GDC 09 brought the house down, and the crowd in - but not as big as last year’s
Fresh from the press release mailbox is the success from the recently-concluded Game Developers Conference by Think Services. The press release came with the heading, “2009 Game Developers Conference Once Again Serves As Focal Point For Worldwide Videogame Industry,” plus a few stats on this year’s events that made the whole thing, in their words, a “week of learning, networking, and inspiration.”
The 2009 GDC Managed to haul in over 17,000 game industry pros into San Francisco for the largest industry-only event dedicated for interactive entertainment - a crowd ranging from aspiring devs to the teams of gaming’s finest publishers. An impressive number that may be, it still fell short of last year’s attendance - the all-time high of 18,000. That’s alright though, it was a tough act to follow.
Event director Meggan Scavio, was pleased with the outcome:
The success of this past week in San Francisco proves the resilience of the games industry. It is a testament to the spirit of our more than 20 year old conference and community, and evidence of videogames continued evolution into a mainstream form of entertainment, that the various constituents of the industry were able come together at GDC as they did year.
The big GDC caravan will move to the Moscone Center for the 2010 conference.
GDC news recaps:
- PS3 Weekend Warrior: epic updates from GDC
- QuickJump QuickGuide #65: Thanks You GDC! Of revelations, revolutions, evolutions
Madden NFL 10 release date announced
Details about Electronic Arts‘ Madden NFL 10 are still scarce, but at least EA has already announced one of the most important pieces of info: the game’s release date.
The long-running NFL videogame series is being primed for an August 14 launch. That’s a Friday, so that should give fans a lot of game time over the weekend. The game’s cover athlete will also be announced on April 24.
No particular consoles were mention along with the announcement, so I’m taking this to mean a simultaneous multiplatform release. Madden NFL 10 will appear on the Sony PS2, Sony PS3, Sony PSP, Microsoft Xbox 360, and Nintendo Wii.
Kudos to manas_girdhar for the tip!
Related articles:
- More casualties: EA layoffs hit Warhammer and Madden studios
- Madden NFL cover (and curse) to be sold to the highest bidder
Capcom still working on US release of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom
Starting to feel like your North American Wii will never get a chance to spin Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Cross Generation of Heroes? Capcom says, “keep hope alive!“
Capcom’s Seth “S-Kill” Killian recently posted footage (found after the break) of a Ranking Battle final at Simi Valley’s Denjin Arcade on the Unity blog, telling fans that the company is still looking for a way to bring the mixed-character fighter to North American shores. The post reaffirms comments made earlier this month by Capcom’s bizdev and strategic planning VP, Christian Svensson, who said Capcom was “actively working” to get the game Stateside. However, nothing is set in stone and it still may never happen. So, who’s starting the online petition?
Continue reading Capcom still working on US release of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom
Capcom still working on US release of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom originally appeared on Joystiq Nintendo on Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Review: M&M’s Beach Party (Wii)
M&M’s Beach Party
Genre: Party Game
Developer: Digital Embryo
Publisher: ZOO Games
Release Date: 03/17/09
The average gamer is far too spoiled in this day and age. Every time you turn around, it seems like a good to fantastic game gets released. There are so many well produced titles like Super Mario Galaxy, World of Goo, Zack and Wiki, and so on that sometimes I have a hard time just catching up on games I’m interested in. After playing one great title after another it is easy to forget that it is hard to create a good game.
M&M’s Beach Party is not a good game.
That’s exaggerating the facts a little. M&M’s Beach Party is barely a playable game.
The outer package uses one of the biggest cons that developers use for selling Wii games to parents. It insists that there are actually six games inside. OMG! For the price of one game you are getting six! It doesn’t matter that all six are short mini-games that stretch out the definition of interactive entertainment - there are six of them!
The game doesn’t even give an explanation for WHY the M&M’s are hanging out at the beach. I guess the thought that you are helping promote your fellow M’s to be eaten by the mouthful is a satressful one; so much so that they have to take a vacation on a deserted island. When you start the game you are asked to create a profile and assign your favorite M as an avatar. Does anyone have a favorite M? Do you choose your favorite M by selecting how tasty you assume the M to be? I did. I went with Orange since I assume him to be the peanut butter one.
Then the game starts out on what is apparently a beach. I say apparently because the graphics of the game are so bad you’ve got to imagine that this stretch of off-white pixels is a beach. The graphics are something you would expect if the Nintendo 64 went on a tequila bender and puked this up. Seriously, is this a port of the DS version of the same game? The only way that you can tell this is a beach is because there some ugly trees and some jagged looking shells are littered everywhere. The island is surrounded by what I think is meant to be water. In actuality the island is surrounded by a flat surface of two different blue colors that shift around.
