I had a chance to play Civilization Revolutions at E for All on Thursday. It looks like a pretty fun game, which adds back in some of the lightheartedness that has been missing from the series lately. Graphics were not yet finished, so the graphic quality was only so-so, but they were fun to watch. If you reach a certain milestone, a minor civ (the Phoenicians, more on them later) will give you a reward of dancers, which jumped around inside your palace (yes, the palace is back). The arctic barbarian chief Gray Wolf climbs or pulls himself into the screen before he starts insulting you. Take away a city of his, and he’ll tell you he did not really want it anyway. The demo only lasted about ten minutes, but it gave a pretty good impression. However, the game was fun to play, although it took me a few minutes to learn the controls (not owning a console).
Well its time for another monkeygames PSA about a great game that may have slipped under the radar but deserves your attention. The game in question is a Japanese style Role Playing Game called “Eternal Sonata” for the xbox 360.
Eternal Sonata was released on 9.17.2007 in the USA and may have been overlooked because of the hype and anticipation of Halo 3 being released just one week later.
Eternal Sonata takes place within the mind of Frédéric Chopin in the last hours of his life [Chopin contracted tuberculosis in 1849] This “world” helps to set the stage for one of the most compelling stories I have ever seen. There are several intriguing plot lines going on in Eternal Sonata and if you are a fan of good storytelling this is the game for you. Some of the plot lines include Philosophy of life and death, governmental corruption, revolution and poverty.
All the characters in Eternal Sonata that comprise your party are names after musical references, and the names fit perfectly both in personal conduct and on the battle field.
Eternal Sonata’s strongest element is its story. This may be a bold statement but the integration of music, thought and storytelling is something I have not seen since Cowboy Bebop [Bebop is still better, but Eternal Sonata comes close].
The game play of Eternal Sonata is a lot of fun as well. Much of the game takes place in beautifully surreal areas. The graphics look very good, and have a nice hand drawn 3d feel to them. Areas do seem a bit linear but there are some good puzzles to solve, and if you take the time exploration of each path in a forest, or dungeon it can yield some cool loot. No matter what area you are in most monster encounters are optional. There are no random encounters if you want to fight you can if you don’t just avoid the monster, either way its good to see random encounters in RPG’s going the way of the 8-Track!
When you do fight the battles play out in an active turn based system. The key word there is active, you can move party members around a 3d battle field, attacks are done with button combos, when you are not attacking you still need to be on your toes because you have the ability to block attacks, or counter them with a well timed button press. When attacking each hit goes into a combo meter, if you wait and build up this meter a massive bonus is given to your special moves. The combat system is one of the best active turn based systems I have seen in an RPG.
The list of character powers and abilities grow as you level. In the beginning you are given the option of selecting two special abilities, one light and one dark. The light and dark mechanic some into play on the battlefield. Some powers will only work when you move your character into a light source, others will only work if you are in the shadows [in sunlit areas monster or party member shadows count as dark as well] In outside areas the sun is constantly moving so the light and dark areas are constantly changing. There are also moments in Boss battles where the changing position of the sun, and movement of shadows can quickly turn the tide of a battle or allow you tank to fire off a much needed light based healing spell.
Now there is one issue with Eternal Sonata and this is mainly the long cut scenes, 15 to 20 minuets can be a bit much but they only serve to tell more of the story so its forgivable to an extent. Once you get through the prologue, and first chapter its not that bad. Over all its annoying to play for 15 min and then spend half an hour watching a cut scene.
So far I am about fifteen hours into this game, the story still remains interesting, and I still go out of my way to get into a battle. Eternal Sonata’s strengths lie within its intriguing story, and active combat system. If you are a fan of RPGs, good storytelling, combat, and off beat humor you owe it to yourself to play Eternal Sonata.
Gotta love the Red versus Blue shenanigans. The new content update - which goes live today - includes a new base versus base rendered in a similar pallet as Ascension from Halo 2 - one of my favorite maps. There’s also some new content for use with forge, including some very large soccer balls, and one of the maps even has a small race track stringing along the outer edge of a bunker. I smell new game types!
Here it is: two minutes of GTA IV bliss known as “Move up, Ladies.” I especially appreciated that Rockstar opened with a shot of the Statue of Liberty some random, giant statue in no way affiliated with New York that most definitely did not make an appearance in Ghostbusters II. For those interested in seeing this trailer on the big screen, it should be available on Xbox LIVE now. And you probably wish that we’d told you that before you clicked play. Sorry, we were lonely.
Numbers are supposed to be impressive, right? Well, it’s been 10 years, two hardware generations, and about seventeen thousand rumors since the last pure number Street Fighter came around. And today we have the first ever official details on Street Fighter IV.
We don’t blame you if your eyes have already skipped down to the screenshot lower on the page (yes, that’s from the game engine). Take your time. But we’ve got some information as well, so the rest of this is probably worth reading when you get a chance.
Microsoft Xbox 360Did you expect the Wii? Sorry. It’s a brilliant piece of innovation, that’s not in question, but there simply aren’t enough games to judge it against the best controllers ever. The Xbox 360 pad has proven itself over a longer time and on a wider selection of titles — and it has its own claims to originality.
