Sunday, August 30, 2009

Daemon



Daemon CoverDaemon
Author: Daniel Suarez
Publisher: Dutton
Released: Jan. 2009
After two CyberStorm Entertainment employees die suspiciously, Detective Peter Sebeck discovers their deaths were caused by elaborate death traps set by revered game designer and CyberStorm CEO Matthew Sobol. Officers storming Sobol’s mansion find themselves in a standoff against more tech-powered traps, but the greater challenge is that the deceased Sobol is doing all this from beyond the grave.

A daemon, a hidden computer program, is part of Sobol’s postmortem plot not to hack computers, but to hack society. Recruiting disaffected individuals and channeling billions of dollars, Sobol’s Daemon organizes a global cabal capable of bringing down corporations and threatening governments.

Lending equal weight to online and offline action, Suarez has some scenes set in CyberStorm’s computer games, which the Daemon is using for recruitment. Beating a mod for the WWII-themed, Over the Rhine, wins the approval of the game’s baddie SS Obesrtleutnant Heinrich Boerner. Later The Gate (CyberStorm’s fantasy MMO) is the setting for a stakeout.

More than a techno-thriller, Daniel Suarez has created a plausible scenario about what a determined individual can accomplish in a wired world.



Saturday, August 22, 2009

9 the Poster



Allegedly this is an exclusive, but I'm thinking other sites may have been sent this too.

Want more? Catch up on the backstory at 9 Scientist's Facebook.



Monday, August 17, 2009

Microsoft’s E3 Briefing



E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) 2009 is underway and the major players are grabbing their share of the media cycle by revealing hot games and new technologies. Once the major industry show, E3's relevance has been questioned in recent years, especially since it has served more to confirm rumors than offer surprises.

It's refreshing that Microsoft has kicked off the show with an impressive E3 Briefing. Here are the three biggest announcements Microsoft revealed today for their Xbox 360.

The Beatles: Rock Band
We knew this was coming on 9.09.09 (number nine, number nine, number nine) and we could have guessed at the track list, but did anyone see vocal harmonies coming? Support for up to three vocalists shows that unlike recent Guitar Hero releases, this isn't just Rock Band with a Beatles skin. This is a multiplatform release, but the biggest surprise Microsoft pulled off was putting the two surviving Beatles onstage during the announcement. Paul and Ringo may have had an awkward two minutes in the E3 spotlight, but unless Nintendo or Sony have Elvis waiting in the wings, it would be hard to surpass this level of star power.

Social Notworking
I hope you like your couch, because Microsoft is planning to keep you on it. Announced today was integration for social networking giants Facebook and Twitter. Redesigned for your television, it will be easier to keep track of friends, share pictures and highlight your gaming excellence all through your Xbox. As if that isn't enough, Microsoft is bringing Last.FM to Xbox Live subscribers letting them create and share playlists.

Project Natal
This morning people were talking about Xbox Fluid which morphed into Project Natal during the briefing. I can only assume the pregnant Trixie 360 created this natal fluid confusion. Anyway, Project Natal is Microsoft's answer to the Wiimote. Bypassing controllers completely, Microsoft showed off the Project Natal concept which uses a camera for facial recognition and body movement tracking while a microphone picks up your voice. Examples shown included miming steering a car to play a racing game, unleashing a martial arts barrage to defeat an on-screen opponent and shouting trivia answers at the screen to win a multiplayer game. Potentially the biggest game-changer, Project Natal also faces the potential of being another gimmick like the EyeToy — or worse — the new Power Glove.



Sunday, August 16, 2009

Sacred 2: Fallen Angel



Sacred 2: Fallen Angel CoverSacred 2: Fallen Angel
Developer: Ascaron
Publisher: cdv Software Entertainment
Platform: Xbox 360 (also on PS3 and PC)
Released: May 12, 2009
Test Freaks' Freak Score: 6.3/10
Let me start with a disclaimer: I’ve made it through less than 30% of Sacred 2’s main quest and I’ve seen less than 20% of Sacred 2’s world. After over 30 hours of play, though, I feel justified in posting a review.

Sacred 2 is an action-RPG loaded with hundreds of quests, thousands of items and a menagerie of monsters. Gameplay is combat-driven so don’t expect to sneak around like a thief and you pick the good or evil path before launching the game so there are no moral quandaries to get in your way. If you need to feel immersed in a fantasy world, then Sacred 2 isn’t for you – but if you’re looking for a game that offers Diablo-style action and WoW-level of addiction, I highly recommend Sacred 2.

