Iwata: DS going online, Revolution to have built-in Wi-Fi - GameCube News at GameSpot: “Iwata: DS going online, Revolution to have built-in Wi-Fi

Nintendo’s next-gen console to sport built-in wireless connectivity, IBM CPU, and an ATI GPU; DS to go online later this year; new Zelda trailer and screens inside.

Hot on the heels of J Allard’s keynote at GDC, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata outlined his own company’s future plans in even more detail at the San Francisco event.

After walking onstage, Iwata briefly talked about his background in game development. Then he whet loyal Cubers’ appetites by showing a trailer for the forthcoming, still-untitled Legend of Zelda. The trailer (viewable here) showed the new, grittier version of series hero Link engaging in a series of The Lord of the Rings-like adventures, including battling orc-like creatures and visiting a cave full of ghostly warriors.”

This story has been edited with new content attached below - Friday Marth 11th 8:00pm

Another 2005 MMORPG has just shown itself as a medium blip on the game radar. Gods and Heros takes place in the year 300 BC when Rome is just coming into light as a world power. Now I’m a sucker for all things Roman, but the thing that truly sucked me in was the demonstration of the combat animations. Finally I think someone got it right.

Check out the videos on this page. You can see people tossed, disarmed, stabbed, etc. People also user their feet as leverage to pull swords out of stabbed combatants. The texture-work isn’t WoW-phenomenal but overall the engine looks pretty good.

A new element to MMORPG is the idea that you can have NPC henchmen (which is most likely dependent on your class). About freakin’ time! You’ll be able to customize and train your men, and then set them in various formations before battles. While in combat you can shout out specific orders to switch tactics according to mob weakness and your strenghts. This should really spice up combat - not only are you pulling off your individual moves yourself with your abiliites but you’ll also have a hand in small squad tactics as well.

There will be numerous “evil” human NPC factions based on historic European and Mediterranean tribes: Germans, Carthaginians, Greeks, Gauls - and since this is early Rome the Etruscans are in that mix as well. Expect to fight beasts from early mythology. There’s a snake-like Medusa (in one of those videos), Cyclops, Gorgons, Nymphs, Skeletal Warriors — it’s a regular Clash of the Titans and a breath of fresh air after all of these fantasy games.

Gods and Heros is under develop by Perpetual Games, a company based in San Fran. Although they don’t have any games released thus far, they’re developing their own MMORPG engine to be re-sold to other publishers (Turbine competitor?). They’re also the company developing the 2006/07 Star Trek Online. With long term development plans I think this company has the backing to follow through.

… And I certainly hope so. I don’t know if I can take starting another Medieval-Fantasy MMORPG, and this title seems to bring a lot of cool new things to MMORP gaming.

Cue the Kirk death-spar music

Edit:I just found this juicy tidbit off a Q&A Session with Computer Games Magazine

Computer Games - What other unique gameplay elements will Gods and Heroes have?

Stieg Hedlund - The thing were most excited about is the ability to hire minions which then form a squad around the player. If you have a group of players with their squads as well as enemies similarly arrayed, you have large scale battle—the kinds of battles this period of history is known for.

It’s also a very powerful way to customize your gameplay experience, since a squad of archers will play very differently from a squad of infantry. And, since you can keep more minions in your camp than you can have in your squad, these different play experiences can be readily switched between, or hybridized by the player.

For consumers the GDC is like an E3 overture. Seems that a new Zelda movie was released during a Ninendo keynote. If you remember the trailer for last year’s E3 - Link is back, and unlike Wind Waker he’s hit puberty and lost the cartoony cellshaded look.

Download the movie here. No registration required.

Very very cool. We’ll most likely see user-controlled movies this May. Me want.

Under development by a collection of ex-Bungie employees, Stubs is an Xbox “shooter” where you control the Zombie.

These clips are great. I love the first brain munch, and the cop who receives an ironic beating.

Thanks Mike!

Attention all you Unreal Tournament and Halo 2 junkies — The next lineup of the Battlefield series (1942, Vietnam) is coming to a store near you in just a few months, and it looks like it’s shaping up to be fantastic.

If you’ve enjoyed teamplay shooters before then you absolutely must look into this title.

First, watch this trailer of the battlefield food chain (or Bigger Fish). I recommend “Battlefield2.info” as the download site (.rar extractor required) because a) there’s no signup, b) it’s fast, and c) It’s in German… And Germans are cool.

In this BF installment the theater is modern with hightech vehicles and weapons, but Battlefield 2 is hardly just a facelift. I’ve been reading some things that have me very damn excited:

Medics have an area of effect heal but only when their medpack is equipped. If a soldier goes down in a fight he may not necessarily be dead (it depends on how bad the killing blow was). A medic can bring back fallen team mates with some electro paddle fun. And yes they can be used as hand to hand weapons, too. Finally - there are no med packs laying around in the maps, but your friendly medic can throw some on the ground for you to consume.

The community. A quick glance at Total Battlefield 2shows that there are already mods in development. Even beyond that there are mod-teams that have Switched from the Half Life 2 engine over to BF 2. Um.. HL2 is a gorgeous engine, so take these words seriously:

“It looks like we’re going to switch over to the Battlefield 2 engine. It’s graphically superior to Source and is also more user friendly. In addition to this, it supports vehicles for online play and also has heightmap terrain generation.

Sorry to all of you who were looking forward to a Source version, but we go where opportunity is.” [– The Verge of Armageddon Team working on a C&C Renegade Mod]

That’s an impressive statement.

BF2 should be released in the second quarter of this year. A more specific guess - June, soon after E3.

MilesTag - DIY Laser Tag System: “MilesTagTM is the product of our ongoing efforts to design and build a high-quality, full-featured “laser tag” gaming system that is comparable to the best commercial systems on the market (honestly, we think it already surpasses most of those systems in both capability and flexibility) and can be built for a fraction of the cost of a commercial system.  ”

Earth 2160 has just caught me completely off guard (Gamespot has a preview).

2001’s Earth 2150 was a great little game with some RTS gameplay twists - you would research vehicle chassis and weapons separately and then “design” your units with the different atoms you’ve unlocked. Granted - this was a bit of a micromanagement headache during multiplayer, but in all it added to the replayability). The single player campaign had you race against the clock to get off Earth before it blew up in 100 days (or so); you were forced to consisently balance the purchase of new units/buildings/research to help fight to gain/hold territory against the ultimate goal of affording a the end-game colonization ship that would fly your faction to Mars, leaving the other 2 factions to go to hell.

This is where Earth 2160’s story starts - Earth is toast and all of the factions are now warring over new Martian conquests. A fourth faction has also been added (der the Martians). The graphics are absolutely killer… like, Half-Life 2-quality but stuck in an RTS. The camera has support for both the top-down RTS style camera or to zoom into the eyes of any of your units. This is great news as Earth 2150’s camera system had an isometric 3d camera zoom-thang going on. It was often difficult to peer around mountains and to see/target what was shooting your units from the air. Unfortunately I’m not sure if unit-design is still in.

Earth 2150 was an enjoyable RTS game similar in may ways to Total Annihilation. It flew under the radar for most people but with screenshots like this, I don’t think the 2160 (part 3 of the franchise) will have this problem. Just take a gander (clickable)!

GamesIndustry.biz - GDC: Getting Unreal with Epic’s Mark Rein: “GDC: Getting Unreal with Epic’s Mark Rein

Of all the companies working on next-generation game technology, Epic Games is arguably the boldest. Last year, it wowed us with stunning graphics - and at GDC this week, it plans to show off how it will keep the costs of developing such games down to reasonable levels. We caught up with vice president Mark Rein to discover more.”