Posted on: May 15th, 2009 Bleep Bleep, Bloop Bloop. Video Games.
For the week of May 10, 2009: Tony Hawk Ride, Klonoa, possible Beyond Good & Evil 2 footage, 1 vs. 100 BETA, Let’s Tap, Bioshock Multiplayer and new releases.
NEW RELEASES:
Microsoft has recently started the Xbox Live Prime Time channel they talked about at last years E3. The idea being, during the hours of ‘prime time’ tv watching, microsoft wants you to be participating in a game instead. The game they’ve chosen to introduce this novel idea is NBC’s 1 vs 100.
Right now they’ve got a BETA open in Canada only, but word is people outside of Canada can sign up for a Canadian hotmail account to get access.
Last Tuesday I got into a ‘live’ game and I think it totally works as great alternative to prime time tv watching. Instead of cash, the ‘One’ and the ‘Mob’ are playing for microsoft points (the kind you buying games with, not the points you get for achievements), so that adds a bit of pressure for not wanting to lose out of a round. Since this is an alternative to TV watching there are commercial breaks, but they’ve been kept to about 30 seconds and every once in a while a dude named Chris (a real guy) gets on the mic and catches players up to whats going on in the game with some ‘fun’ commentary.
If this is any indication of what Microsoft has planned for their Prime Time channel, I think it will turn out to be pretty cool once fleshed out a bit. There’s still a chance for you to get in on the BETA, but you’ll have to wait for the game to start. If I’m not mistaken, they have the game Tuesday, Friday and Saturday nights 8:00pm – 10:00pm.
Remember the days of the mascot? Every system tried their best to put a face to the console with extreme animals like Crash Bandicoot, Sonic the Hedgehog, Spyro the Dragon, Blinx the Cat….well this weeks Wii release dips back into that pot with a lesser known mascot type platformer character with Klonoa the floppy eared cat thing.
At the time it looked really cheesy from the ads and the way they pushed the game, but in actuallity it was one of the best games of its type. Some even go as far as to say it was better than Mario 64. The development team made a concious effort not to fall back on any of the mascot platformer cliches and it totally shows with its well thought out inventive gameplay. The Wii release is a updated 2 1/2D version of the original Klonoa and at $30 bucks shouldn’t be over looked.
An interesting game that was shown at last years Tokyo Game Show by the Sonic Team is making its media rounds this week. It’s another Wii mini game collection called Let’s Tap, but the twist is, to play the game, you have to put the Wiimote on a box or another flat surface, then tap and drum on said surface to make the controller inputs. For example, you could have a little dude running an obsticle course on a 2D plane and your rythmic tapping would initiate the jogging/running, a large tap would make him jump, ect.
The game is scheduled for June 16, so it’s still unknown whether or not it’s worth picking up, but I’m mentioning it now because it’s one of the more inventive uses of the Wii controllers I’ve seen and that’s pretty cool.
NEWS:
Earlier this week Kotaku posted what is rumored to be the first video footage of Beyond Good & Evil 2. The original was praised up and down for design and game play but had disappointing sales. Surprisingly, a few months back, Ubi Soft announced that they were working on a sequal and now there’s a mysterious video with a character resembling the lead lady Jade.
Whatever it is, the animation and setting is georgous and I can’t wait to find out more about it at this year’s E3.
And finally this week, some more information was revealed about BioShock. It was already known that BioShock 2 was to take place before and after the events of the first game, but that’s as far as we knew. This week we found out that 2K studios is planning for a multiplayer component to the game and has outsourced its development to Digital Extremes, makers of the recent Dark Sector and a whole smack of Unreal Tournament games in conjunction with Epic Games. So they know what they’re doing which is good news. We also found out the the multiplayer will be set in a time before/during the fall of Rapture and that they will incorporate experience points leveling ala Call of Duty 4 multiplayer which is very cool. Rapture was frozen in time during the New Year’s Eve celebration of 1959, so expect a lot of party decorations, art deco and crazy people!
While I’m really excited about the announcement, I’m not so sure multiplayer is the best way to experience this part of the time line simply because you don’t explore, learn and interact with the world, you more or less run around it and shoot dudes. We will have to wait and see.
IGN recently posted a 9 minute walk through explaining what’s up for BioShock2.
Until next week.
Dale can also be found over at www.8bitcyclops.com, looking at design, photography and old video game magazines.