In the fraction of the game I've seen, I've learned that there's some problem with elves and I'm guessing a Fallen Angel comes into play at some point, but I really don't care. Not that I'm not interested in being the hero who brings salvation to Ancaria, but I'm having enough fun investigating crop circles, attending rock concerts, and collecting troll hearts. Sure there's a plot to follow, but the flavor of the game comes from the multitude of side quests available. I eagerly scour cities looking for people with ? floating above their heads, never knowing if I'm going to be asked to wipe out a skeleton army or merely tell guests that the wedding's off.
Roaming the Wastes.
Just one more quest, I tell myself and then I get sucked into a mini-campaign or find a class-specific quest I'm compelled to do because I'm a good little Dryad. Yes, I am your typical wood nymph who longs to pepper enemies with arrows and cast her voodoo. She's one of six preset characters available. Avoiding Gauntlet-style archetypes, Sacred 2 opts for classes like an angelic warrior (Seraphim), a resurrected soldier (Shadow Warrior) and an automaton resembling the Egyptian god Anubis (Temple Guardian).

Each character has different combat skills and magic available to them (called Combat Arts and grouped under three Aspects). Using my voodoo, I can envelop enemies in thorns and use shrunken heads to summon ghosts. With 15 Combat Arts to choose from, in addition to Offensive, Defensive and General Skills to hone, Sacred 2 has a pretty deep RPG system. Combine this with the variety of armor and weapons available and, even though I can't change my character's gender or make her ears pointier, I still feel like I've shaped her creation.

There's always a concern that porting from the PC to a console involves a dumbing down of the interface, but the controller works great and allows for intuitive button mapping. You can assign potions to the D-pad and attacks to the face buttons and you can even use the trigger buttons as “shift” buttons letting you easily access up to twelve different attacks, spells, or combinations — in no way is the absence of a keyboard limiting. I have noticed that the controls could be tighter — the game doesn't always recognize that I want to shift from my longbow to sword. Also, targeting isn't precise — many times I've launched a flurry of poisoned bolts at a rat instead of the horrible monster next to it.
One of the class specific mounts.
Sacred 2 favors open-world exploration over traditional dungeon crawling. This isn’t to say that you won’t spend a fair amount of time in cellars, caves and sewers fighting subterranean fauna, but Ascaron has built a huge fantasy world and – by Lumen! – they want you to see it. Grassland, desert, mountain, jungle – name an ecosystem and you’ll find it somewhere in the world of Ancaria. This is an incredibly detailed world. There are remnants of battlefields, strange machines, ancient graveyards and other wonders which you just happen upon if you stray from Ancaria's network of roads.

Sadly, much of Ancaria's beauty is lost to me because I'm either running like mad or hightailing it on horseback. Sacred 2 doesn't have random encounters — it just has encounters. There's no patch of wilderness which isn't crawling with monsters who have the sense to travel in packs. It's cool happening upon goblins fighting spiders, but it doesn't take long for them to join forces against you. Once I barely stayed ahead of a pack of skeletons, bears, minotaurs, goblins, boars, and goblins riding boars.
Come on party people.
However, Sacred 2's deadliest feature is that you can't pause the game. While the single-player setup is perfectly fine for misanthropes like myself, Ascaron really wants you to enjoy the multiplayer experience (2 player offline or 4 players online) and has created a pseudo-perpetual world MMO type experience. The end result is that if you stop to look at a map, level up, or muck about with your equipment, it won't take long before something comes up and starts chewing on you. It's much safer to do any charactery thing in cities, where you're mostly safe. Luckily, the world of Ancaria is filled with transporters and respawny stones, so you can warp around to cities you've already visited and run to the blacksmith to have a magic necklace dropped by a diseased sheep welded to your quarterstaff to make it fiery.

I think Ascaron has a low opinion of my social life, because should I ever complete this massive game, I'll need to replay it to see where the evil path leads me. And then there's the other characters for me to try out and they each have their own quests. And I heard there's an expansion on the way, which is like hearing that Slartibartfast is adding a new continent when I haven't even seen Paris yet.



Friday, August 14, 2009

Army of Two: The 40th Day Contest



Like weapons? Want to design one for EA? Check out this contest:

Today, EA Montreal announced the return of the weapon design contest for ARMY OF TWO: THE 40th DAY. From June 23, 2009 to July 12 2009, participants can submit their ultimate weapon at the game's official website for a chance to have it included in a future EA Game. To enter the contest, gamers will need to submit an image of their weapon and a brief 200-word description. Please click on the game's official website to view the contest rules. Once gamers submit their designs, the images will be posted to the site for the community to vote on. Starting on July 20, 2009 the top weapons will be reviewed by the development team who will then pick the two best designs.

A “future EA Game” sounds kinda nebulous — personally I hope the winning design will wind up in Madden 2011.



