As noted yesterday in kicking off E3 coverage, LucasArts and Telltalle Games have partnered to rejuvenate the classic Monkey Island adventure franchise with both a new Wii/PC episodic series and a remake of the original for PC and Xbox Live Arcade.

Above, the trailer for Telltale’s new take, and below, a longer look behind the scenes at LucasArts’s own special edition from its new original cast voiceovers, updated graphic style, and rerecorded music.

Also of note, original series creator Ron Gilbert — now heading up development at Hothead on his own new adventure, Deathspank, reminisces about the creation of the original Monkey Island and the problems of an emaciated Charles Atlas.

WANDERING WITCHES: NEW DETAILS ON VALVE’S LEFT 4 DEAD 2

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6.1.2009

Brandon Boyer

7 Replies

The collective friends of Offworld over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun have recently returned from an exclusive visit to Valve with an exclusive hands on preview of what, precisely, is going on down south in the studio’s just announced Left 4 Dead sequel.

My favorite new described addition? The Wandering Witch:

It seems in the daytime, the Witch has a bit more pep. Rather than sitting crouched, sobbing, singing, now this most terrifying of gaming enemies methodically paces around, wandering where she sees fit, although still apparently zoned out. She may be on foot, but she’s no more interested in being disturbed. This adds in a whole new aspect to Witch evasion. No longer can you simply take the long way around where she’s squatted. Instead, she may well be walking exactly where you’re headed. Or worse, walking up behind you, singing her haunting song, suddenly infuriated by you when you swing around in terror.

Left 4 Dead 2: Exclusive RPS Hands-On Preview [Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

E309: REZ CREATOR, UBISOFT PARTNERING ON ‘PROJECT EDEN’

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6.1.2009

Brandon Boyer

2 Replies

One last tidbit from Monday’s Ubisoft presser: though they offered no further details or any information altogether, the company announced it would be working with Rez and Space Channel 5 producer Tetsuya Mizuguchi on a new project, tentatively titled Eden, says various reports from the floor. As Brandon McCartin points out in the comments, Eden was one of the original codenames for Rez.

Meanwhile, the fate of his partnership with Atari originally announced in December for a Wii project codenamed QJ is as unclear as ever, though Siliconera recently dug up evidence that some music had been licensed for the project.

Answer: yes, full stop.

As I hinted at before, somehow the team at Harmonix, alongside Gorillaz animator Pete Candeland of Passion Pictures (I’m presuming, based on Candeland’s similarly jaw-dropping work on Guitar Hero II‘s TV ad and the full-3D Rock Band 2 intro), have managed to even out-Katamari Katamari Damacy for what I’m going to call as the finest surrealist game intro we’ve ever seen.

And it’s for the Beatles. At first, you’ll think, hey, what amazing likenesses! This is like when the Mamas and the Papas were on Scooby Doo, only even more completely brilliant! And then a minute and twenty later, the doors of perception are blown open and it changes, and then another 25 seconds later, it blossoms even further into a relentlessly glorious technicolor dreamscape to the very end.

Apart from the updated trailer for Sony’s The Last Guardian/Trico, this could easily be the best cinematic treat to come out of E3 2009.

UPDATE: Harmonix has posted a beautiful hi-def version of the intro to the official Beatles: Rock Band website, where you can pick out even more details and legacy references, like the tiny jar of Marmite Ringo packed for his British Invasion, sitting in his Strawberry Fields Farm box. If this animation doesn’t pick up some Major Awards in 2010, I’ll eat my bowler.

Long in development (and long one of my most anticipated online games) but just shored up again this week with a new EA publishing partnership and this new trailer above, All Points Bulletin — from original Crackdown developer Realtime Worlds — promises to take the core cops and robbers story and make it massive, with a persistent MMO open world, deep customization and gang identity, and (as promised a year ago), many smart touches, like streaming the same song (via last.fm) to all various online players that enter a car at the same time.

Microsoft spent surprisingly little time talking about Xbox Live Arcade developments during its press conference yesterday — and left its Community Games section even further in the dust — but GamerBytes has uploaded the above sizzle reel showing a few of this year’s upcoming downloadables.