I’d recommend buying this game so the developers can afford some Lasik eye surgery.
Once you get over the dramatic attack on your vision, you can wander around using the beach as a hub to unlock the various mini-games. Unless you are playing with a friend, all of the games will force you to play against an AI opponent. These games include:
Skeeball: Everyone’s favorite boardwalk pastime. Remember Wii Sports Bowling? Imagine that with far worse motion controls. I had a hard time trying to figure out how far to move my arm back in order to throw farther. Oddly, arcing my arm all the way back seemed to cause the ball to go a shorter distance than arcing my arm partially back. I’m not sure how that works. This is an exercise in frustration until you can figure out exactly how far you are supposed to move your arm back. Once you have figured that out you just line up the same shot everytime without fail.
So it’s like Skeeball, but without any skill.
Ring Toss: There are buoys. In order to win this one, you just select the farthest buoy then make a frisbee throwing motion as hard as you can while holding B. That’s all this game takes to win.
Colornator: Hey, it’s a target shooting game! This game is all about shooting gray M&M’s with your color to turn them into red/orange/whatever colored M&M’s. The player with the most colored M&M’s wins. Mini-games like this are the reason why lightgun games like House of the Dead: Overkill come with a way to calibrate the onscreen crosshair. The aiming for this game just feels off. After a while you will just correct yourself automatically. From there, it’s simply pointing and shooting at the same area that a couple of gray M&M’s pop out from.
Mr. Runch Slam: You know those carnival games where you hit a ball into a cup? This is the M&M equivalent. Here you use the Wii remote like a hammer to knock Mr. Runch into different colored pads. This game would just be bland if the motion controls worked well for it, but they don’t, so every time you play this mini-game it becomes an interesting test to see what motions the game does register and what motions it doesn’t.
Volleyball: This is probably one of the worst games on the whole disk, if only because it lasts the longest. The motions for serving the ball in no way correlate to motions you would use while playing real life volleyball. As well, the game is sensitive about what motion you do use for serving, so even if you do manage to serve the ball, there’s a good chance it will never make it to the other side of the net.
Passing and setting the ball up are supposed to be two different motions along with different presses of the A or B buttons, but just shaking the controller works just fine. Actually just shaking it works better than attempting to follow the directions. While attempting to play the game using the instructions I think I made up a few new swear words that might not have existed before now.
During the game you can unlock more modes and one locked mini-game by collecting shells. There are twenty shells scattered in around the twelve feet of the island. It took me less than ten minutes to find them all. These extra modes include adding additional challenges to games like Mr. Runch Slam and Ring Toss by adding moving targets or for hitting specific color combinations. These do not make either of these games more fun to play. Considering the game has flawed motion control it sometimes makes these games worse. However, you need to collect all twenty shells to play the Kayak Race.
You know what? Even if you’re the type of sick person who likes to inflict pain on themselves so you decided to buy this game, don’t collect the twenty shells. Kayak Race is a broken mess of a mini-game that requires you to make a motion with the Wii Remote in order to paddle faster. Except four out of eight times the game will not register the motion, even if it’s the same motion every single time. Even if you do manage to move your arm in the correct motion, the computer manages to paddle in a way that gains more speed than you can.
If that wasn’t enough, there are a few other design ideas thrown in to piss a person off. Unless you pause the game and choose to save, the game doesn’t save your progress. This of course is not mentioned in the manual or in the game. It will take most people about an hour to play through all of the mini-games and find all of the shells.
After two years into the lifespan of the Nintendo Wii, you’d think that developers would at least have enough of a grasp of the system to create a poor mini-game collection that worked the way it was supposed to. Wii Sports is ten times the game that this is and it comes packed in with the system.
For the love of all that is holy, is it too much to ask that from now on that games released to the Wii system be better than the tech demo that comes with the system?
The Scores:
Modes: Awful
Graphics: Worthless
Sound: Bad
Control/Gameplay: Dreadful
Replayability: Worthless
Balance: Awful
Originality: Worthless
Addictiveness: Awful
Appeal: Poor
Miscellaneous: Worthless
Final Score: AWFUL GAME
Short Attention Span Summary:
There is more entertainment value to watching a $20 bill burn than there is in playing this game. Buy it for your children if you want them to feel unloved. The game is so bad, I don’t like even eating M&M’s anymore.
http://diehardgamefan.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/mmbox1.jpg
FFCC: Crystal Bearers website demands more visits for more videos
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers is coming out. Seriously, it is. If the trailer above looks familiar it’s because you’ve already seen it. It was released in Japan before being removed by Square Enix’s evil grasp, only to reemerge on The Crystal Bearers‘ new global gateway. Square promises new videos are on the way but gamers will have to work to get them.
