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
Resident Evil: Revelations
“The ship’s innards are dark, subdued, and packed with fear. The 3D screen really recreates the feel of peering into a corridor and thinking you can see something on the other end — that’s why we’re concentrating on the horror in this game; because it’s such a good fit with the hardware.” – director Koushi Nakanishi
“We want a scarier game than before, one that avoids the style of RE4 and later and instead goes with the old style up to RE3, where you’re solving puzzles and exploring. Recent games in the series have been more about fast excitement, but fear is the main drive of this game from the start — something so scary to the player, he’ll instinctively want to run as fast as he can. Suspense plays a key part here.” – producer Masachika Kawada
Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D
“The Mercenaries mode was just bonus material up until now, so a lot of gamers never even got around to playing them, I don’t think. You had to finish the main games to unlock them, which made them tough to access in the first place, and a lot of the challenges were pretty sadistically balanced besides.” – Koushi Nakanishi
“We needed to change the control system a great deal for the Nintendo 3DS. The touch screen is a really great input device, so we definitely want to get the most out of that we can.” – director Kazuhisa Inoue
“You can give them skills and adjust their weaponry. That lets you adjust them for your own play style while leveling up their skills. Each character has varying heal and defense abilities, and some skills let them unlock particular weapon features or defeat certain mid-bosses more easily. Taking advantage of these skills will make the game quicker to play and allow you to raise your characters’ levels more easily.” – director Kazuhisa Inoue
“It’s tailored to be a pure action game, so there is no story aspect to it at all. Instead of that, we’re implementing a lot of new gameplay into the action.” – director Kazuhisa Inoue
We posted this information yesterday along with Sakurai’s other response’s about Super Smash Bros. Melee yesterday, but I thought these two excerpts were important…
“On a personal level, Melee had an extremely grueling development cycle. Some of my other games did, too, but Melee sticks out far ahead of the pack in my mind. I worked on that game for 13 months straight, after all, without a single Sunday or holiday off that whole time. During parts of it, I was living a really destructive lifestyle — I’d work for over 40 hours in a row, then go back home to sleep for four.”
“Melee is the sharpest game in the series. It’s pretty speedy all around and asks a lot of your coordination skills. Fans of the first Smash Bros. got into it quickly, and it just felt really good to play.”
Can you imagine that work schedule? Personally, I don’t think I would have been able to put up with it! Also, I’m wondering how you guys feel about Melee – Do you agree? Do you believe Melee is the sharpest game in the series as well?
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+
– 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!
Keeping this on the front page overnight!
Forum integration: So… I’m really leaning towards making logging in to the forum mandatory in order to comment. Registering on the forum should take less than a minute, and I’m experimenting with ways for users to stay logged in. For one reason or another, spam comments on the main site have gone up a great deal, but, as I said a few days ago, I think that this new setting could cut down on that. Granted this totally blows up in our faces, then I’ll consider reverting back to the old settings. If you guys are on board with this, I’d like to make the switch this weekend. If you have anything else to say about this, feel free to do so in the comments section.
New forum skin: We’ve been using the default phpBB skin for awhile now, and we desperately need a change. Fortunately, we’re going to be implementing a new layout very shortly, and I think you guys will like it. I was actually going to put it up today, but I encountered a critical error that I need to take care of before the style goes live.
Broken things: Jeez, I have a ton to fix. First, I’m aware that we’re having an issue with our RSS feed (thanks for sending in the emails about that). However, I really need to work on a few other things first, such as the new forum skin and polls. I promise to look into the RSS problem soon!
This information comes from Jools Watsham…
“Yes, we’re very excited to be working on the 3DS. We are working on a title that will be announced next year, and plan to make many, many more for the platform.”
Watsham also commented on the status of Maximillian and the Rise of the Mutant Mudds. At the moment, the game is on hold, though he did say the project could turn into a DSiWare title.
Finally, we get a first look at Earth Seeker in video form. Apparently, this is the game’s opening.
WiiWare
Fluidity – 243 blocks
Racers’ Islands – Crazy Arenas – 165 blocks
Fireplacing – 118 blocks
Fluidity demo – 105 blocks
VC
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
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!
