THE No.1 VIDEOGAME MAGAZINE ЕШ іпа! Fantasy VII arrives in ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY 111IF. T1 Revenge of the PS3! 2007 sucked for PS3. 2008 will rock. Find out why inside... FEATURING: Metal Gear Solid 4 • ХЕЗЕО ПО There а | Final Fantasy XIII will be | Blu-ray's future e blood! i Home ® Hands-on with | 4 Ninja Gaiden 2 + 1 апа more! е Dragon Sword | 4 Ave % | хвзео pr 3 m | meets XESGO/PSSJWII т Pac-Man FaceBreaker à A look at the oddest The next Punch-Out!! games forged in Forge | Е © ZIFF DAVIS MEDIA THE 1UP AWARDS: Our Annual Best (and Worst) in Gaming MAR. 2008 issue 226 0 74470 06960 7 dL MILLE MU краци s v лөм — mws, —— mn! ж BS Ss ЖЕ 85 ЕЕ so ЕЕ > = | ратан ғ, ч ‘sannua ‘зиоцедо! рјом-вај јо иоцеәзоә 16 |uünpidep Auy ‘Sistine anjjoadsaı леч © jee: Ц T әшеб siu) ш рајпуевулјабеци pejeroosse pue pleid sewe 18289 's1o1moejnuejy "ой Шәшшейешің 1931980 AUOS 80020 Эш Kuos jo жешәред E srouisun| ueJc) pue өңіеішәред рәзә}з!бә1 ete обо adi ple . NOILWLSAW Id, "90 84,54, „ЧОоӊе]©Ле|д, mmm 2 GRAN TURISMO by ку уг Don't worry. You'll get а good look at the taillights soon enough. With up to 16 players racing online, the competition is fierce. Lucky for you, the new interior dash view lets you experience the race like never before. Strap yourself in and get ready for the drive of your life. ке: кү Yona 12712898 on PLA Е ТЕЗ Т1 07 ГТ. 23 L ESRB CONTENT RATING СҮЙ ија PLAYSTATION 3 + issue 226 ° march 2008 34 36 16 | Overachievers Find out why worthless virtual accolades mean so much to so many.... 40 18 Foreign Object 20 Preview: FaceBreaker 42 EA's zany new pugilism offering is more Rocky IV than Raging Bull 26 Funny Business 44 Developers recount the shenanigans that go on behind the scenes SO Take This Job 46 This month: The dude who gets today's hottest tunes into your videogames ZIFF DAVIS MED! ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY EDITORIAL Chief Dan u Founder Steve Harr GAMING MONTHLY е EGM.1UP.COM Cover Story: year ahead Preview: Soulcalibur IV Incongruous guest characters from a galaxy far, far away infiltrate the action Preview: Ninja Gaiden Ryu Hayabusa leaps back into the fray on Xbox 360 and Nintendo DS Preview: Bully: Scholarship Edition School’s back in session on both Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii Small Wonders Five tiny titles proving that mobile gaming doesn't have to suck Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Prep yourself for the most anticipated prequel since The Phantom Menace Rumor Mill Dead Rising's undead mob plots its revenge from an unlikely place ZIFF DAVIS MEDIA GAME GROUP HEAD HONCHOS. PRODUCTION ın Manager, Revenge! EGM reveals eight factors that could propel Sony’s sleek black box past its competitors in the hk БЭ Gaiden doubles up | EA breaks some faces 72 74 75 76 80 83 83 84 85 86 Reviews Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors FIFA Street 3 Devil May Cry 4 Turok The Club Advance Wars: Days of Ruin Wipeout Pulse Patapon Reviews Wrap-Up TERRITORY MANAGERS а ACCT. EXECS, a Account Executiv Regional Sale ч ount Coordinator ” г more information = ==, 1UP Network Editors’ E. = Choice Awards 2007 ЕСМ? Sixth Annual Tobias Bruckner Memorial Awards Noted humorist Seanbaby presides over this year’s crop of crap Retro: Matters of Import Long-forgotten gems from abroad get a second shot at success on the Virtual Console Seek and Enjoy: Space Chase EGM's loving tribute to Highlights for Children blasts into orbit Hsu & Chan ZIFF DAVIS MEDIA GAME GROUP 2007 Tobie awards = > THIS MONTH'S кан EGM.1UP.COM 2007 1UP Network Readers’ Choice Awards The critics have weighed in, but do the people agree? Halo 3’s Forge keeps on giving Learn more.about the coolest new user-created maps and game types for Halo 3. Devil May Cry 4 SuperGuide Having trouble killing the Pope? Check out MyCheats’ extensive walkthrough for Capcom's killer sequel. Ы And check out our podcast on EGMLive.1UP.com and our message boards at boards.1UP.com. MARKETING PROMOTION: CONSUMER MARKETING ZIFF DAVIS MEDIA INC, California Advertising Director, Vice President of Marketing, ector of Chairman, hard Taw V Promotions, Robert F Callahan nt Mar У Ч Chief Executive Officer, Senior Promotions Manager Consumer Marketing Director Jason Young x Chief Financial Officer Promotions Coordinator 8 SVP Finance, 1UPCOM doc Partnership Director, Mar е Vice President, General Counsel, Editor-in-Chief, tor of Ad Operations, ng Coordinator, phic Designer, impaign Manager, ion Development Manager, ha Biling and Retention Manager, Assistant Manager, Coordina > EDITORIAL Rotten tomatoes БЕЗ мес" | с GAMING MOM ELECTRONK LAST YEAR, DURING OUR ANNUAL 1UP Network Awards ceremony, we gave Sony Computer Entertainment America representatives a bit of a shock. Walking into our party, instead of being greeted by a freshly minted mojito, they came face- to-face with a giant blow-up poster of the cover to our March 2007 issue (pictured below, not above), which hadn't gone out to readers yet at that point. The image: a PS3 getting a pasty new paint job, courtesy of a thrown tomato. The headline was “BattleStation!” and the subject was how Sony was getting beat down by just about everyone in the civilized world for not being the wunderconsole it was touted to be. It was supposed to be powerful. BattleStation! It was supposed A to obliterate the mM competition. It = Ш was supposed to usher in an era of next-generation gaming that mere mortal eyes and ears could not possibly comprehend. What we got instead was a heavy Blu-ray player—and a $600 tomato catcher. 