“I’ve never worked on a game that’s polarized people like this. Literally, we’ve got a half dozen perfect scores and I’ve also gotten the lowest scores I’ve ever gotten on any game I’ve ever worked on. In a weird sort of way, I think that’s kind of cool. The fact that you’re making something that people feel that strongly about either way is way better to me in a weird sort of way, of course you want everybody to think you made the best game ever, but if we were trending at something like an 8 out of 10? I’d probably have to kill myself. It’s kind of cool to polarize people in that way and have people feeling really passionate about it and talking a lot about it, I’m kind of jazzed about that.”

The review scores with Epic Mickey have definitely been odd. At first, a number of publications really praised the title, but since then, I’ve seen scores as low as 4.

de Blob 2 trailer

Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Videos, Wii | 0 comments

Source

Complete Famitsu review scores

Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in DS, News, Wii | 2 Comments

Gran Turismo 5 (PS3) – 9/9/9/10
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (PS3/360) – 9/9/8/9
Inazuma Eleven 3: Sekai e no Chousen! The Ogre (DS) – 9/9/8/8
Shining Hearts (PSP) – 8/8/8/8
Skate 3 (PS3/360) – 7/7/7/8
Kanuchi: Futatsu no Tsubasa (PSP) – 7/7/6/6
Pac-Man Party (Wii) – 6/7/6/7
Tantei Opera: Milky Holmes (PSP) – 7/7/8/7
Dondake Sports 101 (DS) – 5/6/4/3
Deca Sporta Freedom (360) – 7/6/6/7
Gundam Musou 3 (PS3/360) – 9/8/8/9

ESRB updates

Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in DS, News, Wii | 0 comments

Absolute Baseball (DSi) – E
Okamiden (DS) – E10+
Atari Greatest Hits: Volume 2 (DS) – E
Chuck E. Cheese’s Sports Games (Wii) – E
Fit in Six (Wii) – E
El Chavo (DS) – E
La-Mulana (Wii) – E10+

The Last Story Iwata Asks details with AQ

Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii | 0 comments

– Hironobu Sakaguchi and AQ Interactive’s Takuya Matsumoto ended up working together on The Last Story after meetings at an izakaya restaurant in Tokyo (near Mistwalker)
– Sakaguchi was creating a design document
– Sakaguchi and Matsumoto would meet at the restaurant to talk about games
– The two had regrets about Blue Dragon (they worked on that for the Xbox 360)
– Thought they might have made the same style of game too much and took things easy
– The two discussed the new style of games
– Both were shocked by a game video they saw, after seeing the brand new style of the game
– Sakaguchi regretted that he was surprised by someone else’s work while he was the one who was supposed to surprise players
– Sakaguchi/Matsumoto agreed to make a prototype to decide on the direction to take with The Last Story
– Prototyping phase was done for around a year
– The demos had blocky characters named “Tofu”
– Sakaguchi/Matsumoto believed they needed a new battle system for The Last Story, would repeat the same mistakes if they didn’t change the basic rules

– Made a prototype with 3 blue tofus representing the heroes and 3 red tofus representing the enemies
– Glasses given to the enemy leader
– Trial and error tests with the blue and red tofus
– Would have the option of instructing your allies to kill the leader off first in the prototype
– Ability to give directions to allies became important in the final battle system
– Sakaguchi/Matsumoto also decided to work on collision work on the fields of play
– They made the game so that players can explore the reaches of fields of play (complex land formations such as hiding in shadows, turning horizontally when trying to fit through spaces, entering doors after pushing them open with their hands)
– Incorporated the land formations into the game because proper collision was done
– Players can climb over walls or hide in spaces as a result
– Collision work connected to the game’s scenario work
– Story and land formations are intertwined
– 3 steps to the story: Sakaguchi’s general outline, character exchanges in dungeons (worked on by Matsumoto), then details and voice acting
– Matsumoto took Sakaguchi’s outlines to come up with ways to incorporate the land formations into them in the form of events
– Some of what Matsumoto did led to character settings
– Elza’s habit of kicking doors in order to open them is an example of the above
– Sakaguchi believed this to be a nice element to the character and made it part of the character setting
– Matsumoto thought the Gathering component was difficult
– Gathering system comes from the game’s keyword of “Chaos and Order” or “If you bring order to the battle field that is in chaos, you will win”
– A lot of trial and error to make the gathering concept work in the battle system and become advantageous to the player
– Sakaguchi said a big problem was that the strength of the Gathering command would have to change based on the enemy and battle conditions
– Kill off enemies without using the Gathering skill
– Gathering is exclusive to Elza, but other characters use similar skills
– Make enemies drawn in to some allies to some extent
– Sakaguchi thinks that allowing players to have freedon in battles will let players have their own play style
– Staff mixed of those who would guard and use Gathering to get a grasp on the battle and others who’d just jump right in and fight
– Matsumoto used the first option
– Sakaguchi jokes that Matsumoto is making the game’s tutorial and put in a recommendation that players use Guard
– “Replay” system in the prototype phase, didn’t make it into the final game
– Replay would have the previous few seconds of battle saved to memory so that you could review what happened
– Players would be able to pick up on things they might have missed due to the chaos of battle (such as which enemy hurt you)
– Sakaguchi stopped working on because rewinding lead to bad battle tempo
– Replay system led to the element in which the action freezes and you’re given a birds eye view of the action when you input commands in battle
– Climbing walls was added after the prototype phase
– Had to redo all the early dungeons they’d created due to the added skill above
– Auto attack also added after the prototype
– Matsumoto thinks that players are able to get a better grasp of the battle situation with the auto attack\
– Auto attack is the “Normal” setting for battle
– Can switch it to “Manual”
– Manual option gives you direct button controls over your attacks
– Sakaguchi said balancing both types of attack options took a lot of time
– Team wanted to make sure that switching to manual attacks didn’t make the game easy
– Tuning the auto attack lasted through the end of development

