Nintendo to Hold Your Hand Through Upcoming Games

I feel an old man moment coming on…

You know, back when I was a young lad of eight, and had the old toaster-style NES keeping me company through weekends, games were tough. They were hard. They kicked your ass until you coughed up blood, and made you work to beat them. You played and you played until the hard edges of those control pads were grinding into your palms, and if you were lucky, you might have pushed a button at the right nanosecond and finished the final boss. That’s the way it was and we LIKED it! We LOVED it!

Now it’s mid 2009, and the video game demographic has spread beyond the Kool Aid sipping preadolescents of the 90s that we were. Now old people are playing, along with adults, young adults, parents, teachers, and nostalgic 30-somethings. So it’s only natural that a few adjustments would have to be made in how games are marketed and presented; but if this latest bit of news is true, Nintendo is about to go Kirby-soft when it comes to challenging their players.

The latest Super Mario Bros. will be released in stores this holiday season, and Shigeru Miyamoto has revealed that it will carry a feature called the “Kind Code.” Essentially a built-in demo player, the Kind Code will allow you to pause the game and let it play for you if you’re having trouble beating a level.

That’s right. Gone are the days of “Contra” and its insanity, of “Golgo 13″ and its mazes, of “Battletoads” and its jet ride levels. Welcome to the new generation, where Nintendo is prepared to take players by their soft hands and lead them through the big, scary games that could potentially make them sweat a little bit. Don’t worry about timing speed through those Twomps or adjusting jump distance for lava pits. Just sit back, relax, and let Nintendo do all the work for you.

Yeah, I’m a little angry about this.

Controversial “Fat Princess” Headed to PS3

 

Saving the princess? War games? Medieval fantasy worlds? They’re all classic video game archetypes. And studio Titan Games is about to bring them all together, in an upcoming multiplayer game for the Playstation 3.

In Fat Princess, the game starts with two opposing teams (up to 16 per side), each with the other’s princess held captive. The object is to reach the other castle and retrieve the princess, in a ‘capture the flag’ style face-off. But there’s a twist, which lends the game its title. In order to make the captured damsel-in-distress more difficult to carry, she must be fed cake until she’s morbidly obese.

Combat will figure into the game as well. Team members consist of classic fantasy characters such as swordsmen, archers, priests and wizards, clashing with the other side’s units in bloody battles. But fighting has to be balanced with feeding the princess, because she will lose weight if she isn’t stuffed regularly.

A game such as this one has naturally caught the attention of many people, and some are not pleased. Over at the blog Feminist Gamers, a scathing observation of the game’s core mechanic was posted. Contributor Mighty Ponygirl had this to say:

Instead of running out into the forest to find cake to fatten up the princess with, why not go out and find gold (which is a lot heavier than cake) to stuff into a treasure chest. The more gold in the chest, the heavier it would be, and the harder it would be to carry.

Oh, but that’s not as “cute” as cake and fat chicks. Right.

The game will be available on Sony’s Playstation Store service and is expected to be released sometime in 2009. The question of whether some details will be tweaked before then is yet to be answered.

Quad Says: Hey, I’m all for new and innovative ideas. It’s one of the strongest legs the video game industry has to stand on. That said, blatantly making fun of obesity is rather childish. And as far as the question of sexism is concerned, I am feeling some of the same vibes I did when this game came out.

Diablo III Announced, Lots of Goodies Released

For fans of Blizzard’s Diablo series or Blizzard in general, this was one unforgettable weekend.

A simple press release wasn’t enough to tantalize us. Not only was Diablo III officially announced, a whole slew of content was loaded onto the Internet. Blizzard has their official site up and running, and a cinematic teaser trailer has been released.

But perhaps the most important thing out of the pile is footage of gameplay, brought to you by the folks at Gametrailers. While it appears to be the same game in some aspects (isometric point-of-view, clicking the mouse like crazy to slaughter armies of beasts) Diablo III differs in a lot of impressive ways. I particularly liked the ability to interact with the environment. Now your characters can tear down walls to squash their pursuers. Nothing is stationary anymore.

So far only two character classes have been revealed: the Barbarian and the Witch Doctor. The Barbarian carries a lot of his/her (I almost forgot–you can choose the sex of your character now) signature moves from Diablo II and remains the master of melee combat. The Witch Doctor wields heavy blasts of fire and can attack from the netherworld.