20085 not going to change all that, but it's certainly looking a helluva lot more optimistic for the PS3 camp. We're feeling quite good about the system, enough so that we're willing to dedicate this month's. cover story to the big black machine that couldn't—but can now. | also want to thank everyone for the outpouring of support for my editorial last month, "Banned" (you can also catch it at my blog at egmshoe.1UP.com). It certainly caused a much bigger buzz than 1 had anticipated. It just goes to show that honesty and integrity do matter to our readers. — Dan "Shoe" Hsu, Editor-in-Chief IT WEST COAST Senior Technical Analyst, Desktop Administrator, Ali content copyright © 2008 211 Davis Media Inc. Reproduction, modification, or transmission, in whole or in part, by any means, without written permission from Ziff Davis Media Inc. is strictly ЕЗЕВ отнес Ат EEE | rights reserved, NETWORK Shave Lab Test #27 Rigorous tests prove no disposable shaves closer than the Quattro Disposable. It’s irrefutable. No disposable delivers a closer, smoother shave than the Schick” Quattro* Disposable. It's the first . | disposable with four blades and two conditioning strips, for | such a comfortable shave, you can't beat it. The Power of 4* is now Disposable. www.quattrodisposables.com Schick QUATTRO] DISPOSABLE LETTERS * game testing, the future of oddworld, and bulging biceps > TRIVIAL ISSUE This month's EGM question: Who replaced dis- graced heavyweight champ Mike Tyson in Punch-Out!!? E-mail the answer to EGM@ziffdavis.com (subject head: Trivia: EGM #226) for a chance to win something potentially awesome For writing this month’s LOTM, Adam will receive a free game...of our choice. Try, try again—again | think it is time to set the record straight about videogame testing. | have been a quality-assurance peon, a QA manager, and a producer. In EGM #223 [Letters, “Try, try again..."], you said that testers work long hours for fast-food wages. This is entirely false for a few reasons! Most quality-assurance jobs start at a mini- mum of $10 an hour. Maybe some of the smaller developers will pay less, but not much. When you factor in all the overtime, you are looking at wages that are equal to around $30,000 a year. | have never personally worked in the fast-food industry, but | know that many restaurants don’t even come close to that. Either way, no matter what you do at your QA job, it is nowhere near a grease vat, a grill, or anything else to do with food preparation. Most testers | know would work for half of what they make, because no matter how you dice it, you get to play games at work all day. Granted, they are not the games you want to play (try playing a chess game for six months), but it’s still playing games. Playing games for a living is far better than most other entry-level jobs you don’t need a degree for. You know how you see the car driv- ing to work with the bumper sticker that says “Га rather be fishing”? Yeah, we don’t get much of that in the game industry, because we honestly love what we do and know it’s more fun than the alternative. —Adam We'll concede the point that testing games beats flipping burgers any day of the week. But then, most things beat flipping burgers any day of the week. And we should underscore again that one of the real draws to game testing is that it gets your foot in the door. It may not be the most glamorous position, but it can be the first step toward more fulfilling jobs like producer or designer. Everything's better down where it's wetter In EGM #224’s Coming Soon sec- tion, you seemed to describe Endless 10 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY , EGM.1UP.COM E Endless Ocean: The next attack from the sinister forces of edutainment. Ocean's likeness to an educational tool as a negative. But I think this is a great feature—something that will give videogames more credibility in the eyes of those who see them as little more than violent, pointless wastes of time. Teachers in schools and colleges often bring in movies to make educa- tion more exciting; maybe someday they'll bring in games like Endless Ocean to teach about marine life in a fun, hands-on way. —Devon Chapman Certainly, and when that glorious day comes, the editors of Electronic Teaching Monthly will no doubt fall all over themselves talking about how great such games are. In the meantime, we're relegating fish- petting sims to our new "Electronic Nongaming Monthly" section. Your prou yaming The next contestant