, sue me if I'm just a LITTLE skeptical about the direction they're taking DMC in with this alleged reboot. This is even with the promise that this new title will, in their words: "retain the series’ signature mix of sword and gunplay but add additional weapons, all new powers and a revitalised gameplay system as players encounter the game’s devilish mix of enemies and navigate the rich, interactive environment."

...Hopefully that "revitalised" gameplay system includes a jump button.

As far as I could tell, DMC didn't NEED rebooting, and the fact that Dante looks like he's as goth as his surroundings is unsettling. As an angsty rebellious action hero with platinum white hair, he was just cheesy enough to be self-depreciating and cool at the same time. Here, I just don't know what to think. What was wrong with continuing from where 4 left off, in a comfortable place between 1 and 2? I for one enjoyed (relatively) mature Dante, and wanted to know more about Nero, including his connection to the Sparda family. Now, like the Prince of Persia reboot that Ubisoft gave up on, it looks like I'll never see that new thread fleshed out.

Lost in a sea of marketing and..oh hell I don't know.

Fuck this game so far. They'd better flip this faster than Cole's unnecessary re-redesign in inFamous 2, or I can't see myself playing this at any point in the future.



GOD. Why the hell does he look like Edward Cullen?

Yep. Just as I can't unsee it, neither will you. Crab in a bucket, we're all goin' down.

Source: Destructoid [TGS: New Devil May Cry starring a younger Dante revealed]

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Just to drive it home a bit..

Someone at Apple must be reading. That, and they must really like numbers.

Numbers make the shareholders happy, define a consumer's reliance in a product, sometimes serving as a tipping point in new purchases, but more importantly, numbers give Apple a reason to crow above their competitors.

At their most recent press conference, they had a ton to show yesterday. Namely, that there are over 120 million of their devices using iOS out there in the wild. For the uinitiated, that would be referring to the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. With over 230,000 activations (or device purchases) daily.

To put things in perspective, The Nintendo DS has a worldwide tally somewhere around the range of 132 million. Someone's catching up.

Not only catching up, but outselling both Nintendo AND Sony with a rate that speedy.

A rate speedy enough to give them 50% of the portable market now.

Wow.



I've sung my praise of the iDevices as a gaming platform before, but even I couldn't anticipate numbers like this, and certainly not this fast. But am I surprised? No.

But I know who should be. If they know what's good for them.

It's a frightening prospect, a portable platform with the ability to evolve and grow as the market or technology demands, but Apple's got it. Previously, a portable could be released with the lifecycle of a console and enjoy a healthy 4-5 years before an upgrade was necessary. But with the ever evolving smartphone market, especially as a portable gaming platform with Apple at the forefront of such a revolution, we're seeing their hardware upgrade once a year. With better hardware, comes the prospect of more and more emergent software, and it's what's making their devices sell the way they do. The question of just what an iPod can do next is much more compelling than a handheld whose capabilities are clearly defined for the upcoming 4 or so years.

If you had told me two years ago that I would be seeing the Unreal Engine on my phone, I would've snickered heartily.

Now?

I just finished taking these shots from my phone. They're from Epic Games' tech demo Epic Citadel that shows the iPhone 4's ability to run their Unreal Engine 3 tech.




If only you could see the amazing water effects, dynamic lighting, textures, and overall stability (to put it very lightly and not tech heavy) in a still shot. I have chills, and I'm simply a consumer.

The entire portable gaming market has changed. With their ability to update their tech anually, it makes them a force to be reckoned with on a level that even Nintendo can't match. I doubt it's in an effort to keep up with Apple, but you can see Nintendo and Sony attempt to jump on the update bandwagon with incremental upgrades with questionable success (the multiple revisions of the DS and PSP cluttering store shelves and confusing consumers is proof of this), but the difference is, they aren't true revolutions of the hardware before it. As such, it's difficult to justify the frivolous upgrades on display when they're hardly integral to the core experience (built in cameras, microphones, better screens) in the same way Apple makes their revisions. I can't stop saying it. It's scary.

This is without me mentioning the digital distribution model that fuels the device, something the entire industry wants anyway as an ability to combat the sale of used games and pirated software, and the fact that the low cost and high profit of iOS development is very attractive to many a developer.

It's going to be a very interesting road ahead. Nintendo has the 3DS coming, and while no one on this planet has seen a true stereoscopic 3D handheld with the alleged power of a GameCube..no one knows what Apple has in store for us next year, or even the year after that with the newer runs of iPads, iPhones, and iPod touches.

Redundantly, it's scary to think about.

I apologize if it seems like I'm drinking the Apple kool-aid along with the rest of the masses, but the fact of the matter is, the numbers don't lie, their strategy is sound (and WORKING), and as a core gamer? Because I always have my phone on me, and the quality of the software on the device is comparable to my portable systems with half the hassle of operation? I rarely use my other handhelds now. Remember when we all laughed when Steve Jobs said he was going after the DS some years back? Who's laughing now?

Does Nintendo finally have a solid competitor in the portable market? Yes.