Seemingly gone from the Diablo world are the health and mana potions. Now enemies drop colored balls that your character can absorb to regain strength. In place of the belt that used to hold the potions is a skill bar, where players can quicklaunch special abilities at the touch of a button.

A release date was not given in the press release. Blizzard will gradually put out more information as times goes by. As a fan and veteran mouseclicker, I’ll be keeping a close eye on Diablo III”s development. It’s looking like one hell of a game already.

New GTAIV Trailer Uploaded, Music Download Service Announced

The greatly anticipated (and greatly delayed) Grand Theft Auto IV is only a month away from release, and Rockstar served eager fans two promising appetizers yesterday.

First, a new trailer was uploaded, (the fourth) showing off more of the new Liberty City’s glitz, guns, and gritty criminal atmosphere. Whereas the other three previews focused more on elements of the story and main character, this one is all about action. If anything, GTAIV will offer plenty of adrenaline-fueled, cap blasting mayhem. Gunfights, explosions, chases, confrontations– and a few rats!

Second, a new music download service was announced. Rockstar has partnered up with Amazon to usher in an innovative method of music marketing. If a player likes a particular song on one of the game’s radio stations, they can flag it using the in-game mobile phone. The song will then become available on the user’s profile, where they can download it for Amazon’s standard fee ($ 0.89-0.99). After purchase, they’re free to put the mp3 wherever they want, as it comes without DRM security. Also missing is the hassle of having to buy the entire soundtrack all at once.

If all that isn’t enough to satisfy your trigger finger, be sure to visit Rockstar’s official GTAIV page.  There’s a pantload of content there. There are literally, so many pictures and videos are available that I’m not sure I’ll have time to go through it all. From I can see, Liberty City looks like it’s been completely redesigned and expanded. Check it out.

BBFC: ‘Manhunt 2′ Still Makes Us Too Uncomfortable

If you’ve been following the “Manhunt 2″ saga since the beginning, you know that the road to the game’s release has been considerably less than smooth.

Back in June, Rockstar’s controversial stealth/horror sequel got its kneecaps broken and its face pushed into a hot stove, when the ESRB rated it ‘Adults Only’ and the British Board of Film Classification refused to rate it. An AO rating in the United States means no major retailer will carry the game, and The Big Three (Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft) won’t license it for play on their systems. In the UK, if the BBFC refuses to rate a game it’s effectively banned, since authorities have control over what gets released and rely on the board’s advice.

In response to this brutal stabbing, Rockstar edited “Manhunt 2″ and the ESRB re-rated it “M”. The editing consisted of blurring out or darkening the worst executions, and outright removing a castration sequence. Although it was now cleared for release in retail stores, a lot of gamers were not happy with the censoring. A poll on Gamepolitics showed that respondents weren’t going to buy the new version. Obviously the setback was considerable, but whether “MH2″ would escape Leatherface’s chainsaw in the UK was, at that point, undetermined.

And now we know. The BBFC has reviewed the censored M-rated version and refused to rate it, again.

Even with all the crazy censoring that effectively shoved a handful of broken glass into “Manhunt 2’s” festering wounds, it will still be illegal in the UK. Why? Here’s the official statement:

“We recognise that the distributor has made changes to the game, but we do not consider that these go far enough to address our concerns about the original version. The impact of the revisions on the bleakness and callousness of tone, or the essential nature of the gameplay, is clearly insufficient. There has been a reduction in the visual detail in some of the ‘execution kills’, but in others they retain their original visceral and casually sadistic nature.”

Rockstar has responded to this evisceration by (thankfully) refusing to censor the game even further, and announcing that they will appeal the BBFC’s decision.

Rockstar responded with a statement shortly after the announcement, stating that it would also be appealing this decision, and that the extra changes it was requested to make were “unacceptable.” The statement is as follows, “We are continuing to appeal the BBFC’s decision to deny the edited version of Manhunt 2 an 18 certificate and thereby ban its release in the United Kingdom.”

The M rated version of “Manhunt 2″ hits US shelves on October 31st, the perfect Halloween gift for the insane asylum escapee in your family.