in our monthly h From your lips to Odd's ears What has become of Oddworld Inhabitants? Are they coming out with another great game to top off Stranger's Wrath? Also, what ever happened to that rumor about the sequel to Stranger's Wrath they said they were working on soon after Stranger's Wrath hit? — Jason Kinchen Unfortunately, it looks like the Oddworld series is on hold for the foreseeable future. Studio head Lorne Lanning shut down the game studio to focus on computer-ani- mated films, like Citizen Siege, expected to release in 2009. But don’t give up hope! Lanning and Oddworld partner Sherry McKenna are designing games to tie in with the film property, and moments For a LAN party with my school’s computer club, | baked cookies...Pac-Man cookies. | spent five and a half hours hand-cutting and decorating 60 cookies in the shape of Pac- Man, Ms. Pac-Man, ghosts, and even some Yoshi eggs and Triforces—all homemade and delicious. Sure, the LANers probably didn't appreciate the finely crafted cookies before eating them all in a few hours...but it was totally worth it. —Robin Basalla | m The eater becomes the eaten. Want to see your own story in this space? All you have to do is tell us how hard-eff- ing-core you are. Dish up the goods on what makes you more into games than anyone else, and send it to EGM@ziffdavis.com, subject head: “1 Am Hardcore.” Remember, it doesn't count if you can't prove it, so send photos, too! CSTANDING ЏР ЕОВ YOURSELFIS STRONG. 2 , STANDING UP FOR THOSE E AROUND YOU 7 715 ARMY STRONG. г Эх № Л) ү N қ N AN D EN 2 эл, : ч ї AES ү N t here's Strong. "And then there's Army‘ Strong: Тһе strength | E that comes from Rot jst NN your life bÛt chahiging the lives of others: P > а | 23 : . 1 1 RU S | | Find out more at ER $ \ mae Ge We 1 e 1 \ N Е Ap EOS АЈ 02200077 та COS ARMY J S E. Staff Sergeant дегеп $* 4 Paid Tor y їе Uni tates АЛАВ АН fights ЗАД E Sure, Madden's players may have chicken arms, but does it really matter? have hinted that they may return to the Oddworld universe once Citizen Siege is complete. The right to bearish arms | simply cannot play Madden 08 for one reason: The players have ridicu- lously small arms. | am a football play- er myself, and you need big arms, not only to intimidate your opponents, but to protect your arms from the brutal beatdown they take as helmets clash on your biceps. | need to see my 6- foot-4, 250-pound linebacker looking jacked as all hell in my videogames. Гуе tried creating my own player, and | always put their arm size and muscle definition as high as it can go, but for some ridiculous reason, they magi- cally shrink to zero before every game. And in franchise mode, they don’t let you adjust player appearance, which is also really stupid. Having a jacked- as-hell linebacker whose strength is 99 looking like a wimpy Abercrombie & Fitch model is just degrading to the sport of football. —TDP32@aol.com Wow, you’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the bulging, rippling biceps of big, sweaty men, haven’t you? If anything, Madden 08’s dainty arms help to balance out 07’s insanely buff punters.... Link to the future | recently read something that quite literally gave me goose bumps: Zelda series director Eiji Aonuma is apparently not against the idea of doing a Link to the Past remake for what | would assume to be the Wii. Considering the fact that Link to the Past has long been my favorite game of all time, this came as a very wel- come surprise, but is there any way of knowing if this will actually become a reality? | know we will see another Zelda title on the Wii before the end of 12 + ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM.1UP.COM this console generation, but could it be a remake of this classic title? —Јеѕѕе Farris Don't hold your breath there, champ. Aonuma's exact words were, “I’m actually very interested in what it would be like if we remade that title as a 3D game." Sounds like a pie-in-the-sky, throwaway comment to us. Oblivion meets itself What ever happened to Oblivion for PSP? I remember you announced it was coming out in April, but then it got held back. So what happened to it? Is it still gonna happen? Or did it get canceled? It was, in my opinion, a bit ambitious.... —Rylan Doyle Well, back in November, games retailer GameStop began refund- ing preorders, saying the game had been canceled, but Bethesda has remained mum on the issue. Our guess is that the studio wants to keep their options open, but the game is, for all intents and pur- poses, a no-go. Hooray us It's obvious that developers fear nega- tivity in the media. Ubisoft wouldn’t release a demo for Assassin’s Creed, for example, and Silicon Knights seems to be on a campaign for dam- age control with Too Human. That being said, do you guys feel like you carry enough influence to make or break a game in terms of sales? Do you feel like your reviews will per- suade people one way or the other in terms of buying or not buying? —Jennifer Robbie Well, those are two different ques- tions. Sure, our