In a diabolical move, Square Enix has decided to unlock two additional trailers for Crystal Bearers at an undisclosed time, presumably when an unknown amount of visitors check the site. Put simply, more visits equal more movies. Shenanigans! Smart shenanigans … but shenanigans nonetheless. Everyone start clicking!
FFCC: Crystal Bearers website demands more visits for more videos originally appeared on Joystiq Nintendo on Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Study: violent games least likely to cause gamer aggression
By now everybody has heard about the supposed link between violent videogames and real-life aggression. A lot of researchers have sunk time and effort into either disproving or proving this theory, so until now we don’t really have anything definitive. A new study by researchers from Huddersfield University, however, is calling this supposed link into question.
The study was set up like this: 30 participants, aged from 18 to 45, were asked to play three different game genres - a FPS, a driving game (Project Gotham Racing) and a 3D table tennis game - on an Xbox 360. They were measured for changes in their physical responses (EEG, breathing and heart rate) and mental responses (aggression) before and after playing.
The researchers, Dr Simon Goodson and Sarah Pearson, found that no, violent games like first-person shooters don’t actually cause players to get more agitated and aggressive than usual. In fact, the researchers found that it induced the least change in heart rate and brain activity. You might be surprised at what caused the greatest change, though.
Their findings indicated that the driving game induced the greatest change in heart rate and brain activity and the FPS induced the smallest change. Yep, according to the study, driving games actually cause gamers to become more aggressive. I guess road rage also exists in virtual highways.
Here’s what the researchers had to say about their findings:
Previous researchers have made sweeping generalisations about the nature of videogames. This study is one of the first to use one of the latest games consoles that have a much higher level of realism. Surprisingly the results showed that the driving game made participants more agitated and aggressive than the game with graphic violence. Given the high levels of realism in modern games a re-evaluation of the relationship between videogames and violence is needed.
Makes you think, huh? The study will be presented at the British Psychological Society s Annual Conference today.
A similar study presented during the BPS Annual Conference last year by Miss Jane Barnett and her colleagues at Middlesex University also found that people who play violent games online actually feel more relaxed and less angry after they have played. There were still differences depending on sex, age and personality, though.
Conversely, a study conducted in the United States and Japan late last year found that violent games DO make people aggressive. The thing to note here however is the age group that the study focused on: 9 to 18. Compare that to the 18 to 45 that was used in the Huddersfield study. Age was also one of the factors that influenced the findings of the Barnett study. Impressionability, perhaps? Feel free to share your thoughts about this in the comments section below.
Related articles:
- New research says violent games not linked to school shootings
- Violent video games make you aggressive
- Results of psychological study dispute link between online gaming and violence
- New research reveals kids who don’t play videogames at all are more at risk of violent tendencies
DreamCatcher & JoWood bring dedicated Yoga game to Wii
DreamCatcher and JoWood have announced a dedicated Yoga game for the Nintendo Wii, simply named Yoga for Wii. The game, which was built for use with the Wii Balance Board, includes three modes: Training, Routine and Story — where players must seek revenge for the death of their brother… wait, no. Wrong press release. Oh, here it is, the purpose of the story mode is actually to turn Yoga novices into routine gurus. Also, players can go through a number of preset routines or create their own to fit their daily needs.
Using the Wii Balance Board in conjunction with the Wii Remote is said to analyze balance, making suggestions for better routine execution with the help of a Yoga Master that tracks overall progress. Yoga for Wii is set to downward-dog into stores this October.
DreamCatcher & JoWood bring dedicated Yoga game to Wii originally appeared on Joystiq Nintendo on Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Rock Band Wiikly: Pearl Jam, Devo, Faith No More, Fall Out Boy
Pearl Jam’s album, Ten, is ready to get grungy this week on Rock Band for Wii. A few other tracks tag along to get the Wii music store up to spec with other consoles.
Pearl Jam’s Ten (200 Wii points apiece)
- “Once”
- “Even Flow”
- “Why Go”
- “Black”
- “Jeremy”
- “Oceans”
- “Porch”
- “Garden”
- “Deep”
- “Release”
- “Master/Slave”
Individual songs (200 Wii points apiece):
- “Through Being Cool” - Devo
- “We Care A Lot” - Faith No More
- “I Don’t Care” - Fall Out Boy
The tracks will be available today, March 31, and videos for all of this week’s tracks are after the break.
Continue reading Rock Band Wiikly: Pearl Jam, Devo, Faith No More, Fall Out Boy
Rock Band Wiikly: Pearl Jam, Devo, Faith No More, Fall Out Boy originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Top 5 Rock & Roll Movie Games That Don’t Exist
A drunken mosh pit of rock movies and game ideas.