Thursday, August 13, 2009

Daemon



Daemon CoverDaemon
Author: Daniel Suarez
Publisher: Dutton
Released: Jan. 2009
After two CyberStorm Entertainment employees die suspiciously, Detective Peter Sebeck discovers their deaths were caused by elaborate death traps set by revered game designer and CyberStorm CEO Matthew Sobol. Officers storming Sobol’s mansion find themselves in a standoff against more tech-powered traps, but the greater challenge is that the deceased Sobol is doing all this from beyond the grave.

A daemon, a hidden computer program, is part of Sobol’s postmortem plot not to hack computers, but to hack society. Recruiting disaffected individuals and channeling billions of dollars, Sobol’s Daemon organizes a global cabal capable of bringing down corporations and threatening governments.

Lending equal weight to online and offline action, Suarez has some scenes set in CyberStorm’s computer games, which the Daemon is using for recruitment. Beating a mod for the WWII-themed, Over the Rhine, wins the approval of the game’s baddie SS Obesrtleutnant Heinrich Boerner. Later The Gate (CyberStorm’s fantasy MMO) is the setting for a stakeout.

More than a techno-thriller, Daniel Suarez has created a plausible scenario about what a determined individual can accomplish in a wired world.



Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Nintendo’s E3 Briefing



E3 continued today, with Nintendo's Media Briefing at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The Electronic Entertainment Expo is the video game industry's annual trade show where major players gather to reveal anticipated games and new technology. While Nintendo's presentation wasn't as well received as yesterday's Microsoft briefing, here are three things for Nintendo fans to get excited about (and I should note that I love the DS and Nintendo has some cool things planned for the DSi, but the Wii was the star of the show).

New Super Mario Bros. for the Wii
Can there be anything new about Mario? After all, the last New Super Mario Bros. was a 2006 DS title and the venerable plumber has been hanging around since 1981's Donkey Kong. With that said, Nintendo has something interesting here — they've taken the core 2D platform design and turned it into a 4-player co-op game. Or at least co-op in spirit — I'm thinking this game will be the new Gauntlet, where screwing over fellow players is almost as much fun as working together.

Wii Sports Resort combined with Wii MotionPlus
Nintendo's Wii captured people's imagination with a motion-sensitve controller which made you feel like you were actually swinging a baseball bat or throwing a punch instead of pulling the strings on a computer-generated puppet. MotionPlus (a new attachment for the Wiimote) ups the realism by allowing faster and more sensitive motion-tracking. As shown in the Wii Sports Resort trailer, this means archery, golf, water skiing and a host of other sports have now reached the next level of immersion. Can the ultimate lightsaber game be too far behind?

Metroid: Other M for the Wii
There was major fail at this year's briefings, with the consoles attempting to reach out to hardcore gamers and girls not realizing that hardcore gaming knows no gender restrictions. With delicious irony, Nintendo's best received title was the hardcore Metroid: Other M featuring the badass (and female) Samus. Nintendo plus Team Ninja equals stunning 3D environments, awesome boss battles and fast and furious (and edgy) gameplay.



Sunday, August 9, 2009

9 the Poster



Allegedly this is an exclusive, but I'm thinking other sites may have been sent this too.

Want more? Catch up on the backstory at 9 Scientist's Facebook.



Saturday, August 8, 2009

Sony’s E3 Briefing



Wrapping up the major platform briefings, Sony hit E3 today with their presentation showing what's in-store for their console and handheld system. Cutting through the marketing, here are the three things Sony fans should be saving up for.

PS3 Motion Controller
Nintendo has the Wiimote. Microsoft has Project Natal. Sony has a prototype. Looking like a small baton with a ping pong ball attached to the end, PS3's motion controller works in conjunction with the PlayStation Eye to track the movement of the controller which could be a stand-in for a tennis racket, pistol or flashlight. A motion controller in each hand lets the user dual-wield. Imagine a Zelda game where you're Link, blocking attacks with a shield while striking with your sword. Still at the tech demo stage, this has a lot of promise and I'm hoping Sony can stick to their Spring 2010 launch date.

PSP Go
Showing that Nintendo isn't the only company that can make their portable device more portable, Sony showed off the PSP Go. Half the size of the PSP, this sleek and sexy handheld slides open like a cell phone. With built-in wifi and Bluetooth capabilities, the PSP Go goes beyond games allowing for better access to and storage of videos, music and pictures. Full PSP games can even be downloaded to the Go, bypassing physical media. The only question is will the $249 entry price be too high, especially since Nintendo's DSi is only $169.

The Last Guardian
When the “games as art” argument rears its head, two games come to the forefront: Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. It's no wonder that the company behind them, Team Ico, would have created the beautiful and mysterious The Last Guardian revealed today. The trailer shows a young boy hunted by knights in an eerie ruin who is befriended by a giant griffin. Haunting and poignant, this game is set for a 2010 release.