CVXFREAK’s choice:

Onimusha 3
This was a blast to play. The fully 3D graphics engine is beautiful, and the game played faster and smoother than the previous Onimusha games. The Paris-time travel dynamic worked out well, adding up to a long, enjoyable experience. There’s plenty to unlock and replay value is decent. The game is easily more accessible than its predecessors. The voice acting is decent, the movie direction is fantastic and Jean Reno isn’t in the very least distracting or out of place. DCharlie’s choice:


Half-Life 2
With a lot to live up to, Half-Life 2 was the experience I thought it would be, and then some. Fantastic graphics, well crafted atmosphere giving a sense of helplessness and doom, and some great set pieces all helped HL2 become an obsession until it was completed. Although the game does have its negative points such as some sound glitches and some badly timed load times (which could be fixed), the big boon that comes with HL2 is the inevitable mod scene that will follow. At least that will keep us entertained until HL3… JonnyRam’s
choice:

Gradius V
My love affair with the Gradius series stretches way back to 1985, and while those two decades have given us more Madonna albums than Gradius games, Treasure’s addition to the mix makes me feel like I was "touched for the very first time". The staple Gradius ingredients are almost all present - the power-up system, options, cores, and remixed Gradius tunes. The only thing fans may miss is the famous Easter Island stage. 21st century graphics and music form
the icing on Gradius V’s all too tasty cake. A must for shmup fans everywhere.
LEOsh’s choice:

Monster Hunter
The online capability made this a strong candidate amongst other games but that was not its only quality. The world setting and concepts were unique. Characters did not level up with experience points as other RPGs do. It requires the improvement of player skills, equipment, coordination and communication to work with other players. Although challenging, it was exciting to see yourself beat a
dragon you used to get creamed by. Even considering the issues it had such as the heavily loaded servers at the start of its service and the badly designed in-game chat, Monster Hunter got a large amount of my gaming time in 2004.

The original Made in Wario was like a breath of fresh air. Best described as
gaming for A.D.D. sufferers, the unusual yet well implemented action "party game" caused quite a stir. This week saw the release of Mawaru Made in Wario, which takes the premise of the original and offers an interesting twist… literally.

Mawaru Made in Wario makes use of a position sensitive cartridge which means that the game can detect movement when you turn your GBA. It must be clarified hat this works by physically turning the GBA so that you are rotating it from its original position, not physically rotating yourself or merely tilting the GBA.

The game format is much the same as the original, with the main game comprising of an unfolding story following the adventures of Wario. At each stage of the game, revisiting all the old favourite characters, a set of mini-games must be completed. In most cases, this involves performing a task within a 5 second time frame. Following completion of 10 or so mini-games, it’s off to the Boss Battle. Defeat the boss, and the next part of the story is opened.

Beyond the main story, you can once again play each mini-game individually, with the difficulty increasing progressively, as well as being able to replay through the story again with the game continuing after defeating the boss. The Pig Towers make a welcome return, this time as Monkey Towers, but the premise remains the same.

Obviously, the biggest departure is the use of the movement detecting cartridge, and here-in lies a question key to the games’ success; does it work well? Thankfully, it does. Each degree of turning gives a nice clear ‘click’ from the cartridge, making the game very tactile and very pleasing to play. Despite requiring some deft movement at certain points in the game, the cartridge reacts instantly to the action, meaning that the game is unhindered by
unreliable controls.

Graphically, the same mish-mash of styles remains from the first title, with more use of scaling and rotating graphics. Special mention has to go to the vertically scrolling "nose in fingers" boss level, which invites you to rotate the GBA 90 degrees to play in vertical mode, while employing a brush stroke drawing style that looks fantastic on the small screen.

Sonically, the game has to rank as one of the very best GBA games to date - strange voices chip in with mumbles, music contains more vocals than before, tracks are interesting, and the whole production sounds much clearer.

The games themselves are once again fun, humorous, and involving. You will find yourself (amongst a myriad of other things) pushing sweets out of the mouth of a young girl, extracting bad teeth, teasing a cat with a stick, playing keepy-up football, shaving, ironing a shirt, balancing an umbrella on your finger, as well as some interesting retakes on some NES classics. The level of required
interaction to complete each game ranges from a simple, timely press of the A button, all the way to having to turn your GBA through 360 degrees over and over again.

The main game is relatively short (it can be completed in just over 1 hour), but truth be told, this game and the original were never really about the main game - it is all about scoring highly and unlocking the extras. Again, there are a host of extras to unlock, including a number of mini-games, musical instruments, curio, and collectibles. The mini-games prove addictive as ever and are definitely worth taking the time to unlock, adding to the reward of replaying the games over and over.

On the down side, it must be noted that at the harder levels things get very difficult indeed, more so than the original game, with some of the challenges requiring nimbler hands than seems humanly possible. The main game itself is over pretty quickly, and the addition of a few extra modes would have been nice. The inclusion of a time-attack level (which is part of the main game) involves starting the level with 15 seconds on the clock. Completion of a round will see
the overall time increase, but you have no 5 second limit, meaning that the longer you take, the more of your time gets eaten up. Keeping your time above zero is the goal. While this is a nice addition, some extra modes catering towards multiple players would have been appreciated.

Given that Mawaru is made for the GBA (the portable games machine of choice at the moment) and given that the original Made in Wario was the ultimate "short commute" game, I don’t envisage seeing many people playing this game in the same manner. You will be moving, turning your head with the screen and generally
looking quite odd… although adding confused onlookers may add even more appeal to the games strange nature.

