Microsoft recently held a press conference in Japan to show the growing local support for its Xbox 360 and Xbox Live Arcade service, and, surprisingly, it was Square Enix who came away with the most interesting developments of the show, and — even more surprisingly — they had nothing to do with Final Fantasy or RPGs in general.
Most notably: a new Live Arcade game project tentatively titled Project: Cube, a multiplayer dual-stick arena shooter that doesn’t give away much by just watching: for the life of me I can’t understand why the laser shots fired sometimes hang limply in the air (on the floor?).
Also, surely I can’t be alone in seeing some heavy similarities between the new game and Sean Cooper’s hit Boxhead Flash game series, down to the name itself?
With the Encore edition of Pixeljunk Eden now officially in the wild, series creator Q-games has begun the slow information reveal of its next game in the franchise — still known simply as PixelJunk 1-4 (the fourth game after Racers, Monsters, and Eden — and above you see the first two images.
It’s not much to go on, other than what would appear to be a group’s journey burrowing into the earth, and — what have we here — over at the series’ home site, the ‘coming soon’ notice hovers over a shovel beginning the dig itself.
The images come as part of a new Facebook campaign to get one million people to buy the game on its launch day, and the more people join its launch-event group, the more images the studio promises to post.
With its flagrantly outlandish Old Blighty stereotypes mixed with fantastical turn of the century steam-punk block puzzle tropes, EA’s DS puzzler/platformer Henry Hatsworth and the Puzzling Adventure will likely remain one of the top one of the most creatively directed visions of 2009.
As I’ve mentioned before, most of the kudos there can be attributed to art director Jay Epperson‘s wood-block and paper-cut vision for its puzzling realms from the Livingston-ish explorations through the tribal Mysteria, the floating islands and dirigibles of Skysland to that Puzzle Realm itself, Hatworth manages to capture big wonder on a tiny screen.
And the series couldn’t have started at a better place: over the following pages, you’ll find all the game’s environments, the first stirrings of the game’s enemies both fragile and fearsome (pork hork!), and — as a special bonus — a look at some of the game’s bosses that never made it into the game, including, as hinted in the title, one Evil Ben Franklin.
Well technically, yes, it is classic Sierra adventures like Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter, Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel and Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizardsplayable from in-browser (including, apparently, the iPhone and Wii, with a bit more fiddling on the part of the creators), but it’s still not quite.
The difference? Sarien’s in-browser versions let you jump from location to location at will, have augmented the text commands with a right click menu, and, most curiously, allow you to see the avatars (your avatar) of other concurrent players, all clicking around just as wildly and blurting out “BANG ON DOOR” and “MAKE CHECK AUTO”.
But it’s a good start, should the rights holders allow it to evolve (and possibly with a play-solo option) — creator Martin Kool is currently at work adding support for Space Quest 2, King’s Quest and The Black Cauldron, and it’s been given at least a very confused hat tip by Leisure Suit creator Al Lowe himself.
It’s much ado about voice acting, but the fact that Stephen Fry has revealed via his twitter that he’s just finished recording new voiceovers for the forthcoming PSP version of Media Molecule’s LittleBigPlanet is causing much rejoicing around the games blogs, and for good reason — his warmly paternal delighted cooing at every little victory of your first steps into the game set the tone for the childlike innocence that was to follow.
After months of speculation and an accidental reveal via GDC slide notes, Rock Band creators Harmonix and Lego Star Wars/Batman/Indiana Jones creators TT Games have officially announced that 2009 will see the release of a Lego branded Rock Band for Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and DS.
Why Lego? As it turns out, the game is being positioned as a way to take Rock Band‘s suggestive metal posturing and give it family-friendly smiley-face accessibility, with “classic favourites suitable for younger audiences” like:
Blur: “Song 2”;
Carl Douglas: “Kung Fu Fighting”;
Europe: “The Final Countdown”;
Good Charlotte: “Boys and Girls”;
Pink: “So What”
As for the Lego integration itself, apart from being able to customize your minifig-avatars (as well as your roadies, managers, and crew) as you’ve classically been able to do, the studios say that instead of mimicing real-world venues, the game’s performances will take place at “venues, stadiums and fantasy locations on Earth and beyond, that mimic the imaginative settings that the Lego world offers.”
I have to admit: I’m as excited for this as I have been for any of the franchise’s other iterations, despite the toned down approach, though if it doesn’t have guitars smashing into a handful of 1×1 bricks, both Harmonix and TT are a little bit dead to me.
Remember that time when you finished Fallout 3? Yeah, not so much, with the new Broken Steel DLC coming May 5th. As previouslypromised, and in keeping
with producer Todd Howard’s lament that players were “pissed off that it ends,” after the studio “underestimated how many people would want to keep playing,” the DLC will allow players to forgo the ending and continue their quest in a newly evolved world.
Shacknews was on hand in London for the full reveal, who said:
In a nutshell, Broken Steel will remove the game’s ending entirely, with Bethesda’s Pete Hines saying simply to fans that called for an open-ended resolution, “We got the idea.” Players will still have to make the final choice, but following that climax the game will continue, presenting new prologue quests, another 10 levels to gain, and new perks, monsters and achievements to keep the climb interesting.
For instance, one new perk will be “Puppies,” a passive ability that sees Dogmeat reincarnated into a puppy after he is killed in battle. A new weapon shown off called the “Heavy Incinerator” works like a projectile flamethrower, firing bursts of flame from long distance.
Click through for the full details, which — be forewarned! — include previous end-game spoilers.
The manuals, of course, detail their crossover ‘artxgame’ created with Spelunky creator Derek Yu for Giant Robot’s oft-bloggedGame Over/Continue show. See more of their game here, and more photos incoming when the manuals themselves arrive.
Also new on the ngmoco front: the first direct feed footage of developer Rough Cookie‘s upcoming 3D spherical tower defense game Star Defense. I’m still curious to see how a tower defense game will operate under heavy stress when the majority of the playfield is obscured by itself, but the new preview again shows the game’s consistently impressive production levels.
More screenshots of the game’s environments (and one curiously unspherical close-up) below the fold. (more…)
Fresh from Rolando developer Hand Circus, two new secret levels have just gone live on the App Store with the game’s 1.2 update [App Store], including Torrid Twist, another of its Cameltry-like free-rotating puzzle challenges, and Excavation, an enormous traditional level that requires progressively more challenging bomb-play to free Rolandos trapped deep underground.
Also newly updated: the official home page for this summer’s forthcoming Rolando sequel, Quest for the Golden Orchid. Ngmoco are adding new information to the site every Monday until the game’s release, and this week they’ve started with two new characters, now given more distinct personalities than the first game’s cast.
Orchid, as you might be able to suss out from the image above, is shaping up as a properly British colonial adventure (as compared to the first’s storybook/fantasy underpinnings), with the captain of the HMS Plunderful, General Sir Richard Smythe, on his quest for the rare flower, accompanied (this week) by Lord Derby Disraeli, his treasure authority.
Though Hand Circus have long promised new mechanics for the sequel, it’s clear that some things will remain the same — even silhouetted, the outlines of the larger Rolando Royalty that you shepherded through the first remain. Henry Hatsworth not withstanding, good old fashioned 19th century sea-bound exploring is rich and unexplored thematic territory of its own, though, and very happily accepted here.
