Goodbye Mega Man Universe, we hardly knew ye! Always a fan of classic Mega Man action, I was looking forward to this one. Not to say I was salivating and fighting back bouts of the shakes though. When I playedMega Man Universe at New York Comic Con 2010, it seemed like a flawed product, but it had promise. The create your own Mega Man angle seemed like a pretty neat idea, especially taking into account the broad range of characters across Capcom's library that could have been added in.
The official Mega Man Universe site states "various reasons" for cancellation. I wonder if this has anything to do with Capcom's serious lack of Keiji Inafune these days? Mega Man Universe was scheduled for release in Spring 2011 for PlayStation Network and Xbox LIVE Arcade. I guess Mega Fans will just have to keep their fingers crossed that the demise of Universe opens the door for Mega Man 11.
The world needs more four-player cooperative futuristic ninja games, dammit. Thankfully Square Enix has answered the call with Moon Diver, the multiplayer ninja platformer created by the man who may have pioneered the genre, Kouichi Yotsui, designer of the arcade classic, Strider.
Ninjas are an easy sell for me, as is four-player co-op. Pairing the two means I'd buy four copies of the game, which I may consider for my tight-pocketed friends. I understand some may not be sold on what to me seems like a complete no-brainer. For those of you on the fence, there are three items to sway you into a purchase: a demo which is currently available on PSN, a launch trailer which is considerately attached to at the end of this post, and a katana to the neck!
Moon Diver is out today on PSN for $14.99, with an unspecified XBLA release sometime in April.
Supergiant Bastion wallpaper, courtesy of the good folks at Supergiant Games
Way back in September of last year, I saw a trailer for a humble game named Bastion that brought me back to my days of power gaming as a teenager. Any title capable of evoking such fond memories is one to keep an eye on, and Bastion is no different. Found on a whim at PAX East, the thought of this game came rushing back to the forefront of my mind. Oh yes, hands on baby.
In classic RPG fashion, your character is awaken from sleep and ventures out of his home to seek his destiny, however instead of an annoying pet or underage girl as your companion, you are accompanied by the dulcet tones of the narrator. The vibrant and lively world pops up under your feet as you stride forth, introducing you to the simple combat mechanics when it's not busy wowing your eye sockets. Bold colors are bountiful in Bastion, something that is much too rare in this day of the browns and grays of post-apocalyptic modern warfare.
This is the old school at it's finest, renewed for the modern day, of course. Your character -- the Kid, as he's called -- does everything expected of the hero archetype in a three-quarter perspective role-playing game; swing his melee weapon -- in this case, a large hammer -- shoot arrows from a safe distance, block attacks with his shield, and roll-evade from danger's path. These actions can be beautifully mixed without missing a beat, and without a miscued moment from your narrator either. All these actions are introduced from the outset, leaving many more abilities and weapons to be unlocked as you progress, I'm sure.
The Kid will probably play out as one of those silent protagonist types, which I ain't mad at. Some folk take exception with mute heroes, but in this case it gives the wise old narrator a chance to shine. The anonymous voice calls it as he sees it, dynamically narrating the Kid's actions in real time, as well as unraveling the story in a classy way that only a faceless, comforting, gravelly voice can. He's like the second grandfather many of us never knew we had.
I didn't play for too long, but I don't think it matters. Bastion has shaped up to be pretty special, and has a chance of being one of the year's best indie titles if the cards fall into place before release. Expect it on Xbox LIVE Arcade, Summer 2011, with a PC release to follow.
In one of the corners of the PAX East show floor lie Fez, a game I've been salivating over for some months now, and what could end up being one of 2011's best platformers. You who are not concerned with ingenuity and thoughtful gaming can stop reading right now. Though for those brave enough to explore the tenets of "reality is perception," and "perception is subjective," please read on.
The lovely world of Fez is composed primarily of trixels; 3D pixels which lend a decidedly 8-bit feel to the old 3D model formula that has been the norm since the mid to late 90s. Fans of the PS3 exclusive 3D Dot Game Heroes will feel right at home in Fez's town of Villageville.
The real beauty however, comes after the protagonist, Gomez, speaks to his village elder to discover this is a day of great importance. Gomez receives a Fez in a dream sequence of sorts, and when he wakes on what appears to the the same day, something is different. He can now traverse Villageville in a way which he can rotate the world on an Y-axis, allowing new platforming opportunities to be discovered in the most creative of ways. The mechanic is not the easiest for my non-trixel brain to put to words, but the included PAX East gameplay video should allow you a greater comprehension. The mechanic is quite brilliant.
Once I got the hang of the perspective-altering power of the Fez I tried speed-running. That might not have been the best idea, as I missed a bunch of jumps and fell to my death on multiple occasions. Speed-running may require some experience -- AKA failed jumps -- but I'm sure once your mind is calibrated for world-turning and once you've learned the world itself, it can be done effectively. Perhaps speedruns in Fez are unnecessary, as the beauty of the trixels as well as the gravity of what exactly you're doing (twisting the freaking world) should be enough to keep you entertained for hours. The difficulty isn't as steep as something like Super Meat Boy, but Fez is still a joy to play.
If you don't have your frequency set for Fez already, you should get on that. Polytron Corporation's mind-bending game-changer will release sometime this year, and honestly, I don't think that's soon enough.
After hearing about Fallen Frontier just recently, I was stoked to spend some time with it on the PAX East show floor. While still an early build, I would be hard pressed to find many flaws with what I was able to play.