With the remote possibility that this game may not get a US / European release, it’s worth pointing out to potential importers that the game can be played with little japanese knowledge. Although the one phrase description of what you need to do in the game is helpful, the goals of the mini-games are usually relatively straightforward. Some Japanese word-based games make an appearance, which will cause issues, but fortunately these are scarce and there is no compulsory level, like the Japanese RPG boss level in the original game, that will halt your progress.

All in all, Mawaru Made In Wario is definitely worth checking out, especially for fans of the original and for those who like something a bit different.

Katamari Damacy can be literally translated as "Clumpsoul", though, like the Japanese title, that doesn’t mean a lot unless you immerse yourself in the game. Some ackground is therefore required before the review commences.

The King of the Great Cosmo had a little bit too much to drink one night, and in his stupor lashed out at the cosmos, destroying all the stars in one fell swoop. Waking up with a terrible hangover, he realises what he has done and asks his son, the Prince, to clean up the mess. How? By collecting a load of junk from Earth, rolling it into clumps, and sending it up into the Cosmos to make stars, of course! Enter the Prince, a tiny green guy, standing only 1cm tall, with a
hammerhead to maintain balance.

If Katamari Damacy is anything to go by, making stars is not only easy, it’s incredibly fun. The game can essentially be played with the twin analog sticks alone, with control typically seen in mech and tank simulators: move both sticks in the same direction to push the clump that way, or push one stick forwards and the other one back to move the Prince around the clump. You can also get a speed boost by flicking both sticks up and down alternately, which can be rather
tricky to pull off but it’s invaluable for getting up hills quickly. There are, in addition, a couple of functions on the shoulder buttons: one allowing you to view the world from a bird’s eye view and the other allowing you to perform a quick U-turn.

After a brief introduction to the controls, you’re thrown in at the deep end. Starting with a clump no bigger than the Prince himself, you must roll around the deepest crevices of a house, picking up tiny things like drawing pins, moving up to Shogi tiles and batteries. Each stage has a target size and a time limit within which you must expand your clump to the minimum size. You can keep going beyond the target if you have time, giving the game some replayability from a high score perspective. Each successive stage sees the clump starting small but having to reach a bigger size than the previous stage, enabling you to light the dark night skies with bigger and brighter stars.

The progression in size is handled very well by Namco’s engine. As your clump gets bigger, it becomes harder to control, and starts to block your view a bit, but when you reach certain intervals, the whole environment scales up a little, allowing you to see more clearly, as well as elimininating some of the smaller objects which no longer have a noticeable effect on the size of the clump. Later in the game, this gives you an incredible sense of scale as you grow from 50cm
to 100m or more, picking up giant octopi and huge monsters, not too dissimilar to Godzilla. Get even bigger and you start to pick up whole towns and islands, something quite unfathomable when you first start rolling around the dank corners of a cellar at the start of the game.

The graphics are bright and colourful, simplistic yet sharp. Textures are avoided in favour of increasing the number of objects on screen. As such, the appeal relies heavily on quantity rather than quality with every manner of items being presented to you in your attempts to create stars - animals, food, game systems, vehicles, buildings. The game even has a complete library of everything you have ever picked up, categorised by type, size and name. Due consideration should also be given to people - your primary enemy, and also your main source
of clump fodder in later levels.

The living inhabitants of this earth are much the same as ours. They vary from small, squeaking mice, to huge, rotund sumo wrestlers. What they all have in common is the ability to thwart your growing progress. An alarm in the corner of the screen will warn you when any of these predators are in your vicinity - get too close and they will hit you, propelling you in their direction and knocking some of the items off your clump. If you have a hard impact, you’ll lose even more of your mass. But revenge is sweet. Grow big enough and you’ll be able to consume these enemies as part of your efforts to bring light back to the galaxy.

Audio is diverse and pleasing. Plenty of genres of music are catered for, all spinning their own take on the Katamari theme. A few big name Japanese vocals have been enlisted to add words to the melodies and the end result is most agreeable. The central theme is simple, memorable and transcends language boundaries. It may well end up being stuck in your head for days! For people who fell in love with the Vib Ribbon soundtrack, I personally recommend "Lonely
Rolling Star", brought to life by the chirpy vocals of Saki Kabata. Other takes on the Katamari theme include Rock, Classical and Mambo, amongst others.

Presentation is typical of Namco - slick, innovative and extremely well
polished. Even from the start screen, everything is handled with the twin stick configuration. Select a file by pushing both the sticks left or right, then push both sticks forward to roll your clump towards the file, taking a chunk of the Namco logo with you. The game is broken up by bizarre animated sequences telling the story of a star-loving family going to meet their astronaut father at the rocket launch station. The sequences are short but sweet, and strangely entertaining. In game presentation doesn’t disappoint either, with a
well-designed HUD showing all the information you need, as well as a pause screen that shows you extraneous information that you didn’t need, but which is still interesting nonetheless, such as, "Your clump is now 10,354 times the size of a watermelon".

Katamari Damacy can be played through quite quickly if the bonus stages and other extras are ignored, which will suit players without much time. However, it does have extra longevity for people who demand value for money. There are nine stages in the main storyline, with an extra seven stages to add constellations to the sky. The constellation stages offer variations on the gameplay, including a stage in which you must increase the size of the clump to a certain target, but you must guess when you reach that target by yourself, rather than being told your size, giving the game a "Price is Right" flavour. Not forgetting the potential replayability of high score attempts.

