GOING DEEP ON MUSIC WITH HARMONIX
Harmonix co-founder Alex Rigopulos has some very smart reflections on the birth and evolution of music gaming in this recent chat with Wired, talking about the work and non-work of music creation software — which the company was founded to create — versus their music performance software as we know it today.
He also expounds on how familiarity with the music helps guide you as a player, and the risks in broadening its catalog from Guitar Hero‘s cherry-picked ‘best of the history of rock’ catalog to Rock Band‘s more all-encompassing selections that attempt to foster music discovery rather than just appreciation, and, implicitly, makes you understand why the company is at the fore of the music gaming genre.
Game|Life Video: The Man Behind Rock Band [Wired]
See more posts about: Harmonix, Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
DENKI RE-EMERGE WITH XBLA BOARDGAME MASHUP QUARREL
Scotland developer Denki has a pedigree that belies the attention its received: studio head Gary Penn was formerly of DMA Design (who you now know as Grand Theft Auto creator Rockstar North) and has had design roles in games like Body Harvest (which you could argue was a prototype for how GTA would eventually function in 3D) and, more recently, Crackdown.
Denki, for itself, has been behind some of the best cult hits of the Game Boy Color/Advance generation from the very smart puzzle game Denki Blocks to Go! Go! Beckham!, a wholly unlikely and wickedly good GBA title that brought the soccer star cutely into a pastel Mario/Yoshi’s Island-esque world which he conquered with trademark footwork (see: this YouTube video).
Now, after a diversion onto set-top box game venture which hasn’t panned out technologically, Scottish games mag Square Go has got the first look at Denki’s new Xbox Live Arcade venture, Quarrel: Word War One. Square says the game plays out like “Scrabble x Risk x Countdown” (the last of which necessitated a google: I’d substitute Boggle, perhaps, for the Americans), where word games blossom out to territory control, which appears to feature Denki’s by now recognizably primary-colored aesthetics and might just turn out to be a surprisingly good development.
World Exclusive: Quarrel – Hands On [Square-Go]
See more posts about: Denki, Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
BETTER LEFT UNSAID: SCRAPS FROM LEFT 4 DEAD’S CUTTING ROOM FLOOR
We’ve already looked at length at what Left 4 Dead is subtly teaching the player in its opening cinematic, and over at the game’s official blog, they’ve recently posted a detailed look of their own at the four month process of shaping its intricacies.
Most intriguingly, the earliest videos hint at a budding last-guy-on-earth romance between Zoey and Francis, which sounds just about as off-putting as they said it ultimately was, and the post shows the challenges of cutting down unintended comedy and making characters less vulnerable than they wanted them to be:
Through playtesting, we also found that the initial sections of the hunter sequence were lingering a bit too long, allowing viewers to wonder whether Louis would himself become infected. In later edits, this part of the intro would be edited more tightly and shot with more close-ups in order to remove any lulls in which the viewers would be tempted to ponder the fate of Louis themselves. You also notice that the hunter no longer gets away from the survivors but instead falls from the building and sets off the car alarm, providing a plausible cause for the Survivors setting off the alarm.
The Moviemaking Process: Left 4 Dead’s Intro Movie
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
METAL GEAR’S DECEMBER SURPRISE
Back in July, as many may have forgot, a French games blog suggested a rumor that Kojima Productions might have a December Surprise up its sleeve. December 12th, they said, six months after the release of the game (that length of time, players will note, fitting in nicely with the fiction of Metal Gear Solid 4) might trigger an in-game event.
Kojima’s no stranger to time-based fourth-wall-shattering trickery: one of Metal Gear 3‘s aged boss characters can be secretly defeated by saving in the middle of a fight, exiting out and forwarding your PlayStation clock by a few days, and returning to the game to find him dead from waiting.
All of that’s preface to the widely reported new teaser on Kojima Production’s website which simply reads “A Next Metal Gear is…” accompanied by an image that is surely only coincidentally similar to the green glow of the Xbox 360’s power ring (note: it’s just as similar to the PS3’s own [colorless] power symbol).
We’re as much in the dark as anyone for now, but thought the timing of the new teaser seems oddly serendipitous and worthy of note.