Sony? Well..we've gone over that already.

Time to get to work, boys.

Source: Engadget
Apple Claims 50% of Portable Gaming Market
Apple ships 120 million iOS devices since iPhone's launch


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Wait...Really?

I was incredulous upon first viewing, as I usually am whenever I view a Sony trainwreck for the first time. It's so much like a "Wait....Really?" vibe that I'm surprised every bit of advertising that comes out of their department doesn't get approved at least 3 or 4 times before they start shooting.

Are you kidding? I suppose it'd be funny to anyone with their head in the sand like Sony apparently is about their own device, but last time I checked, critically (and from the perspective of yours truly), I think it's funny that the iPhone versions of games like Need for Speed Underground, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (which combines the graphics from the PSP version with the touch features of the DS rev), and Prince of Persia: Warrior Within are all better than PSP versions of the same name. I also find it of a particularly amusing pedigree that it also does FPS games and the like better, as its responsive touch-screen allows for all manner of faux dual-analog setups that work much better then they ever ought to.

Hell, even your sad attempt at a bite sized game store with "PSP minis" is a resounding failure, as most of the games on the service offer much too little for a little too much. Kind of sounds like the PSPgo, your failed stab at the success of Apple's App store without an inkling of what -exactly- has made the service usurp your position, accomplishing in two years what you have struggled to do for five.



Perhaps instead of attempting to make scathing "jabs" at Apple's device, you should be figuring out how in two years, they managed to trump you in the portable gaming market.

Then you can get back to figuring out how to make the platform relevant this week, needless revisions, failed experiments, and desperate rumors notwithstanding.

Also....PLEASE stop using the little kid from Role Models/Land of the Lost/Whateverthehell. He really isn't funny when he's not swearing a mile a minute. Every single bit of his routine feels forced not only because someone his age wouldn't bother, but also because the PSP is such a stopgap between failure and moneysink that the irony of their fun-poking ads only causes one to shake their head in disbelief. Sega took potshots at Nintendo back in the day and it was funny, and all in good fun. This is just obnoxious. He is just obnoxious.


Seriously. Screw off.

Whatever. I suppose ports would be a step in the right direction though. Hey, if you can't beat 'em, join em, right? This seems to always be your policy. I wonder how much fun it'll be in a lower resolution, without the dual analog control scheme that made it such a hit on its original platform (not to mention its $4.99 price point). At least it'll get decent games on the platform at a rate faster than once every 6 months.

Really, if anything at this point, they need to consider the potential threat that the 3DS represents, as they will no longer have the raw power advantage to assert their "superiority" over the DS anymore. If the original DS model represented innovation at the cost of technology, then the 3DS, with its Gamecube esque processing power and glasses-free 3D technology represents a successful marriage of power and new frontier.



How they can continue to ignore something like that, and continue to out out these baseless ads is beyond me.

But then again, I'm used to something like this coming from Sony, the only company with their heads so far into the sand that it reaches their nether regions.

If that sounds amusing, it's only because it's true. They tried to write the Xbox off, and look at what happened. Keep doing the same with the iPhone.

I dare ya.

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Scott Pilgrim vs. the Arbitrary Objective!

So it's no secret by now, but I loved Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game. The game's retro sensibilities, combined with it's purposely pixelated sprite art look and 8-bit soundtrack won me over in a way that many games that attempt to be "retro" fail to. I mean it without a shred of hyperbole that I've literally been addicted to the game since its release, and while I can point out any aspect of its design in bullet points as the reason for this (great fighting engine, wealth of secrets, addictive leveling system), it wasn't just the graphics, or the gameplay that really brought out that old-school feel in me.

It was the return of the completely out-of-left-field institution that dominated most of my early gaming life:

The arbitrary objective.


We've all been there. You love a game to death, you play it to death. Somewhere inbetween purchase, mastering, and fondly archiving it for good, players go through this phase. A game gets completed, mastered, and because we don't want to let go of it just yet, we start making up new rules in our head. Racing games can be beaten without nitro. A fighting game can be beaten without special moves. These pointless, unnecessary, dare I say..arbitrary tweaks to a game's established formula can extend its relative value long past is shelf life, and it's exactly what happened to me here.

The funny thing was, I didn't even need to finish the game in question. It happened while I was playing through the game by myself as Scott, I realized that essentially, aside from some very unique attacks, everyone played the same, and because they had openly customizable stats, simply powering them all up to maximum would just make them homogeneous. The gears in my head began turning almost immediately. I knew I was going to play through the game with each character, but how could I indulge my hardcore sensibilities and still keep the game fresh 4, maybe even 5 playthroughs later? I thought of one of the game's many inspirations: Streets of Rage.



I remembered how each character, despite having the exact same moveset, had different attacks, and not only that, but they also had stats giving them all a distinct feel in addition to this. Axel was a power character with great moves, Blaze was the balanced type, Max was slow but powerful, and Skate was small and fast, if lacking in stamina. I wanted something like this for this game. After all, what better way to highlight each character's individuality (and give players something to call dibs on during multiplayer) than to give them completely differing strengths and weaknesses?