For skilled gamers, though, the game may seem rather easy. There are only a couple of stages where you may feel challenged at first, and once everything has been unlocked, there may be some feeling of dissatisfaction. If you’re the type of player who enjoys high score challenges, you may be somewhat appeased, but the majority may tire of the game quickly once completed. Of course, if you’re looking at this year’s release schedule, wondering how you’re going to fit
everything in, games of this length will be right up your alley, but pennywise gamers who like a long, drawn out game may want to think twice, in spite of the fun factor.

There is a two player mode included, for those who have the friends and the inclination to try it. It’s rather unspectacular, but may be of interest when all else is complete. The two of you face off in a bowl-shaped arena, three minutes to play, and the biggest clump wins. The screen is split vertically, and as the clump sizes increase, the arena expands with new, larger items to pick up. Of course, if one of the players gets enough of a lead, they can roll over the other player and add them to the clump, in which case the screens join and
the victim must wiggle the control sticks frantically to break free. After a few plays, it becomes clear how limited this mode is, however. Only the items change from arena to arena, and the only real deciding factor here is who can control their clump more efficiently - all the items are laid out in rings, enabling an adept driver to roll up items in next to no time. Certainly a welcome addition, the two player mode could have been so much more if Namco had put more effort
into it. But don’t let that deter from the single player effort.

For eager importers, Katamari Damacy will not provide too many language
problems. The story may be unfathomable, but everything else should be within the realms of trial and error. A European release can’t be ruled out, but a US release seems very unlikely. It’s likely to become hot property when word spreads of its goodness, so I recommend a quick purchase if you’re teetering on the brink of buying it. You won’t be disappointed!
 

The latest Capcom release, Monster Hunter, seems to have landed the company with a surprise hit. Selling circa 120,000 copies in its opening weekend, it surprisingly trumped MGS:TTS, Ninja Gaiden and Jak 2 in a hot week for new releases.

The game follows the rise of your character as a village "Monster Hunter". Starting out with no hunting skills whatsoever, you are taken through the basics required to become a practitioner of your trade, such as fishing, chopping up dead prey for meat, and cooking. Soon after the initiation levels, you are killing packs of velociraptor-esque monsters, and running from massive Wyverns - sometimes with one of its eggs in your arms.

Monster Hunter is set in a strange fantasy environment. By and large, the enemies resemble dinosaurs, with later enemies having a more mythological bent. The environments within the game ooze atmosphere. From the rolling grass plains littered with large dinosaur families, evoking memories of the first Jurassic Park, to the dark and dank jungle marshlands, everything is finely crafted. The frame rate is rock solid even with a large number of enemies on screen and the
camera for the most part is well positioned. And whilst the nvironments are fairly big, moving from one area to the next does not incur a restrictive load time - unlike stablemate, RE:Outbreak. The monsters and the hunters themselves are all interesting and are well modelled, with good animation and plenty of character.

Adding to the ambience are the background noises and the notable lack of an in-game sound track. Noises are a giveaway of incoming enemies and music is used sparsely, limited to accompanying events such as the appearance of one of the larger monsters or the completion of a quest. What music there is fits in well with the game, and the lack of music in the field, with a focus on ambient noises, only serves to increase immersion.

Create a character
Before starting the game, you must create your hunter. Creation of your hunter is a little limited. You are restricted to creating a human hunter, male or female, choosing face, hair style, skin tone and voice, with hair colour being the only totally configurable attribute. The ability to change proportion and build, found in PSO, is not available, meaning more outlandish looking characters aren’t going to be catered for. Once created, it is a simple choice of playing online or offline. Offline and online progress are one and the same, with items, cash, and equipment all carried over. Disappointingly, there is no multiplayer offline play, so for multiplayer you must play online.

Game flow
In the offline game, the main hub of the game is a small village with the usual equipment stores, item stores, a home base and quest pick-up point. This works in much the same way as the ship in PSO. Each set of quests that is available is further broken down into sub quests, all of which must be cleared (along with a
final mandatory event quest) to open up the next set of quests. Each quest is replayable so there are plenty of opportunities to collect more cash and items.

For each quest, you are given a time limit and an objective. Whilst most of the objectives are fairly standard (Collect 10 mushrooms, kill 10 animals), the fulfillment of the quests (beyond the first set of quests) becomes increasingly difficult with various enemies out to do their best to make life difficult. In both online and offline modes, the longest quest time we have witnessed has been 50 minutes. This may well change, but this further iterates the fact that this is more of a pick-up-and-play flavour of multiplayer action, rather than having
to devote hours committed to partying in games like FFXI. In reality, the quests tend to be completed within half the time limit.

Once a quest is started, you are transported to the actual game area, starting off at your base camp. This is a small tented area, complete with a bed for free recovery and an item box containing a map and other useful items for the quest. From this point, you must venture out into the adventure area to complete your quest. For collection type quests, you have to return to the base camp with the
objects and place them in the "send box" in order to complete the mission, where as "find and kill" missions end a minute after you kill the final monster that you need to dispose of.

As a hunter, you have to keep an eye on two attributes. Your health is obviously the number one concern, this will be depleted when attacked. However, our hunter seems to be impervious to damage from dropping from great heights. Running out of health does not result in death, you are collected up into a wheel barrow by a couple of cat like creatures and unceremoniously dumped back at your home
base. An amount of cash is deducted from your possible winnings for the quest and if this results in your winnings coffer turning to zero, or if you go over your allotted time, the quest is over.

The second attribute of note is your stamina. Each action will deplete a little bit of stamina, which will in turn replenish itself when you aren’t active. However, if you continually run everywhere, your overall available stamina will drop, meaning you cannot recover as much stamina and (ultimately) limiting what you can do. The management of stamina becomes important when coupled with the fact that, although you are the hunter, quite often you will become the hunted,
and if you are low on stamina, you may well become a Wyverns dinner if you aren’t able to run far enough away.