Though it’s marked as internally developed, Splosion Man is a new platformer from Twisted Pixel, the creators of excellent PC/XBLA action/puzzler The Maw, and you’ll also see, among other things, another look at the microtransaction supported avatar racer Joyride from Vancouver’s BigPark, a quick look at the dual analog sidescrolling shooter Shadow Complex from former Advent Rising devs and Undertow creators Chair, and RedLynx’s heavily physics-enabled motocross-y puzzle game Trials, now due for a console release.

Though I’m actually jonezin’ so much harder to re-watch the game’s animated intro that kicked off Microsoft’s E3 conference (especially the White Album era bits!), Harmonix has instead just released the first gameplay trailer for their Beatles: Rock Band.

The trailer gives you a look at the band through their various stylistic eras, as well as the first look at the mechanics of its harmonizing vocals — a technique Harmonix utilized in their earlier Karaoke Revolution games, but which are just now debuting in Rock Band via the Beatles.

The game will include 45 songs on disc, ten of which have just been announced — “I Saw Her Standing There,” “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” “I Feel Fine,” “Taxman,” “Day Tripper,” Back In The USSR,” “I Am The Walrus,” “Octopus’s Garden,” “Here Comes The Sun,” and “Get Back” — with full downloadable albums being delivered later, starting with the entire Abbey Road album, and an Xbox Live exclusive on the song “All You Need Is Love.”

As noted before, the game will be released for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii on September 9th.

Just announced at Microsoft’s E3 conference as an Xbox 360 console exclusive, Left 4 Dead 2, a new chapter of the game that takes the struggle against the horde to the southern bayou, and will focus more strongly on melee weapons — chainsaws, axes, frying pans, and baseball bats — on top of its updated arsenal of guns.

The game, due to launch on Xbox 360 and PC on November 17th, will also include new boss zombies, new survivors (seen above), and “more co-operative campaigns, more Versus campaigns, and maps for Survival mode available at launch.”

1.) Microsoft unveiled the 3D motion sensing and facial/voice recognizing “controller” project named Natal.

Microsoft promised the moon in its demo video for their Project Natal, carrying the tagline that it would “make ‘you’ the controller” and that, as the controller is the current “barrier separating game players from everyone else,” with Natal, “the only experience you need is life experience.”

As above, Microsoft demoed racing games, fighting games, and simple sports games using full body spatial recognition that let you hold up virtual steering wheels, duck, weave and deliver punches, and kick goals using nothing more than their physical actions.

But the company also took that a step further, promising full facial recognition — demonstrated by walking in front of your TV and having the Xbox 360 instantly log you in to your personal account — and object scanning, like holding up your own skateboard and having it instantly placed in a game. Microsoft added that the system could function just as well in a multiplayer environment.

For real world use, apart from a ringing endorsement by none less than Steven Spielberg, Microsoft called up Fable producer Peter Molyneux to demonstrate Lionhead’s project Milo — a virtual friend that they promised could carry on fluid conversations with full voice and emotion recognition, and demoed sleight of hand tricks like drawing on a piece of paper, holding it up to the Natal sensor, and having Milo “receive” that same paper in the virtual world, with additional recognition of what you’d drawn. (more…)

E309: LUCASARTS ANNOUNCES NEW WII, PC MONKEY ISLAND, XBOX LIVE REMAKE

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6.1.2009

Brandon Boyer

8 Replies

And so E3 coverage officially begins: first up, LucasArts has announced the revival of its classic adventure series Monkey Island with Tales of Monkey Island, a new five-part monthly episodic series for WiiWare and PC by the Telltale Games, the same studio of LucasArts vets behind both the Sam & Max revival and the Strongbad series games.

Following that, LucasArts will unveil The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, an internally developed remake of the original game that will add “updated high definition graphics, a re-mastered musical score, and full voiceover”, exclusive to PC and Xbox Live Arcade.

The Tales series is due to launch in “a few short weeks,” with the Special Edition due “later in the summer.”

Monkey Island [LucasArts]