Right off the bat, what caught my eye about Fallen Frontier is the awesome way it handles split-screen co-op. Players exist on the same screen until one ventures off too far, at which point the screen is bisected in whichever direction the wanderer has moved off to. For example, if the first player is at the right of the screen, and the second moves off screen to the left, a split-screen line will divide the screen vertically. As the players move around independently, the split screen adjusts to track them. When the players come back together, the screen is once again whole, without a beat missed. It's hard to describe, you can see what I mean in the trailer attached below, but wow, why has no one ever thought of this before? It's really brilliantly simple.
Adding to the co-op experience is the fact that the second player is said to be more than just a throw in to accommodate a bored friend. Player one plays a human who sets out from Earth on a personal mission of revenge. Player two controls an augmented human, which looks kind of like a cyborg. The idea here is rather than terraforming planets to create suitable living conditions for humans, it was the people who are adjusted to inhabit to the conditions of their home world.
Your character can hold any two weapons as well as grenades, in addition to using a couple of secondary abilities to spice things up. This build featured a grappling hook -- with no cooldown -- which allowed our slow moving heroes to zip around the environment with relative ease and increased speed. It has uses in battle as well, such as the pleasing combination of pulling an unsuspecting enemy into a cloud of fresh buckshot. The grappling hook makes the shotgun a viable long range weapon of sorts. There was also a forcefield pushback, which knocked back everything in your immediate area, be it enemies or grenades. Helpful in a pinch if you become swarmed or need to clear a grenade with a short fuse. More abilities will be available in the final release of the game, but these two were the only ones we were able to see.
The developers stated much inspiration was drawn from Blade Runner, and it shows. Not only because of the mesh of organics and robotics, and no, your character doesn't look like Harrison Ford, but mostly due to the bright-yet-dreary beauty, in similar style to Blade Runner's futuristic world. The backdrops are startlingly lovely, akin to concept art used in production, and executed very well. The character models are crisp, animated well, and generally look great.
Unfortunately, we're going to have to wait until 2012 for Fallen Frontier, which is shocking considering how tight the build I played was. A true testament to its development process and the pedigree of those working on it.
Let me admit, when I first read about The Gunstringer, a Kinect title where you play as a skeleton cowboy, shooting stuff with your fingers, I promptly went to my toilet to drop a deuce, finished up, and went on with my day.
I should have given more credit to Twisted Pixel.
As more media for The Gunstringer has made its way out I've warmed up to it a bit. After watching a full 15 minutes of the game, I'm 90% sold. While the premise is weird, and the gameplay doesn't seem incredibly addictive or complex, Twisted Pixel's trademark style and humor shines through to give this Xbox LIVE Arcade title a bit of a 'DO WANT' edge.
The question is, how does one price a Kinect XBLA game?
For more than 20 years, Contra has been a staple of classic gaming worldwide. From its original, painfully difficult roots, the series has grown and evolved into different entities over time, with slight gameplay changes introduced to keep the series fresh. Hard Corps: Uprising, while not a member of the Contra family in title, is a spiritual relative of the esteemed franchise. That said, The look of Hard Corps: Uprising is as drastic a departure from the series as the name change is. Does it get past the heavily armed and fortified one-eyed wall, or does it mistime it's leap and plunge into a pit?
If you told me there was a four-player cooperative stylized side-scrolling futuristic action game in which I take control of a super-powered ninja and fight oversized bosses for PSN and XBLA, I'd slap fire out of your mouth and call you a liar. Fortunately for you, this is not a lie, so rather than resorting to violence, I'm just going to cream my pants instead.
Directed by the dude who created Strider (and it shows), Moon Diver combines many things I love, even if it looks like it might be a little confusing. Four ninja throwing flashy moves all over the screen in a side-scroller seems like it might be overwhelming to keep track of the important factors: position, health, enemies, pitfalls, etc, but hot damn if it doesn't look like it'll be worth the trouble!
Aside from the beautiful art and effects, Moon Diver has some RPG elements peppered in to assure that your character progresses in stride with the difficulty, which I'm sure is going to be pretty steep. This looks to be the experience I had hoped Castlevania: Harmony of Despair would deliver, but couldn't quite nail down. Fingers crossed Moon Diver gets it right when it releases, sometime this spring.
Gamers of my day have a fond appreciation for the arcade game, a medium which has been steadily declining in the states, to the point of near death where it lay today. While you may still be able to find arcades around town somewhere, the odds of the games being up to date and the prices being moderate are next to none. One of the elite arcade games of my time was X-Men, a six-player orgy of flying fists and mutant powers, which was a blast both in part to the multiplayer mayhem, and the enjoyment of seeing my favorite mutants mix it up on the dual arcade screens. Is Konami's re-release on XBLA and PSN too late to be appreciated? Is our review too late to be appreciated as well? Read on to find out.
So which do you want first, the good or the bad? Fuck it, you're getting the bad news first, so deal with it! Retro City Rampage has been delayed until summer 2011. Dammit! That's an awful long time to wait for what looks like the greatest 80's nostalgia orgy since The Expendables.
To make up for the delay, the game will see some additions, such as more missions and extra playable characters. The Xbox 360 version will also include dopeness such as widescreen support, character creation, video replay, and challenge modes. Wait, did I just say Xbox 360?! Yes, that's your good news, the game has been officially announced for Xbox Live Arcade. As if the nifty header image wasn't clue enough.
Actually, I guess if you're a Wii fan you get double bad news. The Wiiware version of Retro City Rampage wont release until Fall 2011. Creator Brian Provinciano apologizes for the delay, but a dude's gotta eat, and apparently Wii exclusivity wont pay the bills. Sorry Wiitards!
Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 12:12PM 
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