Combat
A hunter must also take good care of his weapon - constantly slamming a blade against tough dinosaur skin results in damage to the weapon. Luckily, you can sharpen the damaged blade. Each weapon inflicts different damage depending on its status, and each weapon has a different level of durability. Ranged weapons do not have this maintenance overhead, but they also deal significantly less damage than the melee weapons.

Obviously, combat plays a large part in the game and this is handled,
interestingly, on the right analogue stick. With a melee weapon in hand, moving left and right will swing your weapon, with down and up activating the more heavy-handed attacks. With a ranged weapon such as the Gunbow, left and right movement handles targeting, whilst pushing the stick down will reload when your bullets run out. Shooting is achieved by pushing the right stick inwards. This is somewhat cumbersome and isn’t entirely ideal. In all, the combat control method isn’t perfect, but neither is it hard to get used to. In fact, the way it is configured it makes panicky situations a bit more stressful than they would normally be and this, perversely, adds to the game.

The ranged weapons also have a first person shooting mode, which works very well indeed. The only down side is that you are obviously blind to what is going on around you, but with the addition of the sniper scope this mode become
increasingly more valuable for picking out distant enemies.

Fear and roasting

The game, whilst simple, makes maximum use of two elements: fear and environment. Environment plays a big factor in combat: with the open, wider planes it is quite easy to take out raptors from distance, but facing the same enemies in a tighter more confined jungle area with limited visibility due to trees and foliage becomes a whole different prospect. Each area on the map starts to take on its own characteristics, and you come to realise that it’s often better to run. Added to this is a healthy smattering of large, monstrously tough beasts such as the Wyvern. In single player these represent a very
probable quick death. This means that you are constantly listening and looking for these beasts. Larger animals will roam all over the game map from area to area, and unlike PSO, large enemies do not stay locked in a certain area. Fortunately, you can tag enemies with paintballs, which makes them visible on the map for a period of time and this at least gives you some idea as to which areas are off limits.

Mixed with the fear factor is more than a smattering of humour. A special note must be made about the cooking aspect - which is handled in an amusing manner. If your hunter purchases a roasting kit, you can spit roast whatever meat you happen to collect from dinosaurs. Using the roasting kit sees your hunter pull out a seat, sit down and turn the roast, to a comedy cooking tune. A second or
so after the music stops, you have to take the meat off the roast. The success of your cooking attempt is dependent on your timing of taking the meat of the roast. Take it off too soon, and it’s half done. Take it off too late, and it’s ruined. Whilst not crucial to the game, the tune alone will stick in your head for some time to come.

Networking
Whilst the offline game is more than competent, it’s the online implementation which is interesting a lot of players. Getting into the online game itself is somewhat cumbersome - after the lengthy sign-up process you select a server, then a city (A thru H) on each server, and finally a zone within that city. Each zone is limited to 8 players. Unfortunately, if you wish to play with 3 other friends, everyone has to be on the same server, in the same city, and in the
same zone. Once online, the game works in much the same way as the offline version. Players accept a quest, this then appears on the quest notice board for that particular area. Other players in the area can then choose to join your quest. Players wishing to restrict their quest to a group of people can password protect their quests so only friends can join. Quests are segregated based on rank. Rank appears to be an online only concept akin to experience. For each quest completed you will receive a certain amount of rank points, with ranking up occurring at a pre-defined number of rank points. This, in turn, opens up higher ranking quests. To all extent and purposes, though, so far the quests have been the same as their offline equivalent.

Communication is handled via a keyboard - either the software-based keyboard, or a USB keyboard. This has a couple of issues. Firstly, the first character that you type does not appear, this simply activates the keyboard. Secondly, typing in English requires the same few keystrokes or button presses each time you wish to type something. While not a massive issue, this is an unnecessary annoyance.
Importers should also be aware that the game does not feature an English language option for quest descriptions.

The online play itself is very smooth indeed with the action remaining identical in quality to the offline version, with very little lag to speak of. The short quests make for excellent bitesize multiplayer gaming, with some (especially the quest to steal a Wyvern egg) requiring some coordinated multiplayer cooperation. However, whilst fun on the whole, there are a couple of low level quests that will seem impossibly hard: A showdown with oversized bird creature quot;Yancucku"
causes headaches and frustration. Even with a full party pounding the beast with all they’ve got, the creature does not fall easily. To add to this, when on the verge of death, large beasts will flee and recuperate elsewhere on the map, leaving the team with extra work to do to defeat the monster.

Further frustration comes in the form of egg stealing or crystal collecting quests. Whilst the premise is good (one person carries the object whilst the others attempt to protect the carrier), it can become quite frustrating. Just one single hit against the carrier will mean the item is dropped. And once the item is dropped it is lost, meaning the party has to backpedal and repeat the process all over again. Despite the difficulty and frustration, the online game looks set to be the popular facet of the game. Perhaps an indicator that this is
indeed a surprise hit for Capcom is in the capacity and load on the servers on the second night of play. All the servers were full to capacity, with surplus players waiting patiently for an empty slot in the game areas to open.

Whilst certainly not free of issues, Monster Hunter is equal measures
out-and-out fun and out-and-out terror, delivered fantastically well in both online and offline modes. The game provides a PSO-style game for the PS2, and offering pick-up-and-play online gaming without the need to commit to hours at a time, this game certainly has the possibility of pulling in a whole new section of online gamer. I get the feeling that this isn’t the last we’ll see of the Monster Hunter line.

Now, if only i can get the damn cooking tune out of my head…. "jouzu ni yakemashita!"

