MICROSOFT’S BUILD-YOUR-OWN-GAME PROJECT KODU DUE ON 360 IN JUNE?

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6.8.2009

Brandon Boyer

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Remember Kodu? Microsoft’s new 21st century LOGO Steve Ballmer demonstrated during CES that the company hopes will help children learn game/programming logic by piecing together small works of their own on the Xbox 360?

Very much lost in last week’s news was this blog update from the team that says after all its years in development, they’re finally putting the final touches on the package for its release by the end of June.

It’s still not clear how the project will be integrated into the current Xbox 360 lineup, apart from the earlier promise that it’d appear as part of the Community Games initiative: whether that’s as a separate group entirely, or as a first-party Community Games release. It’s just as unclear whether sharing of created game will still be an integral part of the experience.

See more about Kodu at its Microsoft Research project page. [via IGN]

In case you still haven’t made it through archive video of Microsoft’s E3 conference, meet Milo, the virtual playmate from Black and White and Fable producer Peter Molyneux and his cohorts at Lionhead.

In the works for some time now and originally known as Project Dimitri, Milo will use Microsoft’s just-announced motion/voice/facial recognizing hardware Natal, allowing you — as the video above only slightly unbelievably promises — full, fluid back and forth conversations with Milo, and other fourth-wall breaking tricks like “handing” Milo a drawing via instant Natal scanning, a drawing he will be able to recognize as well.

Watch the ‘real magic’ in the video above, and see Joystiq’s live demo impressions for some early real-world interaction, who also note that, yes, there will be a ‘Millie’ for those that are more in need of female companionship.

Hideo Kojima’s biggest surprise for E3 wasn’t the potentially 4-player portable Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker or Raiden’s return for Metal Gear Solid Rising, but — newly unveiled at Konami’s late-Wednesday conference — the fact that he will be assuming production control for Lords of Shadow, the latest attempt at bringing Konami’s decades-old Castlevania franchise to life in full 3D.

In development for PS3 and Xbox 360 by Madrid studio Mercury Steam — the same team behind Clive Barker’s Jericho — Konami says Lords of Shadow is “one of its most ambitious and innovative titles to date”, with “a rich, open game world that traverses snowy mountain ranges, Gothic castles, and undead-strewn wastelands in a devastated Southern Europe during the Middle Ages,” and a star-studded voice lineup that will include Robert Carlyle, Natasha McElhone, Jason Isaacs, and, yes, as above, Patrick Stewart.

Whether those key words “open game world” are code for a game that will retain the later 2D Castlevanias signature slowly-unfolding back-tracking structure remains to be seen, but Kojima’s involvement, however executive and overarching, is surely meant to inspire confidence that this might be the 3D Castlevania done right, after a series of four earlier attempts across Nintendo 64 and PlayStation 2 that, by most accounts, were not.

Hit the jump for a collection of high res screenshots. (more…)

Another game that I only heard mentioned once during the entirety of E3 was Blitz Arcade‘s Invincible Tiger: The Legend Of Han Tao, a game that’d apparently escaped my attention for too long during Namco’s spring lead-up to the convention.

Blitz were on hand demoing the game on their special polarized-3D setup, but it’s not quite the game to do 3D justice: what it is is the apparent next-gen heir to the NES’s original simply titled Kung Fu, only with a fluidity that’s rare even for modern brawlers, and that perfect amount of hammy badly-printed HK kung fu film filter. [indirectly via Jean Snow]

ORIGINAL N64 PERFECT DARK BEING REVIVED FOR XBOX LIVE ARCADE

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6.3.2009

Brandon Boyer

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Somewhat lost in the E3 shuffle last week was much-under-reported confirmation that 4J Studios — the same developer that helped bring the excellent conversions of Rare’s Nintendo 64 platformers Banjo Kazooie and Banjo Tooie to Xbox Live Arcade — would also be bringing spiritual GoldenEye 007 sequel Perfect Dark to Arcade this “winter.”

The sci-fi original IP to Bond’s GoldenEye, Perfect Dark was an underdog classic for the console, and marked by troubled development that saw a number of the original designers leave during the course of its development to start their own studios (Martin Hollis to Bonsai Barber developer Zoonami, and a number of others like David Doak to Free Radical, where they founded the TimeSplitters franchise). There definitely comes a shift at a certain point in the game where its taut and sober opening acts loosen to uneven comedy, but it’s still one of the finer first person shooters from the era.

The Xbox.com listing confirms that the game will be updated with online capabilities for its very densely packed multiplayer half — I’m certainly looking forward to returning to briefcase holding after all these years.

Hit the jump for more screenshots of the game in its new full-res HD skin. (more…)

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

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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]

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.

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.