Manhunt 2 Has Dismembered Limbs Stitched Back on, Face Reattached, Organs Replaced

Well. That didn’t take long.

After only two months of controversy and uncertainty over its fate, “Manhunt 2″ has been reevaluated by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board and given a new “Mature” (M) rating. If you’ll recall, the game faced a firing squad and was thought to have had its corpse devoured by cannibals back in June, when the ESRB slapped it with a garroting “Adults Only” (AO) marker. That rating meant all major retailers would refuse to carry it and The Big Three wouldn’t license it for play on their consoles. The release date was pushed back to sometime in 2008.

With the new rating, “Manhunt 2″ is now set for release on October 31, 2007. That’s Halloween, for those of you who didn’t know. Although it’s cleared for distribution in the US, there’s still no word on whether it will escape the breaking wheel in the UK. Take-Two Interactive is currently appealing the BBFC’s decision not to rate the game.

There’s one question I’ve been turning over in my mind since this story broke: is the objectionable content truly gone? Or did Take-Two/Rockstar simply stow it away inside the code? We all know their track record of not being honest about these things, and it certainly didn’t take them long to do that trimming.

Resident Evil 5: Stranger in a Tank

So, the trailers for Resident Evil 5 have been out for a while now. They’ve received a lot of feedback, look gorgeous, and have been accused of being racist. Yeah, Chris sure has his hands full fighting all those black people…

This isn’t about that, though. What I want to talk about shows up at the end of the trailers– after all the carnage and real-time footage is over, there’s approximately three seconds where we see what appears to be a woman floating around in a tank. She opens her eyes and looks into the camera before the video cuts off.

The identity of this character has been the subject of much debate. Some gamers say it’s Alexia. Others say it’s Jill or Rebecca (how!?) . But most people (myself included) are sold on the idea that it’s none other than Sherry Birkin, Resident Evil 2’s trademark annoying child.

The case for the tank girl being Sherry is pretty strong, I think. When you consider the fact that she’s been held captive by Albert Wesker since the aftermath of RE2 (due to the whole G-virus debacle, no doubt) you realize that an entire plot thread has been ignored by the series for the last ten years. In RE4 it was revealed that Weskman was involved in some nefarious plot to revive Umbrella and take over the world, but we got jipped on specific details. It’s about bloody time we found out what he’s’s been up to, and I have no doubt that Sherry plays a big part in what it is.

And who else has blond hair and blue eyes?

There’s plenty of room for argument. If it’s not Sherry, then hopefully somebody we’ve already met in the series. It would suck mightily if Capcom made us wait until 2009 and then revealed that it was a totally new character.

Grand Theft Auto IV Delayed- Bad News For Sony?

Hot on the bloody stumps of Manhunt 2’s behavioral readjustment, Take-Two Interactive announced Thursday that Grand Theft Auto IV– originally scheduled for release in October of this year– has been pushed back to an early 2008 release.

Obviously, this doesn’t bode well for the company. Delaying two major titles is more than enough to blast a festering wound through Take-Two’s profits. It doesn’t take an expert to understand the repercussions of such actions.

My concern is with Sony, specifically the Playstation 3. It’s been out for almost a year now, but has lagged far behind the Xbox 360 and Wii due to its repellent price tag and lousy software lineup. It was my belief that GTAIV would be the title that saw a big turnaround for the console.

But what’s going to happen now? With GTAIV delayed (until at least February) the PS3 will have to remain useless for a little while longer, a big pile of expensive parts appealing only to computer enthusiasts. The ultimate fate of the system is still undetermined (I’m still reluctant to label it a ‘failure’) but time is running short.

Of course gamers also had the option of playing it on the Xbox 360… if they could get it to WORK, right guys?

Resident Evil 5 Trailer released

Yesterday the extended trailer for Resident Evil 5 was released. By now gamers the world over have gotten a chance to see it, so it’s hardly breaking news. I’m going to share (in brief) my thoughts on what the game looks like, based on what’s showcased in the above clip. Although the trailer lasts only three minutes, it covers plenty of ground.

The setup looks very similar to Resident Evil 4, with the behind-the-back camera view and laser aiming. You can still target specific body parts, knock weapons out of hands, and intercept flying projectiles. The melee moves are present too, though I’m not sure you can use them without on-screen prompts.