Scientist: DCharlie

Before any gaming took part, the GameScience crew hit Kutaragi’s keynote speech. This hour long presentation started with a five minute video of third-party PS3 titles and ended with a three minute video of Afrika, PS3’s intriguing safari simulation. What happened between those videos can only be described as drab, uneventful and “what?”. Kutaragi spoke for around 50 minutes about PCs, online maps, finding the cure for Alzheimer’s disease, and how the network is not yet strong enough to support streaming of High Definition movies and games. Things were tied loosely to the PS3, but the only real PS3-related news we heard was the announcement of Sony’s plan to distribute some Mega Drive games online, for a few hundred yen each. Most noticeably, there were no concrete details announced for either their online plan, or the backwards compatibility of the console, however emulation was mentioned in passing for the latter.

Onto the exhibition floor to try out some games. First up was Resistance on the PlayStation 3. There were two rooms for this, one for the single player campaign and one for the multiplayer game. The demo was in rooms because of the “C” rating it is scheduled to receive from CERO - “C” means only people 15 years and above may play the game. I joined the queue for the multiplayer room and after a decent wait, and a ten minute tutorial movie, we got to play. There are two sides - human and alien. Alien have special abilities to run quickly and see through walls, while humans have the ability to crouch and see aliens on the map. These abilities can be used for a limited time by holding down the left trigger. The demo had plenty of weapons, and each weapon seems to have a couple of alternate attacks as well as the regular shot. It was a little too deep to fully understand during such a short demo, but it looks to have a lot of potential.

The multiplayer game we played involved capturing as many “pod bases” as possible to increase the team’s territory. There were a couple of problems with the ruleset that made it frustrating. First off, the pod bases take a long time to destroy, much too long for a game of this pacing. Second, even when you’ve taken a pod base, you still spawn from the same main base, so you have to trek all the way across the map to defend your pod base. The graphics were clean and well-defined, but the colour palette used is quite minimal and didn’t excite me too much. Framerate was largely stable and the game runs at a good speed, but for my first exposure to PS3, it was a little underwhelming.

One thing that was strongly apparent is the lack of vibration in the controller hurts FPS games pretty badly. You don’t notice you’re under fire as quickly with on-screen warnings as you do with vibration, but perhaps they can improve the on-screen reaction so that it’s more obvious. With the strong competition in this genre, I may give this title a miss. After that we spent some time walking around the PS3 booths together. A lot of the playable demos seemed to have some framerate issues, with games like Lair, Motorstorm and Sonic the Hedgehog looking a little bumpy in places. There was plenty of interest in the machine, though, and the news of the PS3 price cut gave things a slightly rosier tint.

Next up, we split and I headed off to the 360 booth to try out Blue Dragon. There was a 90 minute wait, but that wasn’t going to put me off. For some unknown reason, the demo machines for this were also kept in a walled-off room. Unlike Resistance, there isn’t a high CERO rating or anything. Perhaps it’s related to the problems that happened later on. The game plays like a cross between Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. The character design is, of course, not a million miles away from Dragon Quest, thanks to Toriyama’s design. Each of your four characters has a job, defined by their dragon, and you can switch between these jobs at any time through the menu. Each job also has a job level, similar to the DS remake of Final Fantasy III. Jobs included standard fare like Warrior, Monk, White Mage and Black Mage, as well as more obscure jobs like Assassin.

For the purpose of the demo, there were two save files - a field area, where you could run around freely, and an event area, where you could see the story develop. I chose the latter, which puts you up against a couple of regular enemies before a boss. Being overpowered made the boss a joke, but it allowed me to see the range of attacks available. In this aspect, everything was very DQ-like, with mages having similar magic to choose from, and attackers having multiple special attacks too. Turns are displayed in a similar way to Final Fantasy X, so you can see which of your characters will have a turn before the enemy attacks. While selecting commands, a camera follows your character’s face in the top left of the screen. It wasn’t clear in the demo whether this serves any purpose other than just looking cool. After dealing with the boss, some story is played out with cutscenes then there is a minigame involving a dogfight in a small rocket against an evil professor. It was here the game crashed, although the minigame seemed quite solid and easy to control. Other people seemed to have problems with this part too, but the people playing the field area were unaffected.

The game looks beautiful, and the claymation-like lighting seems natural for Toriyama’s designs. The controls also felt solid, and it appears the system has plenty of depth for RPG fans. I’ll be picking it up in December. Walking around the 360 booth revealed quite a surprising number of Japanese titles, including the beautiful looking Trusty Bell. I didn’t stop to play, but the shading effects used on the characters was really eye-catching, and this looks to be a another RPG to look forward to. There’s still no release date known, unfortunately, but I’ll be following the game’s progress. Lost Odyssey was apparently playable earlier in the day, but I couldn’t find any demo booth when I got to the 360 area.

Later in the afternoon, I headed over to Bandai Namco and gave Ridge Racer 7 a try. The screens were adorned with stickers saying 1080p and 60 frames per second. In terms of resolution, though, I couldn’t really see a big improvement over the 720p output of Ridge Racer 6. The game setup was a four player race, on one of the new tracks that has got some heavy rotation on websites in the past couple of week, the foresty area with a big Buddha-like statue.

Before the race, I chose my machine from a selection of cars divided into three drift types: standard, mild and dynamic. Nothing new here. The race then began and the handling is basically exactly the same as Ridge Racer 6. Turbo start was possible by keeping revs high as the countdown hit zero, drift handling is the same, and charging nitrous at higher speeds after using a nitrous (ultimate charge) is the same too. Unfortunately, due to my competitive spirit, I was in front the whole time and couldn’t test the new slipstream system, but it seemed to have quite a big effect when I was watching other people play it. The graphical effect for nitrous is severely toned down now, perhaps to make the difference between the two camera views less apparent, since external view doesn’t have any nitrous effect on-screen. The new track was quite lovely - there is a section going through a tunnel and the floor is wet and casts a nice reflection. It’s just a nicely designed course, really. There’s a lot of interesting environment, but I couldn’t really check it out while driving, it’s more for the spectators.

The customisation aspect of the game has been talked about a lot in the press, but that aspect was nowhere to be seen in the demo. I am a big fan of the Ridge Racer series, but after the recent release of Ridge Racers 2 on the PSP, where two thirds of the content was just recycled from Ridge Racers, I can’t help but feel that Namco may be doing the same thing with this, as we’ve only seen two new tracks. I’m going to be cautious about this game and listen to what people who try it out have to say. If there’s a substantial amount of new content, I’ll pick it up, of course.

Also at Bandai Namco’s stand was the PSP remake of Gunpey, Gunpey-R and its DS cousin, Connect the sounds: Gunpey Rebirth. I played the PSP version to check out some of the new music that Q Entertainment have selected for their new product. The setup of the game is quite similar to Lumines, with skins unlocking as you play through the game, each skin featuring a graphical flavour and new song. There are a number of other modes too, suited to different styles of play and different lengths of playtime.

One eye-catching mode was “Twin Skin mode”, where you can switch between different skins on the fly, like a DJ mixing two records. The Gunpey rules seemed the same as ever, and the music I heard was similar in range to Lumines. This should make a great portable title, and I’ll be picking it up when it comes out later this year. Sadly, Q Entertainment’s other PSP title, Lumines II, was nowhere to be found, and neither was the Xbox Live Arcade release of Lumines, Lumines Live! Hopefully they will both be released in a timely matter too.

That pretty much covers the games I played, though plenty of other titles caught my eye. Overall, the event was a little disappointing - Nintendo’s absence is felt quite strongly, considering the current DS domination of the Japanese industry and the recent unveiling of Wii information. The PlayStation 3 was finally playable, and a little underwhelming, if only because it doesn’t show a huge improvement over the 360 which was shown here last year. And Microsoft made a decent effort, but failed to make their most desirable games playable to the maximum number of people. Considering there are really only two or three games which can make or break their position in Japan, they should have really pulled the stops out a little more. Companies are also getting ridiculously stingy with their giveaways, perhaps a sign of the financial state the industry has been in recently. It’s a bit of a shame for TGS to bow out like this, but hopefully their will be a successor announced soon.

At the start of the day, Ken Kutaragi sang us a sweet one hour lullaby littered with vague hints of what could be achieved on an unspecified network including a confused look at downloading , uploading of data, then utilization of this data in games - the basic theme was the potential of the network , confusingly not specifically Sony’s forthcoming PS3 network, just any network. With no details on the PS3 network, and scant information on games outside of the open trailer of old footage from RR7, VF5, FFXII, and Gundam and the grand finale of nice-looking-yet-scant-on-gameplay-info Afrika. The keynote certainly wasn’t what i was expecting following last year’s Nintendo and MS conferences, as it transpires it sounds like the real big details from Sony - the 10,000 yen core pack price drop (the open price unit remains open price) and the inclusion of HDMI as standard were left to the Press Q+A session afterwards. Both these moves are excellent news - with the HDMI change being across all regions but unfortunately the price cut is Japan-specific - but details still remain to be seen. With the PSP core pack we saw extremely limited numbers over the first year making the 19,800 yen price point of the PSP only so on paper. Hopefully Sony are not going to repeat this and the actual launch numbers of the core pack will be significant. From a business perspective, it’s somewhat perplexing why the PS3 (which is pretty much a dead cert to sell out regardless in Japan) needs a price cut at this point.

Kutaragi had mentioned that there were some 200 final PS3 units on the floor and we should definitely go and check out what they were running, and of course that’s where the PS3 had it’s chance to shine. In reality, it was a mixed bag.

On the plus side, the Ridge Racer 7 demo was glorious. Boasting the usual slick Namco presentation and running at 1080p at 60fps, this really was the real deal. The course in question was based around a rustic asian village surrounded by waterfalls, with race ways cut into the side of a mountain, through tunnels, and back through the farm land - it really is quite the spectacle. What seemed to differ from the X360 Ridge title RR6 was the way the race transpired - rather than picking off the odd racer or two, the final lap was spent in a cluster of 8 racers all vying for first place. A great title and certain to be one of the launch stars. Questions still remain over the rest of the game: does the game consist of new made-for-PS3 tracks? Or are we going to see the X360 tracks recycled plus a handful of new tracks? If it’s the former, this is a definite launch purchase, if it’s the later, then i’m not so sure. For non-X360 owners though , this should be the first game on your PS3 shopping list.

Being a sucker for FPSs, Resistance single player looked to be another great addition to the launch line-up - graphically fantastic with an interesting washed out tinge, I’m interested (as a UK’er) to see how the locations pan out. The game looks like a more dynamic and much more polished Call Of Duty, with particles and debris being kicked up around the screen and some fantastic texture work. Although not offering anything ground breaking in terms of gameplay, what it did, it did extremely well and was an instant addition to the list of games to pick up at launch.

Capcom’s booths, which deserve a special mention for their excellent ‘themed approach’: a court room for Gyakuten Saiban, the inn for Monster Hunter, etc. was home to the quite beautiful DMC4. Regardless of claims of 100 fps - the frame rate was certainly high and locked in, this game is beautiful because of the art work. Capcom have truly mastered all the current batch of machines, and the PS3 looks like being no exception. Unfortunately with the queue to play DMC4 being over 1 hour 30 long, I didn’t get to try this out myself, but the signs are extremely good for this game.

Over at the Sega booth, both VF5 and Virtua Tennis looked great (with VT being another 1080p/60fps game). Both games look to be solid conversions (which given the difference in power between Lindberg and PS3 is to be expected). Both these games are excellent additions to the PS3 library. VF5 still commands the arcade 3D fighting realm and Virtua Tennis is a solid and enjoyable tennis series. Hopefully, both these titles will follow the previous home conversions route and an abundance of extras will be added.

Unfortunately, the PS3’s TGS debut had its fair share of issues. Whilst waiting in line to play Ridge, each of the four machines in that particular section of the Namco booth suffered fatal crashes. Whether this is a code issue or a hardware issue is unknown. I’d hoped to get a view of the new splash screen on reboot , but unfortunately there was nothing in place beyond a black screen which then took us into the main dash then quickly into loading the game.

And as it became very apparent, it isn’t all sunshine on the gaming front either. Lair, from graphical powerhouse Factor 5, had a number of issues. A juddering and unstable frame rate which occassionally would hit 30fps and issues with vsync took the shine off what is otherwise a good looking game. The gameplay isn’t quite there at the moment, and the ground attack portions consisted of huge armies who were a little too static to provide any real insight into how this section will pan out.

Lair, however, wasn’t the only game having some technical difficulties - surprisingly GTHD was also having issues with the mountain side course displaying an unusual amount of screen tearing and the same sort of vsync issues as seen in Lair. What is more perplexing is what is going on with the GT series - a brief slide in Kutaragi’s keynote mentions that GT4:part one is GT4 but ’several steps closer to heaven’ and whilst this will no doubt end up being a very good looking game, it’s not clear what the purpose of GTHD is - is this a stop gap release? Or is it the basis for the future of GT? With further disturbing news prior to the event concerning microtransaction details, the worry is that this is a leap in the wrong direction.

Coded Arms Assault was having the worst technical issues with the game pretty much unplayable at a flicker book frame rate level, which is a shame as the game had some quite excellent texture work, albeit perhaps a little too reminiscent of PDO. AI was sadly lacking, and with no aim assistance the game was quite difficult to get to grips with.

Motorstorm was also guilty of some astonishingly apparent technical issues. Late in the day it was reported that these issues were down to a bad build and that the issue is to be resolved for Saturday (with no details if this is the same demo or an older demo). However, in its state on Friday, it was again worrying. The frame rate fluctuated wildly but never seemed to get to 30fps, some crashes were taking several seconds to execute, and it was difficult to enjoy the game in this state. If I recall correctly, Motorstorm had this self same issue at E3 and I’m somewhat perplexed about how this could happen again.

Outside of these games, details still remain a little scant on a few items: backwards compatibility and Bluray playback were not demonstrated at all - although no issues are expected with either of these, it would have been nice to see if BC had some sort of advanced features as sported by the PS2. PS3 download of PS1 games then upload to PSP suffered hard crashes resulting in the 3 machines running this function being turned off. The network running behind the scenes still remains a mystery, as does the charging structure (’free basic online’ still remains confusing with Konami announcing at TGS that PS3 Mahjong Fight Club will carry a monthly charge to play).

All in all, i’m not sure that the PS3 had a particularly great TGS debut, the good and bad just about balanced out - if you weren’t expecting great things of some of the titles , as I admittedly wasn’t, then there was more than enough to get excited about for launch. What is somewhat annoying is that, again, we are coming out of TGS unclear about a number of PS3 related issues - just as we were two years ago with the PSP. Perhaps this is just a fact of life with Sony launches? Regardless, if more games can hit the highs that we saw then PlayStation fans and gamers alike (especially 1080p TV owning players) have interesting times ahead.

The typical flow of a mission is weapon preparation -> intro movie -> phase one -> movie -> phase two -> movie -> debriefing and results. Some of the missions feature more than two phases and can go on for quite some time. Each phase has a number of primary objectives, specified when the phase starts, and a number of secondary objectives, which are not directly specified. Primary objectives have a number of forms, such as destroy all enemies, stop incoming attacks, or escort friendly fleets. Secondary objectives are more varied still and you have to find them for yourself, usually through hints in the radio communications, or through intuition, which improves as you get used to the game system. If you die in a later phase of the mission, you can restart from the beginning of that phase, but you will lose your secondary objective accomplishments from the first phase, unfortunately. On easy settings, dieing is often the result of colliding with a large ship, or being destroyed by a battleship’s heavy-duty laser beams. Death rarely comes from dog fights unless you play on normal or hard difficulty. This is great for people who aren’t used to the genre, but players looking for more of a challenge should perhaps avoid this level.

become a lot more frantic and the screen is filled with swarms of small ships and fleets of destroyers, battleships and carriers. To cope with this, you need vastly superior weapons and these are provided with the weapon development system. Using points awarded at debriefing time, new weapons can be developed in a number of categories, including lasers, guns, missiles, bombs and a few others. Also, because the difficulty ramps up so heavily at various points, extra weapons are opened automatically at key points in the game. After developing weapons, they can be fitted to your craft, in one of four places. Each weapon has a specific place it must be equipped at, so there is some tactical aspect here. There is always one nose gun and three main weapons - one situated under the wings in pair formation, another pair at the rear of the ship and a third single weapon underneath the cockpit, behind the nose gun. The weapons all have wildly different graphics, resulting in some interesting ship designs, even though the base ship remains constant throughout the game.