It’s not terribly pretty — it’s beige, for a start — but the Xbox 360’s pad is a winner on several counts. For starters, it was the first wireless pad to come as standard. Its comfy, solid design offers dual analogue joysticks and two analogue trigger buttons underneath.
There’s also a built-in jack for connecting a headset, so you can hear and talk to your n00b opponents. Can it be waved around like a magician’s wand? Hell no, but this is about serious man-gaming — there’s no time for moving your arms when your thumbs are tapping this fast.
Microsoft Corp. might as well enter the real estate business. They may not want your mortgage payment or utility bills, but they’ll take all the space they can get.
Why?
Because when it comes to the connected entertainment business, the diversified vendor wants to own or control the home and everything around it.
Consider this: As far as delivering video to consumers is concerned, the IT colossus already is in the home with your PC and media center software, already produces wireless devices and code, and already has multifunctional IPTV — and just cable TV — software in many TV STBs.
While many vendors would kill for this breadth of coverage — which spells countless big-buck revenue opportunities for service providers — Microsoft has it and plans to expand its presence in the home and beyond.
A clear-cut case-in-point was Microsoft’s announcement at the Consumer Electronics Show 2007 of plans to integrate its IPTV software with its wildly popular Xbox 360 gaming console for general availability to service providers by the holidays. The move was expected, as it long has been said that the Xbox was a Trojan Horse for Microsoft to own home networking.
Today Epic announced that a new game mode will be coming in an April 9th update.
The Game mode is called Annex.
Annex
Objective: Capture and hold key locations to collect enough points to win the round.
Description: In Annex, you win by keeping control over key map locations, or objectives, long enough to collect a winning number of points. Every map has two to five identified objectives available for capture, with one objective active at a time. Objectives are based on map weapon-spawn locations and have a potential value of 60 points toward either team’s score. Teams collect those points by maintaining ownership of an objective until all its 60 points have been distributed. Every second that a team controls an objective, the team gets one point. When an objective falls to zero points, the next objective is selected at random.
On the HUD, the current objective appears below the team scores at top left. This indicator contains several pieces of relevant information. The weapon icon inside the circle indicates which weapon-spawn location is being used as the objective. The compass along the outer edge of the circle shows the relative direction to the objective. The number inside the circle indicates how many points remain at that objective and the background icon color indicates which team currently controls it. No color means the objective awaits capture, a red icon means the Locust Horde hold the objective and a blue icon means the COG hold it. When the icon in the indicator circle fills, the corresponding team’s score also changes color, the team begins collecting points from the objective, and the point value of the objective drops.
On the map, a projected ring marks the physical location and boundaries of the objective in the world. The ring’s color indicates the current captor: White means neutral, blue COG, and red Locust. To capture an objective, players must stand inside the glowing ring uncontested for a short period of time. How long depends on how many teammates stand in the ring at once. One player can capture an objective in eight seconds, two players in four seconds, three players in two seconds, and four players in one second. Once a team takes an objective, they are not required to remain inside the ring to maintain ownership. The captured objective’s points drain until an opposing team member enters the ring, or until its points fall to zero.
Round scores can be set as low as 120 points or as high as 480 points. The first team to reach the target score wins the round.
Respawns: Infinite, wave-based every 15 seconds.
This mode appears to borrow some inspiration from the old Onslaught mode in Unreal Tournament 2004. This will be the second content update to Gears of War, and will be available on April 9th.
We always knew there was so much more fun to be had from the whole Guitar Hero thing.. and this sounds like its PERFECT.
Harmonix forms Rock BandNew game from Guitar Hero-maker to feature guitar, drum, microphone peripherals, master recordings from major labels; game due on PS3, 360 later this year.
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Harmonix, MTV Networks, and Electronic Arts today officially announced Rock Band. The music-based game will do Guitar Hero two better by featuring guitar, drum, and microphone peripherals, proving rock and roll requires more than just someone who can handle the axe. Rock Band is scheduled to be available for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 this holiday season.
Like Guitar Hero, Rock Band will feature licensed music. Thanks largely in part to its new relationship with MTV, Harmonix was able to wrangle multi-track master recordings from the catalogs of some of the biggest record labels in the business. On board to offer access to their portfolios are EMI Music Publishing, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Hollywood Records, and Warner Chappell Music. It is currently unknown how much from each music publisher will be available to Harmonix, but the emphasis going forward will be to work with the artists themselves.
WOW.. you have got to see this vid to belive it. I didnt embed the vid.. so head over to Kotaku for the actual video. BUt wow.. if only it would ever see the light of day. Looks like fun
So what do you think of this vid? For starters, it’s running in blurry footage from an emulator, so its authenticity is far from assured. Then you’ve got the shoddy “alpha” presentation, which while sticking to Casamassina’s story of it being conceptual also could just as easily be a fanboy job.
Me? I call real deal. There were too many people whispering about this thing for it to not be true. What I want to know, though, is why or how this was even conceived. Were Microsoft ever seriously entertaining the idea of letting Halo turn up on a Nintendo handheld? Would Bungie ever seriously entertain the idea of their FPS masterpiece ending up as a Game Boy side-scroller?
Civ Going Console