reviews probably persuade people, because—let’s face it—we're awesome. But “make or break" a game? Look, as we've already said and all agreed upon, we're awesome, but other media outlets do exist, and sometimes their opinions dif- fer from ours. We wouldn't be so arrogant as to think we're the only voice in the business when it comes to reviews. We're just the awesomest. Party of one With more and more games focusing on multiplayer and online content, I’m curious as to how the industry views gamers like myself. | rarely go online with consoles, but | invest a consider- able amount of time in a single-player experience. What is the industry doing to get me more involved with multi- player content? And how confident can | be that downloadable content will enhance my single-player experi- ence as well as the multiplayer? —Andrew You're a dinosaur, Andrew. The newest generation of consoles is thoroughly connected for a reason: For many games, playing against real humans beats the pants off playing against even the most cunningly designed computer-con- trolled opponents. But never fear—we don’t see the industry moving all online, all the time anytime soon. You'll still have plenty of satisfying offline experi- ences like BioShock to warm that Luddite heart of yours. Finish the film When | saw that the Halo movie was real and not just some rumor, | got excited. Now, however, I’ve been hearing rumors that the whole thing's been called off. Are these just rumors, or is there some truth in them? —Nevin Valker Er, a little of both. The film has been put on hold and restarted more times than we care to count. The latest news, though, came in October of 2007: In an interview with Variety, a representative for executive producer Peter Jackson said that while initial distributors Fox and Universal had pulled out of the project, Microsoft was still behind the picture and seeking a new distributor. The promised 2009 release doesn’t seem too likely at this point, though. Jack Thompson salivates What's stopping Manhunt 2's develop- ers from creating a code that restores the game to the original AO rating? —Nicholas Crompton Do the words “Hot Coffee” mean anything to you? No way Rockstar’s going through that again. #% 1 EGM@ziffdavis.com EGM Letters 101 2nd Street, 8th Floor San Francisco, CA 94105 Web: www.zdmcirc.com Phone: (800) 779-1174 ©2007 Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. God of War is a registered trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. “PlayStation,” the "PS" Family logo and “PSP” are registered trade- marks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. C". е ау а Г 38 6 i359» NEN TINT FOCAL MEARE GEH 21:16:04 rm. PlayStation Portable WAS DARKNESS DARKNESSREVEALS.COM f се Р BLESN OW я нА RA. DVD camne FP LAY STATIONS ROM 2555 . : - © Touchstone. TUROK TM & © Classic Media, Inc., an Entertainment Rights group company. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Xbox, Xbox 360; Xbox LIVE, and the Xbox logos are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. Blood and Gore Intense Violence Language “PlayStation”, “PLAYSTATION and “PS” Family logo are registered trademarks of Sony ComputerEntertainment Inc. Online access requires broadband Internet service and a wireless access point or LAN, Certain limitations apply to Wi-Fi connectivity User is responsible for Internet service fees, ж 1 x i-a > features, previews, 3-foot-tall warriors, and other stuff Achievements may not have many real- world rewards, but don't say they never earned you nothin’: In 2007, Microsoft gave copies of Fuzion Frenzy 2 to folks with gamerscores of over 10,000 who earned an additional 1,500 points in a two-month period. We're sure those gamers remem- ber that accomplish- ment with, uh...pride? possessed by a compulsion to play his Xbox 360 up to 60 hours a week. He doesn’t play for fun. He doesn’t play for escape. Roberts plays for Achievements, the little gray bubbles that tell us when we've accomplished a special gam- ing task. We get them for persistence (kill 10,000 players in ranked Gears of War matches for the "Seriously" Achievement). We get them for dis- plays of skill (complete BioShock on the hardest difficulty without dying for "Brass Balls"). We even get them for sucking (fail 10 times at one song in Guitar Hero III for “Blowin’ It"). Roberts, like many in the online Achievements race, gets them any way he can. But it wasn't the little bubbles or their satisfying "ping" that drove him to a life of obsessive gam- 16 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY * EGM.1UP.COM ing; it was the tiny payouts of gamer- Score, Xbox Live's currency of cred- ibility, that each unlock carries with it. “What got me started was a good friend of mine bragging that he was the king of gamerscore," says Roberts (gamertag "Il Tenshun II”). “At the time, | was a casual gamer at best, but | hate to be beaten at anything. Thus, the sickness was born." He now has a gamerscore of over 150,000 points. At an average of 1,000 available