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
GO UNDERCOVER FOR THE RESIDENT EVIL 5 DEMO
With Microsoft and Capcom only releasing the Xbox 360 demo for Resident Evil 5 in Japan import-focused blog Siliconera has released a comprehensive guide for the rest of the world to sneak in under the radar and download it for yourself.
The bonus? Once you’ve got your digital paws on it, the demo plays fully in English, and even calls itself Resident Evil versus its rest of the world name, Biohazard.
How To Get Access To Japan’s Resident Evil 5 Demo [Siliconera]
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MIRROR’S EDGE, RUNNING THE VOID
Though I’m still reserving judgment about how the just announced DLC for Mirror’s Edge will work without true-life guideposts to get my peripheral bearings, what I do like (apart from the gawpingly beautiful plain shapes they’ve created) is that it’s bringing me warm feelings of Super Mario Sunshine‘s secret “void” levels — pure, self-aware videogame environments that exist for no other reason than to play in.
Watch the trailer for the DLC pack, which will be released in late January (with an exclusive additional map for the PS3) at YouTube.
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
ELIOT MIN’S LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL
Seen via Rock Band‘s “zine,” this gorgeous concept art from illustrator Eliot Min, who also worked alongside Steven Kimura for the game’s Beast of Burden concept costume.
The People’s Artist // The ‘Zine [Rock Band]
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ROCK BAND ABOUT TO GET A LITTLE BIT COUNTRY
From the MTV owned Country Music Television blog (and therefore very probably not empty conjecture!), the first real word of Rock Band branching out from its, well, rock roots with the first all-country DLC:
Just wait until Dec 16. That’s when Rock Band will add five country songs to its downloadable content for PlayStation3 and XBOX 360… This bundle’s going to have [Dierks Bentley], plus Brad Paisley, Brooks & Dunn, Miranda Lambert and the Dixie Chicks.
Say what you will about the tricky mashup of four spike-and-leather be-goth’d members working their way through a cover of my grandmother’s favorite hits, but more diversity is always a very good thing, especially if it spurs more back-catalog digging (‘Ring of Fire’ being a new Offworld hit in iNiS’s karaoke game Lips).
Rock Band Purists Not So Sure About Country | CMT Blog
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COUNTDOWN TO BRüTALITY
The primary reason I’m excited for Spike TV’s forthcoming Video Game Awards show? Even apart from the fact that I returned to serve as one of its judges, the ceremony will include the first new look in over a year at DoubleFine’s black metal adventure Brütal Legend, the sophomore game from the studio behind Psychonauts, headed by former LucasArts designer Tim Schafer.
That year long wait has been a tumultuous one: as with the Ghostbusters game, the Vivendi/Activision merger put the future of the game in some jeopardy, and its new publisher is still not yet known. Schafer went so far as to devise an encoded threat level system to let people know where the game stands, which he’s just raised to Haunted Sandalwood, or “omg I think there may be some news this month,” which we’re going to go ahead and guess will come alongside the new video.
Jack Black — who plays Brütal Legend‘s hessian lead — will host the awards show, which will also see appearances by Will Wright, Hideo Kojima, Cliff Bleszinski, Fallout 3 producer Todd Howard, and LittleBigPlanet‘s Alex Evans. Spike TV will air the show live Sunday, December 14 At 9:00 PM ET.
See more posts about: Brütal Legend, Double Fine, Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
HOW EVERGREEN, CITY 17
Gamasutra notes that Game Informer magazine has run life to date retail sales for Valve’s Half-Life franchise, and even not counting units sold through its Steam service (keeping those figures traditionally tightly held), the numbers are duly impressive:
Half-Life – 9.3 million
Half-Life: Opposing Force – 1.1 million
Half-Life: Blue Shift – 800,000Counter-Strike – 4.2 million
Counter-Strike: Condition Zero – 2.9 million
Counter Strike: Source – 2.1 million
Counter-Strike [Xbox] – 1.5 millionHalf-Life 2 – 6.5 million
Half-Life 2: Episode One – 1.4 millionThe Orange Box – 3 million
Left 4 Dead – 3.6-3.9 million (projected)
As Gamasutra points out, while the figures on their face would suggest a downward trend in sales for each new volume of the game, the 2004 release of Half-Life 2 was the first to be released simultaneously at retail and via Steam.
Analysis: Valve’s Lifetime Retail Sales For Half-Life, Counter-Strike Franchises [Gamasutra]
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