It took a bit of time, but I got it. Thinking of each character's personality/ability in the comic, I went about balancing them all out, albeit in RPG-grinding fashion:




Scott became an all-rounder, given his reputation as a fighter (and his uncanny ability to adapt), Ramona, being the "American Ninja", became the fastest character, yet relatively low on strength and high on defense. Kim, resident drummer (and situational damsel-in-distress) became above average on technique, strength, and speed(drummer qualities!), but has absolutely no defense, and Stephen, aka "the talent", became a tank, sporting relative strength, but maxed technique (talent, natch) and defense (he did date Julie, after all) at the cost of speed.

If the stats seem kind of high, it's because I balanced them all to be used on either medium, or hard difficulty..and for the most part, it worked out wonderfully. Scott is as powerful all around as he should be, Ramona's speed goes well with the range offered by her weapons, Kim's strengths go well towards a solid offense that masks what she lacks in defense, and Stephen is the strangest feeling one, having the lowest speed but a wealth of special techniques at his disposal.

The funny thing is, none of the hours I spent doing this felt wasted at all. I just finished the game with Scott yesterday, and now I can't wait to go through it again with Ramona. She's much faster, with much lower attack so her juggles are a lot more fun to indulge. I singlehandedly introduced character balance and an extra layer of strategy to this game, and while I didn't have to, the experience for me (and the people I've played with) was that much richer because of it.



Labor of love as it was, It brought me back quite a bit. I remember my tenure in Sonic 3& Knuckles, having separate files for having completed with or without all emeralds. I'm still proud of completing Super Mario Bros without touching a single fireflower (never touching a mushroom was beyond me). This sentiment extended past "old" games as well. In high school, action games like Ninja Gaiden weren't spared, as a friend and I finished the entire game on "very hard" without upgrading ANYTHING, and my girlfriend, notorious for her Need for Speed exploits, did everything short of finishing Most Wanted by driving backwards before she was satisfied. The arbitrary objective knows no genre, and no limits, being clearly defined by a gamer's ability, and imagination.

Hell, I've even become fond of what I named "stock mixing" in DJ Hero, playing a song through for 5 stars with no (extra) multipliers or modifiers.



If any of this sounds crazy, it's because well...it is, but it's something we gamers are well acquainted with. Microsoft may have capitalized on this old art by giving it a mainstream name in the form of "achievements", but at the end of the day, they have no real value, and it's the pride that we put into them that defines their value. Putting a score on it doesn't really change the fact that we've been assigning arbitrary objectives to ourselves since the beginning, and it'll continue as long as we have the drive to push the limits developers have assigned us.

Now if you'lll excuse me, I'm off to practice M.Bison in SSF4 by beating arcade mode on hard using only his normals.

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Gorilla-Proof

Akin to the legend of the Gulf War Game Boy, things like this just constantly reaffirm my stance that products from Nintendo are designed to withstand nuclear fallout. I mean, there are several written accounts of the little handheld that could surviving everything from avalanches, to rollercoasters, to well...WARS, and if this is any indication, we will NEVER be done recounting crazy tales of Nintendo's voodoo craftsmanship.

...Or ability to appeal to EVERYONE.

The story's almost too good to be true. Some knucklehead boy at the San Francisco Zoo accidentally drops his DSI XL into a Gorilla habitat. Noticing almost instantly, a massive honking gorilla approaches it, and instead of flattening it out of sheer animal madness, actually picks it up and inspects it. He then proceeds to open the thing and flip it around, presumably looking for the power button, but after several attempts, ends up looking just plain confused.

But it gets better! A smaller one approaches, and tries to show the big one how it's done...and fails as well after attempts culminating with trying to "see" through it. Presumably frustrated that he cannot get his DK on, big dude snatches it back, tries to flatten it, then finally EAT it before being lured over by a trainer, who traded him the DSi for something more edible.

I don't know what's more amazing. That the gorilla actually tried to play it, or that aside from some drool and scuffs, the DS was fully operational when it was returned.

How sneaky of you, Nintendo. Your announcement that this thing was for "old people" and "people with bad eyesight" was just a smoke screen. It's clear to me now who the intended audience was. Giant screen, giant stylus, it all makes sense now! Target audience get!

GORILLAS.

Who would've thought?


Source: You Got Donkey Kong On This Thing?

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Wait, don't you know what today is?

The hint begins (and ends) with this trailer. Like the comic, this game just gets better and better the more I see of it..




...and were it not for the absolutely BOOTY release schedule on the PSN, (where the date of release doesn't correlate with midnight, instead "sometime" in the afternoon of said day) yours truly would be playing it right now, basking in all of it's old-school, Final River City Double Dragon Ransom Fight in Time : 1989** glory.

STEP YOUR GAME UP, SONY.



No really. I don't know what vegan voodoo Todd Ingram is on to have a TETSUO FUCKING ARM ATTACK, but I want to find out. NOW.

(**Bonus points go to those who pick out the references on a first try!)


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