per game, that is a /ot of time on the couch. Photographs Бу R. Dodson/SFMi By Robert Ashley It's enough gaming to make devel- opers sit up and take notice. Achievements seem to have an almost irresistible power for some players, a simple premise that can squeeze hours of extra play out of a game at very little cost. Though the PlayStation 3 doesn't yet have a stan- dard system for in-game rewards (that will come with the Home online com- munity), some games, like Resistance: Fall of Man and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, have their own equivalents. РИ pretty much buy, rent, borrow, and play anything-as long as it can get me gamerscore. —Professed Achievement whore David Baxley Evan Wells, copresident of Uncharted developer Naughty Dog, attributes the idea’s popularity to the competitive spirit among gamers of all types. “It’s а chance to show off to your friends,” says Wells. “The gaming community is obviously a very competitive bunch, and making accomplishments publicly viewable allows you to prove to the world that you're a hardcore gamer." Just ask Nick Rebori (gamertag “TheLazyWolf”). The chance to com- pete with gamers all over the world spurred this compulsive player into chasing the top spot on the gam- erscore leaderboards (find them at MyGamerCard.net). “I’ve always loved competitive gaming," says Rebori. "I used to spend my Saturdays at the arcade playing Mortal Kombat against guys twice my age. Once | was able to play all day on one credit, and when my mom picked me up, | made someone else in line give me 50 cents for my spot. For a 10-year-old, that's just about the greatest day ever." By the summer of 2006, Rebori was entrenched at the top of the leader- boards. But he was quickly overtaken by mysteriously productive players, people using data-transfer kits to uploaded Achievement-laden saves from other players' Xboxes. "People were jumping up as much as 30,000 points a day," says Rebori. “They were able to unlock 1,000 points in Ridge Preview: Break-a 3 you’ face Racer 6 in under five minutes. | spent 108 hours playing that rotten game, so | took it as a personal offense." It was the beginning of a cheating free-for-all that persists today (see sidebar). Microsoft, in defense of its online service, figures that the vast majority of Xbox Live's 10 million members increase their gamerscore the old- fashioned way—they earn it. And as annoying as they are, the cheaters are just a part of the game. "Given the popularity of Achievements as a measure of skill and accomplishment," says a Microsoft rep, "it's no surprise that a handful of people may try to shirk the social norms of the online gaming community in order inflate their scores." So meta Chasing Achievements is a form of metagaming, says Matthew Weise of the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab (a gaming research center), "which isn't new at all." He likens it to the hardcore gaming communities who developed the speed run phe- nomenon. "Gamers have always taken it upon themselves to come up with new and bizarre goals," says Weise. "Achievements make that process top-down. Instead of the commu- nity, it's the developers making the ‘official’ unofficial goals." Weise sees Achievements making metagaming CREDIT REFORT We rank the dirty tricks unscrupulous players use to “earn” points... Using in-game cheats Just like the old days, many games today feature cheats that allow for invincibil- ity, infinite ammo, etc.—all of which can easily beef up your Boosting Achievement freaks join private online games made for the purpose of score boosting. "You shoot me in the head 100 times, and then ГИ shoot you. Fun!" Account trading The practice of lend- ing profiles to pro players for exper- tise-required games like Guitar Hero is widespread. The pros sometimes get PayPal cash in exchange. gamerscore. Profile glitching Several games feature glitches that transfer points from one profile to another when both profiles are loaded onto the same Xbox. PAGE PAGE Feature: News: Gaming’s Forge finds music man in Halo 3 more mainstream—so much so that it’s even parodied in the Simpsons game (you get an Achievement for pressing start). But it’s ultimately just another way to make gaming competi- tive. “It’s the old arcade mentality,” he says. “Xbox Live offers new avenues for old practices.” The obsession afflicts developers, too: Gearbox (Brothers in Arms) Prez Randy Pitchford has a gamerscore of over 55,000 points. His lowest moment? "| played Bullet Witch beginning to end three times. Мо геа- sonable person would ever do that.” Glory dazed But completists beware: David Baxley (gamertag “xRogue 5x”) has found his obsessive pursuit of recognition has turned what once was a hobby into a chore. "| used to play games for fun, but now | play solely for Achievements,” says Baxley. “Before Achievements, | only purchased the games | was interested in. Now | find myself getting just as excited for the next kids’ game. I'll pretty much buy, rent, borrow, and play anything—as long