Thanks to Thomas N for the tip!

Source

First Earth Seeker video

Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Wii | 3 Comments

Finally, we get a first look at Earth Seeker in video form. Apparently, this is the game’s opening.

WiiWare/VC/DSiWare downloads – block sizes (12/6)

Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in DS, News, Wii | 0 comments

WiiWare

Fluidity – 243 blocks
Racers’ Islands – Crazy Arenas – 165 blocks
Fireplacing – 118 blocks
Fluidity demo – 105 blocks

Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando – 64 blocks
SONSON – 47 blocks

DSiWare

Space Ace – 128 blocks
Rytmik Rock Edition – 128 blocks
Dairojo! Samurai Defenders – 62 blocks

AQ Interactive/Artoon working on The Last Story

Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii | 0 comments

Ever since The Last Story was announced, we knew that Nintendo and Mistwalker have been working on the game. However, there is one additional company that is involved with the project: AQ Interactive. AQ has been handling most development aspects of The Last Story. Of course, this mostly relates to programming as well as other technical elements.

Artoon was actually rumored to be developing The Last Story for quite some time. However, AQ Interactive absorbed Artoon in addition to Cavia not too long ago. As we discovered in the latest edition of Iwata Asks, this is the first time in seven years that Blue Dragon director Takuya Matsumoto (formally of Artoon) has worked with Hironobu Sakaguchi.

Thanks to Thomas N for the tip!

Source

Spector comments on Epic Mickey’s camera

Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii | 2 Comments

This information comes from Warren Spector…

“First, there has never been a game that I couldn’t break if you give it to me for 30 seconds. I mean, I will break a camera in any game ever made. And if I learned one thing on this project, it’s an immense amount of respect for people who have been making third person action and platforming games. Third person camera is way harder than I even imagined it could be. It is the hardest problem in video game development. Everybody gets it wrong. It’s just a question of how close to right do you get it.

What I try to be completely clear about is that this is not a platforming game. This is a game that takes platforming elements and adventure game elements and role-playing elements and merges them. So we couldn’t tune the camera perfectly for platforming or for action adventure. It’s a very different camera style. What we did is try to find the best compromise in the moment and give the player as much manual control as we could. So we took the hardest problem in third-person gaming and made it harder by trying to accommodate two different playing styles. And I will go to my grave, imperfect as it is, proud as hell of my camera team

If reviewers want to give us a hard time about it because they’re misunderstanding the game we made, it’s not for me to tell them that they’re wrong, absolutely not. But I wish people would get it out of their head that we made a ‘Mario’ competitor, because we didn’t.”

The camera in Epic Mickey has definitely been one of the biggest complaints I’ve heard about the game. To be fair, I feel that Spector is right in that it isn’t easy to make a perfect camera. The system was criticized in Super Mario Sunshine, and even many titles today have similar issues. For those who have played the title, how many of you have been having trouble with Epic Mickey’s camera?

Source

X-Play’s “Best of 2010” nominees

Posted on 13 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in DS, News, Wii | 4 Comments

Game of the Year

1. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood
2. Disney Epic Mickey
3. Mass Effect II
4. NBA 2K11
5. Red Dead Redemption
6. Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty