Capcom-Unity Darkstalkers Petition

Following the release of the highly anticipated Street Fighter IV, its sequel Super Street Fighter IV and Tekken 6 the fighting game community has exploded with new recruits. Due to this high volume of new challengers, Capcom and Namco/Bandai have dropped their ears to the ground in order to listen to the waxing community. So far this explosion of fan support has bestowed upon us Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and the mind boggling fighting game titan crossover Street Fighter x Tekken/Tekken x Street Fighter, but there could be more!

In an interview with Eurogamer, Yoshinori Ono (of SFIV fame) said his boss Kenji Inafune would consider reviving the Darkstalkers franchise if 1 MILLION people signed a petition on the Capcom-Unity forums. So far a little over 5000 have signed which is only a grain in the Darkstalkers hourglass.

If you're a nostalgic fan of Vampire Savoir games of yesteryear or if you love the amazingly creative character designs Nick commands you to sign this petition! Sure Capcom has its hands full with a shopping list of upcoming games but as a member of the fighting game community or not, do your part to keep Capcom busy! SIGN THIS PETITION! Not only will you be a part of making a lot of people (the writer of this blog included) extremely happy, you will be given a warm welcome into a community of awesome people who will strive to help expand your fighting game potential!

(Bring back Darkstalkers petition on the Capcom-Unity forums, requires signup and login)

E3 2010 Commentary Part 1: Microsoft

Although extremely late, the following and its subsequent sequels discuss the presentations of some of the larger video game publishers at this year's E3 conference, with a healthy dose of Nickhateseverything commentary.

Microsoft's press conference can essentially be summed up by two concepts: 1) Motion sensor, revealed to be the "Kinect" and 2) Expanded Xbox Live features. For sports, movie and television fans unaware of the plethora of link hub sites on the internet, Live subscribers will have access to live sports game feeds via an ESPN addition and movies/television through Zune. In an attempt to transform the Xbox from a simple gaming computer, Microsoft seems to want their console to become a one stop entertainment behemoth. The only thing separating these services from say a cable provider is the enhanced voice controls made available through the Kinect. Microsoft spent a good portion of their press conference flexing the remarkably smooth voice commands to control replays and to pause or resume whatever piece of entertainment the viewer was watching. For a skeptical consumer such as myself, a couple things struck me as awkward: there were absolutely no glitches or technical snags while operating the Kinect voice commands which is very strange behavior for a piece of unpatched or user untested Microsoft software to exhibit. It's quite possible the effects were simulated for the purposes of the conference, but regardless of user or proximity to the Kinect the ESPN sportscasters and other Microsoft conference presenters were able to flawlessly execute commands. Second, if these voice commands are truly as accurate as the main presentation would lead you to believe the potential to screw with people playing or watching a game/movie/television show is limitless. Imagine watching your home football team in the middle of a pivotal game for their season while a vindictive roommate/significant other is constantly shouting "PAUSE", or "STOP" from the other side of the room triggering the Kinect's voice commands... On the games front, Microsoft developers seemed to use preexisting Wii motion titles as the basis for the first wave of Kinect launch titles. Although the potential for creativity is much more open ended without a controller, only one title seemed to think outside the box and come up with an experience that's truly new, without the use of a controller or some kind of handheld device, however Tetsuya Mizuguchi has no concept of "The Box" to think inside of. Sure Microsoft might be playing more towards the sales end instead of trying to trump Nintendo's creativity card, but it seemed more like lazy development. And for potential naysayers, Microsoft cleverly omitted the fact that the Kinect is not compatible with Xbox units made before a certain date (i.e. the release of the 360 slim), so 360 users interested in investing in this new device will have to buy a brand new Xbox to use it. Nifty, huh?

On the game front Microsoft's new catalogue doesn't look too promising; as I'm still burned out from the endless wave of blatant first person shooter clones, about 80% of the upcoming Xbox exclusive titles almost put me to sleep. Halo is trying to be more like Battlefield which is trying to be more like Gears of War which is trying to be like Halo, continuing the derivative loop of unoriginal concepts in the first person shooter genre. I'll admit, the graphics on these games are looking great even while they're still in development, but graphics never make the game. Gears of War looked like the previous two installments with a bit of graphical polish, Halo looked like they turned gravity to 0 and made new levels, yet neither game showcased anything resembling new or innovative systems to separate these mindless clones from their earlier installments. Luckily for Microsoft, FPS fans seem to have little to no functional brain activity, so only burned out cynical Counter-Strike 1.6 veterans such as myself would make a complaint of that nature. To add to the Microsoft sequel hype, Peter Molyneux appeared to deliver the third chapter in the severely over-hyped, underdeveloped Fable franchise. However this time he seemed to realize how much shit he's full of since he wasn't making any crazy gameplay or development promises during his short speech. Instead even he seemed to concede that Fable III is yet another rehash of what fans of the series have come to expect from the franchise, with no new innovations to make Fable's fanbase feel uncomfortable. Heaven forbid any of these design teams upset their loyal fanbase or make some kind of attempt to create new fans by creating something unique...

To be fair Microsoft is not high on my list of developers to watch out for in the field of video games so my expectations were low going into minute one of their press conference, but the great thing about shows like E3 is the potential to blow the socks off of the entire gaming community with a mere 30 second snipit of some burly armor clad space marine giving a thumbs up to the audience. Microsoft decided to play it safe this year and took the route of "it was successful for these guys [Nintento] in the past, so it'll be successful for us now!" while refilling their designer wallets from their swimming pools of money. As with the movie and comic industry the almighty dollar has once again trumped brainpower and imagination to provide the general public with more brightly colored garbage supported by "BUY ME!!!" ad campaigns. Since the Xbox has significantly stronger graphical potential than the Wii why not design games to utilize this advantage instead of renaming existing games to prevent lawyer rage. If I had been in charge of launch game development for the Kinect (granted this is a HUUUUUGE "if"), I would have created an entire development team to examine the existing Wii motion game catalogue and expand on it based on the limitations of the Wii hardware, target audience and more. Why not prod Capcom to develop a Phoenix Wright game exclusively for the Kinect, where players can object with real shouting, submit evidence and pace the courtroom while interrogating witnesses, and activate lines of questioning with body gestures? Why not develop an RTS style strategy combat game where players can literally control entire armies without the use of a controller? These are just two examples of the limitless untapped potential for motion controls which will probably remain untapped since most game companies aren't willing to take a risk on new franchises or new ideas. Instead gamers will continually be fed endless waves of nearly identical activity game clones with no individuality or lasting appeal. Hopefully Tetsuya Mizuguchi will help the industry move past this standstill, but I have a feeling most gamers will be too scared of Child of Eden's uniqueness to throw off their homogeneous motion game blanket and embrace change.

Red Dead Redemption

New in the line of Rockstar sandbox immersion game experiences, Red Dead Redemption (furthermore abbreviated as "RDR") is a spaghetti western fan's dream. Although it showcases minor variations from its Grand Theft Auto (furthermore abbreviated as "GTA") progenitors, RDR is a much needed departure and first step in creating an all-new formula for future sandbox releases. Overhaul and refinement in much needed areas such as storytelling and period research cleverly overshadow recycled gameplay elements, yet ultimately these small variations create an interesting milieu but fail to separate RDR as a completely distinct gaming experience from earlier Rockstar sandbox games.

The most notable refinement from the GTA series is the severely improved dialogue sequence introduction to missions, transforming generic cliched babble into compelling character development. Although players will encounter various cookie cutter spaghetti western personalities the writing staff for RDR seemed to take painstaking efforts to makes these characters actually sound like they're from 1911, with only a few minor colloquial missteps from time to time. This attention to detail was a much welcomed transition from 100% hard ass gangsters and low-lifes, as characters associated with and encountered by John Marston continually exhibit character evolution and variety. The player's view of the RDR world is much wider than drug dealers, pimps and crime lords. Among the more distinct missions involved assisting a shady traveling tonic salesman. It served as a tutorial for using the Dead Eye mechanic, but swindling those gullible farmers was extremely fun. And unlike previous Rockstar sandbox games, John Marston actually makes an impact and triggers character development in the people he encounters. The only character who doesn't seem to evolve is John Marston himself, however considering his motivation is somewhat one-tracked but mimics infamous gunslinging heroes of legend, film or otherwise. Needles to say, I found myself watching the introductions to missions since the dialogue and writing were so quality, starkly contrasting my frantic efforts to skip the constant Scarface monologues during GTA mission introductions.

Aside from the well researched parlance of the game, the thoroughly researched settings, clothing, weaponry and vehicles pleased my nerdy eye for detail. A common folly which befalls games set in a historic era present a much more lax or negligent approach in creating an accurate representation of the period, more often than not fabricating elements which seem "appropriate" to the era. For nitpickers such as myself, the lazy no research approach can completely ruin a gaming experience, something Rockstar seemed to recognize during development . It's for that very reason the period specificity deserves a notable mention since anything less in terms of research would have completely dissolved the engaging ambiance, resulting in yet another mindless GTA sandbox clone. While in the expansive wilderness of RDR and aided by the minimalist music, you truly feel alone. Excluding randomly spawning NPCs who will generally try to gain your attention, the countryside is a desolate and foreboding expanse of nature. From time to time without paying attention I would find myself exploring a province for no reason but to roam around the beautiful setting, something I haven't done since The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

As with most games in this current generation, one must take the good with the bad. The previously mentioned positive elements appeared to be the main focus of the Rockstar development team, as these spectacular pros are quickly outweighed by non-existent updating of carried over GTA features. RDR is symptomatic of severe graphical glitches and some very serious frame rate issues whenever the game requires the PS3 to do a decent amount of processing. During all of the frantic horseback chases I encountered, enemy NPCs will, without fail, approach you from the rear, in order to deal with that threat the player must about-face to gun the varmints down. Every single time I was required to perform this about-face, the game would drop from a constant 60 FPS down to around 15-20 FPS in order to accommodate loading of terrain, animals and other frills which were now in visible range. This sudden drop in frames added an extra level of difficulty to successfully aiming at targets to bring them down, which unaffected by the sudden frame rate drop continue moving as if the game were performing at 60 FPS. During one mission in particular, I was shamefully forced to change my controller settings from "Expert" to "Casual" since the game was completely unable to keep even a stable 25-30 FPS with everything happening on the screen. These framerate slowdowns would be resolved with a couple seconds, but they would generally be a few of the most critical while being pursued by 5-10 or more assailants.

Since witnesses make stealing horses impractical and a lack of alternate transportation is generally unavailable, it's safe to say Marston's horse is one of the most important elements of gameplay. I expected Zelda-like accuracy when calling my horse, what I got was a horse with a sheep's brain. It's not often I come across AI so stupid it makes Dragoons from the first Starcraft look like brain surgeons, so in order to illustrate my point here is a partial list of some of the instances of horse AI stupidity:

• It proceeded to run past me and clip through a building wall getting stuck. I had to shoot it so I could summon a new one which put a bounty on my head leading to me getting shot in the back by a hidden lawman.
• It ran past me, ran straight off a cliff and died.
• Frequently after summoning, it will continue to run away instead of stopping at John Marston's position, until it's chased down and caught. It won't not stop if this happens and will continue to run away if it evades capture. I failed a number of missions, bounty hunts and other events due to this and began mindlessly mashing the summon button to compensate.
• It wandered off (it will do that a lot too), ran straight into a pack of wolves and got eaten.
• Stopping a ways out from a bounty, I attempted to leave it a distance away so it wouldn't be an obstacle. It followed me and insisted on standing right in front me blocking several key shots. It got an accidental bullet to the head as a result, leaving me stranded after hogtying my bounty.

To say the least, these issues were extremely frustrating as your horse is an integral part of the game. Since the world is so expansive getting around without your horse serves only as masochistic torture, considering while dismounted the number of threats the player will face increases tenfold. What concerns me the most is the lack of attention the Rockstar debuggers gave to these blatant bugs. These issues come up on such a frequent basis I would think they were impossible to miss during development.

Controlling John Marston through the world was no small feat either. Moving him around felt like trying to control a severely drunk man like a marionette with half the strings missing. This is another area of the game that should have been reevaluated as it's the exact same control scheme carried over from the GTA games. The lazy approach to this port of controls made me woefully reminiscent of pointlessly running into walls and other obstacles due to the player's character having a turning radius as wide as the Epcot Center. Additionally, requiring the player to mash a button on the controller to run instead of making the analogue stick pressure sensitive isn't a novel idea, it's another example of lazy programming. Combat, although refined from GTA IV and Vice City, did a good job in making me feel like I was revisiting Heavy Rain. While aiming, Marston's turning radius is equally as horrible as when he's walking and being incapable of doing a quick 180 spin makes speedy combat reflexes impossible, boiling combat down to luck, how full the Dead Eye meter is, and terrible enemy NPC aiming.

Multiplayer has similar incomplete elements which often times make it a frustrating experience. Allowing players to use full auto-aim through the first 50 levels encourages other players to shoot on sight and behave like degenerate jerks, however this could just be a reflection of those player's personalities... Respawn locations in the main world and during mini-games prove easily predictable and usually result in the first player dead getting constantly killed for lack of a quick 180 spin. Leveling imitates MMO quest grinding through survival challenges, killing enemy NPC gangs and mindlessly killing other players and after the player's armory is full only provides faster mounts and more unlockable characters. Additionally my favorite element from single player, the lasso, is stupidly absent. More forethought into making it impossible to abuse in an unfair way would have made players encounters mimic the single player's morality meter more accurately, (if you're curious pick honorable, you can hogtie everyone in the world and receive no bounty), and made for hilarious moments when "Nick expertly lassoed X_Jerkplayer_666" popped up on the screen.

Overall the 15-20 hours of missions are the most compelling part of the game, and if you feel like killing some time there's tons of mindless fun to be had playing poker, tracking bounties, assisting randomly spawning passerbys in distress and plenty more. A myriad of graphical and bug oversights greatly overshadow an otherwise perfect atmosphere coupled with expertly executed writing and research. Recycled controls and gameplay mechanics are unfortunately reminiscent of a lack of refinement and development through a number of previous Rockstar sandbox games, ultimately closing the gap between the GTA series and this shining beacon of hope for future endeavors.

Triumvir X Street Fighter

Apparently I'm completely out of the loop when it comes to "Geek Chic" and managed to miss pre-orders on these awesome shirts, however as of 12PM today they go on sale. I'm talkin' about a collaboration between Capcom and clothing designer Triumvir (previously unknown to me) to produce a line of awesome Street Fighter character T-Shirts.

http://triumvir3.com/wordpress/?p=2588

I got my Zangief tee to represent but find myself needing more from the line. Sometimes it is worth it to pay more than $10 for a t-shirt...

BOOM SHAKA LAKA! JAM Returns!

In the field of video games there's very few sports titles that actually manage to appeal to me. I was unexpectedly swept away by the SSX series and captivated by the early installments of the Blitz series. However one of my earliest and fondest memories of sports games which blurred the reality line was the NBA Jam series.

Featuring real players and real teams in an arcade 2 on 2 setting, Jam brought flavor, action and odd commentator exclamations delivering a very different basketball experience. Sure Jam had a very loose interpretation of the actual rules of basketball, had this game not featured superhumanly awesome flaming dunks or backboard shattering slams, attention to the rules may have been more important.

Today I was fortunate enough to bear witness to the EA Sports revival of this excellent cartridge era game. If the debut trailer is any indication, Jam 2010 will feature the same over-the-top dunking and silly commentating its primitive predecessors had, the update will be a much-needed addition to the Wii's severely lacking game catalog.

Let's just hope the folks at EA don't turn this revival into another endless string of slightly different but overall similar sequels like what's happened to the Call of Duty series...

See the video here: http://www.gametrailers.com/video/exclusive-debut-nba-jam/63073

Heavy Rain - The Taxidermist and lasting impressions

Last week an add-on chapter to Heavy Rain was made available for those who received a pre-order voucher or saw it on the Playstation Store. Supposedly picking up where the main game ends, the new chapter features the sexploited, insomniac reporter Madison Paige who is investigating – one assumes since this is never made clear – a lead implicating a local taxidermist as the mysterious figure in Madison’s ending.

The Taxidermist adds an element of gameplay Quantic Dream seemed to feel was lacking from the main game: stealth. This new dynamic doesn’t so much add to the overall experience of Heavy Rain as it does add to the list of persisting problems. Serving as a median between the exploration and action sequences of the chapter, the stealth aspect accomplishes the opposite of Quantic Dream’s intent and puts an even larger spotlight on the game’s unrefined controls. During this segment I had more trouble navigating Madison through the house (see my review on Heavy Rain) let alone to a safe hiding location. In the end I decided wrestling with the controller to move Madison was a pointless endeavor and opted to forgo stealth by running directly into the antagonist’s field of view. Speaking of which, the Taxidermist must be the dumbest criminal mastermind in the history of serial killers. I hoped this extremely thick serial killer would notice every door in his house had been opened in order to speed up the horrible stealth segment, but the only differences he seemed to notice were disturbed items on the storefront counters. Even the door to the room with the rotting corpse being ajar didn’t phase his determination to ignore my presence in his house, making the absence of quality control painfully obvious yet again.

Once again the action proved to be a matter of deciding between survival or failure, press the button or don’t, and just like the main game these QTE choices determine the final outcome of the chapter. Due to my quick reflexes I was able to subdue and eliminate my opponent thanks to a conveniently gassed up chainsaw in the garage. The ending that followed conveniently ignored the fact that Madison broke into this house and killed a person with no witnesses, yet she’s revered as a hero once her story breaks. This was only one of about six to eight endings, as far as I was concerned I had received the full gaming experience from just playing through one ending.

Playing this new chapter put a sour taste in my mouth with regard to the Heavy Rain experience as a whole. All of the elements I found compelling and worth exploring in the main game were curiously absent from the add-on chapter: compelling storyline, a plot no error in gameplay can falter and a colorful cast of characters. The Taxidermist chooses to ignore all of these strengths in favor of everything I hated about the main game. Honestly I was hopeful this new chapter would be an improvement on any of the list of problems which plagued Heavy Rain, instead I was forced to endure more of the same without the creativity which made the main game a great experience.

Brave and the Bold VS. J. Michael Straczynski

Heralding from the Silver Age of comics, The Brave and the Bold classically featured two heroes joining forces to stop a threat neither would be able to tackle alone. Following a lengthy absence Mark Waid and George Perez resurrected the series which channeled the tongue and cheek feel of classic B&B comics with all new story and art. Although this relaunch mainly served as background for the DC summer event of the time, each issue was readable by itself yet connected to a greater overall storyline if read in sequence. Once Waid and Perez said farewell to this latest incarnation, Scott Kolins took the reigns for a series of oddball single issue stories unconnected to a story arc. These interpretations of modern DC characters were a treat to read and anticipating another wacky team-up kept me waiting for each month's installment, life was good.

The higher-ups at DC decided the Brave and the Bold needed a superstar creator to fuel the book's popularity amidst a somewhat likely drop in sales following the Waid/Perez departure. Out of every writer currently working in comics my last choice for Brave and the Bold would have been J. Michael Straczynski, a writer known for writing for the story arc and not the single issue.

I gave Straczynski's run a couple issues to see how he was settling into this new style of writing but my fears had become reality. Both issues I read seemed to be groundwork for a much larger story, similar to Mark Waid's stint. However this groundwork was completely ignored by the following issue and was instead followed by another story arc first issue. Even utilizing some of the DCU's wackiest and most forgotten characters, it seemed Straczynski was unsure how to resolve these awesome team-ups issues within 22 pages. In these initial issues too much time was devoted to irrelevant character monologues, slowly paced storytelling and an overall detachment between the two headline characters. In the Batman/Dial H for Hero issue the pair don't even physically meet until nearly the end of the comic.

Hopeful again it would just take him a few issues to get used to this new style of storytelling, I picked up the latest oddball team-up of The Atom and the Joker, mainly due to the amazing artwork of Justiniano. This story was NOT A TEAM-UP! The Atom shrinks down to enter the Joker's brain in order to deliver medicine which will save the Joker's life. Once inside, the Atom is continually thrust into memories of the Joker, all of which reek of Heath Ledger Joker fandom (there's even a scene from The Dark Knight recapped in a panel), compiling a Heath Ledger-esque origin story. Instead of using the Atom to his full potential, he's merely used as a device to direct the reader through the story.

I implore Mr. Straczynski, please ask DC for some classic Brave and the Bold stories to read or pick up the very inexpensive Showcase edition, because you need to learn how to write for this book. I'm still hopeful JMS will come around but it probably won't be until two issues before he's pulled off the book.