I thought about going down a list of F’ing Metal games, but other than Rock & Roll Racing and about a dozen things with plastic guitars that for some reason don’t come shaped like whisky bottles, it looked pretty bleak. It’s way more fun to have elaborate fantasies about things that don’t exist… that’s actually a really great way of coping with just about everything in life.
<!– System: NES | Release Date: 1987 | Publisher: Capcom –>
I’d like to see a fighting game made out of this one, if only to resolve high school arguments over whether Taarna or Den would win in a fight. Character selection would be stupid, though. It’d be less like paper-rock-scissors than paper-rock-hand grenade.
“I’ll take the stoned aliens in the giant smiley face.”
“Okay, I’m taking the Lok-Nar.”
“F*** you, you always take the Lok-Nar.”
And then everyone’s face melts off.
<!– System: NES | Release Date: 1987 | Publisher: Capcom –>
You know those Diner-Dash time management games your mother likes so much? High Fidelity would be exactly like that, except if you actually satisfy any of your customers you lose instantly.
Or maybe an MMO where instead of killing monsters you belittle their taste in music. Instead of earning better armor you star in increasingly crappy movies.
<!– System: NES | Release Date: 1987 | Publisher: Capcom –>
I’m picturing this pretty much like playing Rock Band’s tour mode, except the game comes with a tanker truck of vodka, your friends are all idiots, your xbox crashes every two minutes, and everything is broken except the fog machine. So, pretty much exactly like Rock Band’s tour mode, except the special edition comes with a tiny foam henge.
<!– System: Arcade/PlayStation | Release Date: 1997 | Publisher: Namco –>
Man, if you haven’t seen this thing, you have my envy. Both because you’ve so far been spared the deepest depths of vomiting penis puppet hell, and because… I forgot what the second reason was because just thinking about this movie gave me brain damage. Not because of the penis monsters, but on account of the ending, wherein a bodybuilding Rock & Roll archangel battles Satan. I thought rock and Satan were, like, tight. Now my whole world is upside down.
<!– System: NES | Release Date: 1987 | Publisher: Capcom –>
I have a confession to make. I’ve never finished watching Wild Zero. Mostly because I always try to play the drinking game along with it, and I’m left with nothing but a vague recollection of Japanese guys, guitars, aliens, and a headache like someone set off a firecracker between my brain cheeks.
Top 5 Rock & Roll Movie Games That Don’t Exist
A drunken mosh pit of rock movies and game ideas.
I thought about going down a list of F’ing Metal games, but other than Rock & Roll Racing and about a dozen things with plastic guitars that for some reason don’t come shaped like whisky bottles, it looked pretty bleak. It’s way more fun to have elaborate fantasies about things that don’t exist… that’s actually a really great way of coping with just about everything in life.
<!– System: NES | Release Date: 1987 | Publisher: Capcom –>
I’d like to see a fighting game made out of this one, if only to resolve high school arguments over whether Taarna or Den would win in a fight. Character selection would be stupid, though. It’d be less like paper-rock-scissors than paper-rock-hand grenade.
“I’ll take the stoned aliens in the giant smiley face.”
“Okay, I’m taking the Lok-Nar.”
“F*** you, you always take the Lok-Nar.”
And then everyone’s face melts off.
<!– System: NES | Release Date: 1987 | Publisher: Capcom –>
You know those Diner-Dash time management games your mother likes so much? High Fidelity would be exactly like that, except if you actually satisfy any of your customers you lose instantly.
Or maybe an MMO where instead of killing monsters you belittle their taste in music. Instead of earning better armor you star in increasingly crappy movies.
<!– System: NES | Release Date: 1987 | Publisher: Capcom –>
I’m picturing this pretty much like playing Rock Band’s tour mode, except the game comes with a tanker truck of vodka, your friends are all idiots, your xbox crashes every two minutes, and everything is broken except the fog machine. So, pretty much exactly like Rock Band’s tour mode, except the special edition comes with a tiny foam henge.
<!– System: Arcade/PlayStation | Release Date: 1997 | Publisher: Namco –>
Man, if you haven’t seen this thing, you have my envy. Both because you’ve so far been spared the deepest depths of vomiting penis puppet hell, and because… I forgot what the second reason was because just thinking about this movie gave me brain damage. Not because of the penis monsters, but on account of the ending, wherein a bodybuilding Rock & Roll archangel battles Satan. I thought rock and Satan were, like, tight. Now my whole world is upside down.
<!– System: NES | Release Date: 1987 | Publisher: Capcom –>
I have a confession to make. I’ve never finished watching Wild Zero. Mostly because I always try to play the drinking game along with it, and I’m left with nothing but a vague recollection of Japanese guys, guitars, aliens, and a headache like someone set off a firecracker between my brain cheeks.
Top 10 Best Selling Games
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