The graphics are rather underwhelming at first, with the first couple of missions feeling rather empty, but as things start to kick into gear with the number of ships increasing, the graphics really start to take on a next-gen appearance. Small ships leave jet trails and flares, missiles leave smoke trails, and battleships give off huge explosions, sending rings of debris across the battlezone. The game maintains a good framerate for the most part (30fps), but there is some odd jumping occasionally which may be caused by a bug rather than a regular drop in framerate. There are also some nice camera effects when using overdrive to reach high speeds, and then dropping back down to regular speeds again - the view distorts smoothly to give an impression of quick speed changes. There are some nice realtime cutscenes during the missions, and some CG cutscenes before and after the missions too. The CG is noticeably lower resolution than the in-game cutscenes, however, with the 360 upscaling to 720p if you’re playing on a high resolution displays. On the flipside of this, the in-game text is actually very hard to read on low resolution displays, so things are kind of a mish mash, from a resolution perspective.

Sound is an area where the game really excels. Explosions, communication and other sound effects all happen in crystal clear 5.1 surround. The size of ships is well represented in the sound of the explosion, with megaton cruisers pumping out some really heavy low frequencies. The music is mostly composed by Kenichirou Fukui, Square Enix’s in-house musician behind the music in games like Einhander, Front Mission 5 and the upcoming Final Fantasy XII sequel, Revenant Wings. Fukui describes the work as orchestra-pop-techno but the sound is very cinematic and suits the tone of the game well, with pressure building up in tense areas, followed by much-deserved triumph.

The overall feel of the game is very cinematic, making my original comparison to Ace Combat feel more valid. anima inc. boasts more than one hour of CG animation in the game; rather impressive for a shooter and certainly this contributes to the overall feel of the game. The constant little cutscenes really help the story to blend with the action sequences. The character design, though somewhat generic, is pleasing enough on the eye and the sum of all the parts is a rather positive production. The game lacks Xbox Live support, unfortunately, so online dogfights are something that can only be dreamed about, but the game is quite replayable. With weapons being carried over through repeated plays through the game, scores can be improved upon each successive playthrough and hardcore players can go after those elusive secondary objectives and Gamerscore points through achievements. I cannot say for sure whether fans of the genre will enjoy what is offered here, but there doesn’t seem to be anything obviously objectionable. As a newcomer to the genre, however, I am thoroughly satisfied with the game and would recommend it to others in my position.

Last week I experienced something fairly remarkable, although anecdotal.
Three of my friends and I walked into an EB Games. I wasn’t expecting me or
anyone to buy anything, but I was shocked when my three friends each bought a
new DS Lite; two of them bought jet black and one of them bought noble pink.

And like the gaming dorks we were, they opened theirs up while I took my
Japanese white one out, and we had a few Mario Kart DS races on download play in
the middle of the mall. This is just one example I’ve experienced with gaming
among college students at or near college.


Even life in college can’t completely deter gamers from enjoying handheld games.
In high school, they might’ve gotten their systems confiscated, but obviously
colleges don’t have rules like that. During those long breaks between classes,
people will pass the time with their laptops, iPods or other music players,
cellphones and handheld game systems. While it’s rare to see anything older than
a Game Boy Advance SP in a student’s hands anymore, it’s common to see at least
seven handheld game systems a day at any given college or university. Often
students will play them while waiting for class to begin, or while sitting on a
bench passing time by. Shockingly, people may play them in class as well!

With the release of the DS Lite back in June, it appears that the system really
appeals to college students, with its slick and appealing aesthetics, and small
weight that won’t make that backpack full of notebooks any bulkier than it
already is. The PSP as well is a popular entertainment item, for both games and
movies, but its music capabilities have clearly been neglected in favor of the
iPod.

The DS’s emphasis on quick-burst gaming makes it favorable for those ten minute
waiting periods before class begins. Gamers can jump into one level of New Super
Mario Brothers and finish it before the break is over. At least two races can be
done via download play in Mario Kart DS, and I’ve managed to earn 10,000 bells
in Animal Crossing: Wild World in a five minute span before class begins,
despite that game’s longer than average save times. And several times have I
seen people play their DS and PSP during class, with either the teacher not
caring or not noticing.

Surprisingly, I’ve seen a student in my Kanji class use a copy of Nintendo’s
Kanji Sonomama: DS Rakubiki Jiten software, which is a dictionary that allows
for quick search of Chinese characters used in the Japanese language. My teacher
expressed interest in the software, shocked that it was a Nintendo-made
software, saying “this [dictionary] is pretty good!” in Japanese.

It also isn’t uncommon to find game systems in dorm rooms. The PlayStation 2
dominates most dorm rooms, as both a DVD player and games system. Often students
will host Super Smash Bros. Melee or Halo 2 parties on weekends to get away from
the stress of work.

In many ways, the prevalence of gaming on campus is remarkable. Tuitions have
gotten more expensive over the last five years and textbook publishers try their
hardest to shut out the used textbook market; often the price difference between
a new and used textbook is the price of a handheld or discounted game! Any
college student will understand the complaints of transportation costs, housing
costs, cellphone bills and other fees students bend their backs over to pay
every fall and spring.

Handheld gaming hasn’t gotten cheaper either; the DS and PSP are more expensive,
hardware and software-wise, than the Game Boy Advance and earlier, although the
PSP does have a greatest hits line. But students at this university have made
room for gaming, both in time and budget, showing that tight schedules won’t
prevent someone from getting in one session in Lumines or Meteos.