Note: I haven’t posted the Guitar Hero interview because I do not have enough time. However, I believe the interview was only three or four minutes.
Mega Man 9
– Debate was going on about what score the graphics should get
– Matt thinks the graphics are outdated and kind of ugly, but it doesn’t affect the gameplay
– Craig/Bozon say it’s not a bad looking game, just a step back in technology
– Daemon doesn’t think the graphics are bad either
– Graphics score given was a 3
– In the swing of things, the whole breakdown doesn’t affect the scores as much as people think they do
– Talk about how cool the Mega Man 9 press kit is
Wario Land: Shake It!
– 8.4 review score
– Doesn’t run in true widescreen, Matt feels its almost a deal-breaker for him these days
– Still a quality product, controls are responsive
– Level design is great, a lot of variety
– Backdrops change a lot too, reminds Matt of the games he grew up with playing and loved
– Doesn’t have many gimmicks other
– You know where to go, you just have to figure out how to get there
– Bozon doesn’t like some of the backgrounds – such a small amount of parallax and foreground layers
– Can complete the stages in about 5 hours but you can keep (and will want to) come back to the stages
– Matt highly recommends the game, would pay $50 for it
The latest Game Informer review scores are as follows…
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Xbox 360/PS3, Activision): 8.75 / 8.75
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Wii, Activision): 7.75
Rock Band 2 (Xbox 360/PS3, EA): 9.25 / 9.25
Mercenaries 2: World in Flames (Xbox 360/PS3, Pandemic): 7.25 / 7.5
Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen (NDS, Square Enix): 7
Infinite Undiscovery (Xbox 360, Square Enix): 8 / 8
Mario Super Sluggers (Wii, Nintendo): 5.5 / 5.5
FaceBreaker (Xbox 360/PS3, EA): 7.75 / 6.5
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 (Xbox 360/PS3, EA): 8.5 / 8.75
NHL 09 (Xbox 360/PS3, EA): 9.25 / 9
NHL 2K9 (Xbox 360/PS3, 2K Sports): 6.75 / 7
Pure (Xbox 360/PS3, Disney): 8.5 / 8.5
Guilty Gear 2: Overture (Xbox 360, Arc System Works): 6.25
Tales of Vesperia (Xbox 360, Namco Bandai): 7.25 / 8
Battle Fantasia (Xbox 360, Arc System Works): 7.5
Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise (Xbox 360, Microsoft): 8.25 / 7.5
Zoids Assault (Xbox 360, Atlus): 5 / 4.5
De Blob (Wii, THQ): 7.75 / 8
Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility (Wii, Natsume): 6.75 / 7.5
Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness (NDS, Natsume): 6.75
Mystery Case Files: MillionHeir (NDS, Nintendo): 7
Pop Cutie! Street Fashion Simulation (NDS, Koei): 7.5
N+ (NDS/PSP, Atari): 8.75 / 8.75
Away: Shuffle Dungeon (NDS, Majesco Games): 7.5
New International Track & Field (NDS, Konami): 6.25 / 8
From the Abyss (NDS, Aksys Games): 5
Disgaea DS (NDS, Atlus): 8
Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure (NDS, NIS America): 5.5
Videos
Mega Man 9 Info Video
Plättchen – twist ‘n’ paint Info Video
SimCity Creator TV Spot
Skate It Info Video
Luminous Arc 2 Info Video
Ninjatown Info Video
Digest Video
Demos (Expire 9/28)
Crosswords DS – Wordsearch Demo
Spore Creatures Demo
Air Traffic Chaos
Arknoid DS
It’s not typically an encouraging sign when a company hides their game from the press. Disaster: Day of Crisis has fallen down that path, but in this case, it doesn’t necessarily mean the game is terrible. Actually, based on the first review from Famitsu, Day of Crisis might be much better than the average game. The Disaster review, which can be read in the upcoming edition of Famitsu, includes a superb score of 34/40.
I’m not entirely supportive of the score since the same magazine also gave a perfect score to Nintendogs, although it’s definitely a step in the right direction. At least we assume that the game isn’t shovelware!
Once again, this is news from the interview with Dan Houser, cofounder of Rockstar Games..
NP: What do you feel are some GTA features that, because of the technical limitations, won’t make it into the game?
DH: Well, really, the perspective. To go to the isometric view rather than make it fully 3-D. There was never any belief that we’d do anything different than that because we’re always about high performance and the number of cars. I think that’s the only major difference between this and the console version of the game in terms of what the game is. It’s a city with a criminal adventure stuck in, and a bunch of things to do. Because we’re making this game from the ground up for the DS, we were never really looking at it in terms of limitations. It’s more in terms of strengths, and what works well on the hardware and what doesn’t work well on the hardware. Obviously minigames work ’cause you can bounce between two screens so well. We weren’t trying to compress something down this time–it’s more building up for the hardware.
There are some other details I’ve written down from the interview, but I’m pretty sure these are the last important notes from the GTA coverage.
– Wanted to capture the feeling of the GTA games but wanted to provide the game with some evolution too
– Leeds was very keen about making a DS game, took awhile to figure out the format that the game would take
– In some ways it was more difficult to figure out how to make a GTA on the DS rather than on PSP
– Might be the reason why PSP games have come about earlier
– Important to the devs that the game feels like a city, feeling of GTA in general
– Nintendo has really been supporting the game
– GBA version of GTA wasn’t really looked at when making Chinatown Wars
– This is a game built ground up for the hardware
– Once again, simply couldn’t do full 3-D for the game.
– Same developers also created Max Payne for GBA
– GTA IV didn’t touch on Chinatown too much, but developer’s weren’t really conscious of that – it’s not really a sequel
1) Star Wars: The Force Unleashed – LucasArts
2) Wii Fit – Nintendo
3) Mario Kart Wii – Nintendo
4) Warhammer Online: Age Of Reckoning – EA
5) Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 – EA
6) Mercenaries 2: World In Flames – EA
7) Wii Play – Nintendo
8 ) Carnival: Funfair Games – 2K Play
9) TNA Impact! – Midway
10) Spore – EA
MTO plans on releasing a puzzle title, Minna da Asobou Koinu de Kururin (roughly translated as, Play Together: Kururin as Puppies) for WiiWare this October in Japan. The main objective of the game involves lining up the same colors of puppies and connecting groups of dogs to a same colored dog house in order to clear the puppies from the screen.
Minna da Asobou Koinu de Kururin supports up to four participants in local multiplayer. The game has online functionality as well, but only for national rankings. Minna da Asobou Koinu de Kururin will be releasing in Japan October 7 for 500 Wii points.