The graphics are beautiful, and that’s no surprise. RE5 is set for release on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, both of which are notorious for their GPU horsepower. I’ve always stood by my stance that visuals don’t mean jack when it comes to actual gameplay, but that kind of sharpness could, at the very least, make RE5 a very scary title.

Details remain sketchy about the plot. Based on the trailer, one can conclude two things about the game’s story: you are Chris Redfield, and your vacation to Africa has gone rather awry. Like that one guy from the last installment, you find yourself in a village of people who truly, honestly do not care for you, and show off their (lack of) hospitality by throwing axes and trying to chew on your neck.

Oh, I should also mention the last few seconds of the trailer, which show an unidentified character waking up inside of a containment tank. I have a few guesses on who this person may be. The camera is so close up on the stranger’s face that it’s difficult to say, and I can’t even tell if it’s a male or female.

The action looks, to put it bluntly, intense. While RE4 certainly had its share of tension, this one makes Leon’s journey into Spai.. er, an ‘undisclosed location in Europe’ look like a casual tourist mishap. There’s not a moment during the gameplay footage where Chris isn’t surrounded on all sides by restless, blood-starved hordes. The key thing here is that there are so many more of them, no doubt due to faster processor power.

And finally… okay, I’m a little apprehensive about pointing this out; perhaps you wouldn’t even notice if I didn’t mention it. Don’t you think there’s something a little, um, off with a white man gunning his way through mobs of raging black people? Now, I realize that things are probably going to change between now and the game’s actual release date (the producers say sometime in 2009)– that said, this is the kind of three minutes that’s likely to get civil rights groups up in arms. Surely Japan/Capcom realizes that it’s not just blacks living in Africa, right?

To sum up: It looks like Resident Evil 4 with a whole lot of improvements. Good God, I need to play this.

‘Manhunt 2′ Gets Beaten With Crowbar, Has Head Smashed In, Neck Snapped, Throat Slit

Sheesh. There’s never a moment of dead air in the game industry these days. Every time I lose interest in this blog and start slipping back into a perpetual state of laziness, a bomb goes off that I have to jump all over. Maybe I should stop updating more often, so all hell will continue breaking loose.

Today, there’s been some very bad news on Take-Two Interactive’s front. In case you weren’t aware, they’re the corporation that’s constantly coming under fire from watchdog groups and egotistical maniacs, having garnered a reputation for their ‘hyperviolent’ franchises. Their latest game, ‘Manhunt 2′, has been essentially getting its ass handed to it all day long.
The upcoming installment has repeatedly taken brutal stabbings to the face and gut today, and Gamepolitics has been painstakingly covering the whole fustercluck situation.

First, there was the report that our friends in the United Kingdom have refused to rate the game, effectively banning it altogether over there. While outright censorship in the UK is strongly discouraged and alternative methods are often taken, the British Board of Film Classification evidently decided that ‘Manhunt 2′, was way, way too scary and creepy for their tastes.

Said the BBFC:

“In the case of Manhunt 2 this has not been possible. Manhunt 2 is distinguishable from recent high-end video games by its unremitting bleakness and callousness of tone in an overall game context which constantly encourages visceral killing with exceptionally little alleviation or distancing.”

Right. Because it’s not like any kind of editing can be done before the game is released. It’s not the end of July yet.

You’d think that kind of craziness would stay overseas and that we wouldn’t have to worry about having the game condemned. You’d be wrong.

That’s because the ESRB has given Manhunt 2 an ‘AO’ rating. Akin to the dreaded NC-17 mark all US filmmakers try to avoid, an ‘AO’ rating is the worst thing that can happen to the game. It means that most major retailers will not stock it,

When thinking about to all the other games that have gotten by with an ‘M’ rating (including the original Manhunt, which I can say with a straight face is the most violent game I’ve ever played) you have to wonder just how brutal MH2 must be.

Or maybe, perhaps, this is all because Manhunt 2 will be on the Nintendo Wii, where it will take full capabilities of the Wiimote and allow you to stab, shoot, and crack by swinging your body and arms around. Maybe that’s the case, but unlikely given that MH2 will be ported to multiple consoles, that don’t all have a wacky death wand in the box.