as it can get me gamerscore.” Baxley, along with many of his peers, finds it hard to juggle his Achievements obsession with the demands of real life. “I’ve been late to work on several occasions because | needed to get a quick achievement,” he says, adding that he’s also on two semesters of academic suspension from college. “| was participating in a gamerscore league and didn't attend class for two weeks." For gamers like Baxley, maybe cheating might not be such a terrible thing. ж SLEAZY Hacking Elite players on the MyGamerCard. net leaderboards have hacked into player accounts and unlocked Achievements, dele- gitimizing the compe- tition for many. Game saving An Xbox Live update crippled the rampant practice of down- loading game saves through data-transfer kits, but now sneakier methods are coming into vogue. ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM.1UP.COM • 17 > FAR-OUT FANS Cake Mama: PDT Since Wiis are selling like hot- cakes, it's only fitting that a crafty Nintendo fan would actually whip up a tasty treat based on the popular system. Though you may have seen Martha Stewart make a Wii cake on the cover of Wired magazine, Kristy Anderson-Ewing actually beat Martha to the baking. We spoke with Kristy to find how she feels about Martha rip- ping her off. EGM: What inspired you to make a Wii cake? Kristy Anderson-Ewing: It was for my husband's birthday, and he, like everyone, was looking for a Wii for a long time. We finally got one after searching for a long time, so it was still pretty new in our world. EGM: We heard this cake was made before Martha Stewart, eh? KAE: [Laughs] Yes, yes it was, actually—thanks for noticing! EGM: So are you going to sue Martha Stewart for stealing your delicious idea? KAE: [Laughs] No. EGM: What? She stole your idea— come on! KAE: Well, | think a lot of people have made Wii cakes by now. But | wanted to do one that was actually scaled right. A lot of people have made them wider—or whatever—so that they're more stable, which is probably a really smart thing to do, as evidenced by the result of mine. Also, Martha Stewart's cake wasn't edible. EGM: Really? So Martha Stewart's a fake, huh? KAE: Well, her cake wasn't edible. | don't know whether or not it was Styrofoam, but | do know that you couldn't eat it. Better than mama! 18 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM.1UP.COM STAGE! |34 Жа Oss Lee T K-L, БАР JUS »5£- ! 4 > FOREIGH OBJIECT.IAPAM Yuusha no Kuse 11 НАМАТЕТОН Save monsters from extinction Wireless Sports Updates Of course Vince Young is into football. After all, he did win a college championship and is currently a starting pro quarterback. So you know he keeps up on everything happening in the league on his phone’s MEdia™ Net home page. Ringtones As fast as he is on the field, he’s even faster off it. Vince is always switching up his ringtone for the latest hip-hop track he’s gotten stuck in his head. Luckily, he’s got over 3 million to choose from with AT&T Mobile Music. еу, What can AT&T do for your digital world?" Picture Messaging Vince travels for work. A lot. So he likes to keep in touch with his mother and friends back home. And with unlimited picture messaging on his MEdia™ Max Unlimited plan, he saves a lot doing it. Me/Charity Most people don't know that Vince isn't just about football. He's also a volunteer teacher who's working to make sure every kid has access to the technology that drives today’s world. att.com/digitalworld Service provided by AT&T Mobility. ©2008 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. AT&T and the AT&T logo are trademarks of AT&T Intellectual Property. By Todd Zuniga Platforms: PS3/XB360 Publisher: EA Sports Developer: EA Canada Release Date: June 2007 FROM MUHAMMAD ALI TO OSCAR DE LA HOYA, boxers are known for routinely changing trainers. Before their career is over, some even end up bringing back the guy who origi- nally helped them rise to the top. EA is actually doing a little of both these days, as you'll find old and new blood in the publisher's gym. John Riccitello recently returned as CEO while Peter Moore became the new president of EA Sports—and the two are bringing a more ambi- tious approach to EA's sports library (which routinely sticks to known enti- ties). It begins with the arcade-rich FaceBreaker (due out this June for the PS3 and Xbox 360), which aims to be our generation's answer to the NES classic Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! Fresh fists Make no mistake: FaceBreaker isn't simply an EA Big-ified version of Fight Night. Members of the develop- ment team excitedly (and repeatedly) delivered that message when we visited EA's Vancouver studio. “John Riccitello and Peter Moore want EA Sports to become bigger than just > We started with a ring, three rounds, and a three- knockdown rule. But slowly but surely, we're casting those rules away. —Gameplay Designer Todd Batty simulation titles," says Gameplay Designer Todd Batty. *They want us to really push, which is such a fresh message." That new initiative has taken some time to adjust to, though, as these gamemakers weren't exactly sure what to do with their newfound freedom. “When you work on a licensed title, they give you the paint, they give you the borders. It's almost paint by numbers," says Batty. "But with this game, it was: ‘Here’s a blank canvas—now go!’ We started with a ring, three rounds, and a three-knock- down rule. But slowly but surely, we're ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM.1UP.COM » 21 casting those rules away. Do we really need rounds? A knockdown rule?” Art Director Greg Juby is also enjoying being unchained from the usual development shackles. “Doing some- thing unlicensed allows us to do any- thing we want,” he says. “Even on a Big version of a licensed game, you're still beholden to the licensor. We're not forced to do something based on the rules of a sport. We're able to do any- thing we want, and people are dying to do things like that around here." Punch-drunk characters As we mentioned earlier, FaceBreaker won't feature any real boxers. So rather than drawing inspiration from the likes of Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard, the developers looked to another boxing legend. “Before we had any concept art or anything for characters," says Juby, "it was like, ‘If we were going to make Punch- Out!! today, what would we do?'" They even went so far as to re-create the virtual ring icons Bald Bull, Mr. Sandman, and Super Macho Man in a next-gen way. But pilfering those Punch-Out!! pugilists was only for proof of concept—unfortunately, they won't appear in the finished game. Instead, the team will roll out 12 com- pletely original playable characters, all with distinct looks and personalities. EA revealed to us a few members of the FaceBreaker roster, which includes a bus driver, a DJ, a demolitions expert, and a Latin lover. So what's the litmus test here? "The main thing was: Would | buy the action figure of that character?" says Juby. The developers admit that creat- ing characters in today's gaming world is quite difficult thanks to the countless number of fighters already on the market. As a guideline, they set three rules when designing their arcadey prizefighters: They must wear gloves, fight in a ring, and mostly throw punches. Beyond that, it was a free-for-all, which puzzled many of the concept artists EA looked to hire. “Most of them had the idea that box- ers are ugly and couldn't let it go," says Juby. *Just like in the movies, even our ugly has to be pretty good- looking. We want people to want to be these guys." They also had to avoid leaning on clichés when the character-creation process started to feel too daunting. “We didn't want bouncy-breasted, thong-wearing bim- bos," says Juby. "We wanted female characters that the girls would want to be—something empowering." Avoiding clichés meant that the > РЕМТЕГОНТЕТ HISTORY The crew responsible for FaceBreaker is full'of Punch Out!! lovers, попе more than Gameplay Designer Todd Batty. So is his aim to replicate that character-driven blockbuster? “With games like NBA Live 98 or NHL 95, what people remember is a well-balanced game experience with great user feedback, where they understood the mechanics,” says Batty. “In Live, they don’t remember that there was only one run animation that floated all over, or that it was really slow and unresponsive. They just remember the spirit of it. Play Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! now, and it’s laughably bad. But you still remember it fondly, so as a game designer, you have to say, ‘OK, what was it about that experience?’ To me, Punch-Out! had interesting characters that had overtly different gameplay challenges that had to be overcome. That’s what we haven’t captured in our sports titles. When | play [against] this team, or this person—or in this case, this boxer—I should have to learn a new way to adapt to be successful. [Our boxer] Ice fights one way. When 1 figure out how to beat him, | move on to the next guy, who does something different. That's what we're going for." Sounds good...except for calling Punch-Out! laughably bad. Those are ‘some fighting words. A is also working on a Wii version of FaceBreaker, due out in late” 22 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY “ EGM.1UP.COM BERN: e Ж : 2 _ 3 ы “> аны ь г f 4 : x * ` WWW.CONFLICTDENIEDOPS.COM GAMES intera 10.2007 еме) PIVOT^L eidos) AVAILABLE IN LIMITED NUMBERS AT SELECT RETAILERS NATIONWIDE INSPIRATION EXPRESSION CREATION GREENLABELART.COM MOUNTAIN DEW, DEW and DO THE DEW are registered trademarks of PepsiCo, Inc. FaceBreaker crew went to some oddball sources for inspiration. The Latin lover Romeo, for example, came about when someone mentioned making a character in the vein of actor Antonio Banderas, only slimier. Then you've got the yet-to-be-revealed fighter that—wait for it—the sock puppet Lamb Chop inspired. "A lot of the character ideas came from our Creative Director Trey Smith," says Juby, "who would hold up different images that don't even go together and say, ‘What do you think?’ It'd be like a pie, a robot, and something else. | didn't get it, and he'd say, ‘This is the character!" Overall, we found FaceBreaker's roster to be varied, energetic, and Sportin' just enough comedy relief without coming across as cheesy. Still, we'd like to see the final number of pugilists go higher than 12. Ding, ding, ding! From a distance (the game wasn't quite ready for us to go a few rounds), we checked out a thinner, quicker Romeo battle the bullish demolitions expert Molotov. In short order, we saw a impressive flurry of dodges, parries, blocks, pushes, shoves, and of course a whole bunch of thrown punches. At one point, Molotov strong-armed Romeo into the corner, but Romeo beautifully parried by leaping over his explosive opponent like a boxing Mikhail Baryshnikov. W FaceBreaker's gameplay also includes...uh, FaceBreakers, wicked finishers that knock your opponent hilariously sky-high. Even though bringing all that noise might sound complicated, EA prom- ises it won't be. "Button combinations like in fighting games was the antivi- sion of what we wanted,” says Batty, who's dead-set against memorizing button inputs. And we've got faith that Batty will follow through on that vision, considering he also designed one of last year’s freshest and most accessible sports games in NBA Street Homecourt (PS3/XB360). To keep things easy for users, tossing knuckle sandwiches will happen via button presses rather than the some- what finicky analog sticks like in Fight Night. Smart move. Floating like a butterfly and sting- ing like a bee will also lead to some severe facial deformation. But it’s much more than giving your cartoony opponent a fat lip—we're talking delivering over-the-top cranial dents and breaking jaws with such force that Punch-Out!!’s Glass Joe would instantly throw in the towel. Similar to a Pixar flick, humor over horror has always been the goal for the game's brutality. “We wanted a fun, funny game, without being grotesque," says Juby, “so we did all kinds of deforma- tion studies to find the line between gross and funny. We even took meat and molasses and stuffed it in a bal- loon and videotaped what happened." Wow, Riccitello and Moore really are letting these guys do whatever the heck they want. ќа LIMITED EDITION ARTIST SERIES 7 Ч ҚЫ А МИА, CHUCK ANDERSON DEZ HAZE “Highs and lows everyone “DEW is about excitement “Super vibrant, pop art goes through...” and adventure.” kind of vibe.” it'll tickle " у 5 ч ANN yore innards! 77 / ) > 2 5 E PEAT WOLLAEGER SCOTT LENHARDT & DANNY DAVIS TROY DENNING "Vintage bottle of “Like hanging out with a friend "A magic elixir from a MOUNTAIN DEW." 1 hadn't seen in a while, ...” samurai's pouch.” VOLUME 1 - 2008 INSPIRATION EXPRESSION CREATION GREENLABELART.COM MOUNTAIN DEW, DEW and DO THE DEW are registered trademarks of PepsiCo, Inc. Funny Merry drama from game development We know games are fun, but creating games isn’t always so enjoyable. But for all those hell- ishly long hours developers put in, we just know tons of funny stuff happens. So we asked a handful of gamemakers to recount all the hilarious stories that go on during development. Pranks don’t just Pappen whie:gamss > SMELLS LIKE TROUBLE are being made. Sometimes develop- Christophe Desse, an environment modeler here at Naughty Dog, is apparently allergic to the Naughty ers work gags into 2 Dog studio (or perhaps he has a perpetual cold?). Now, there’s nothing wrong with sneez- the final product. For T Я s $ д instance лаге: ing 10 times a day like a normal person, but Christophe has some kind of Drake's Fortune mutated, special-weapons sneeze. Something so terrifically deafening, it’s features a Spanish- like being sneezed at by a Marine drill instructor. As I'm sure you can gauge from his written headstone name, Christophe is very French, and it wasn’t long before the nickname “Le Choo” took that tells readers they hold and was chimed through the office after every occurrence. are nerds for, well, Browsing the Internet weeks later, our inspired environment lead, Rob Adams, found Hd a picture of a child wearing a Thomas the Tank Engine Halloween costume. It started with Rob expertly Photoshopping Christophe's head onto the child's body and sending it in a company-wide e-mail. This turned into a pool to buy the actual costume! So we began a collection of money to purchase said costume in the hopes that Le Choo would come to bold fruition. Christophe, being the sport he is, agreed to wear it for one day. The costume was purchased and worn for a full working day. Smiles, laughs, and photos were had by all. —Shaddy Safadi Uncharted: Drake's Fortune Senior Concept Artist Naughty Dog > PRECARIOUS FANTOMIME Here’s an “animated” tale: Our lead animator, a guy named Kaj, is a really energetic and passionate individual. While trying to make sure some of the animation team really understood what he was envisioning for a particular character, Kaj decided that a dem- onstration was in order. So there he was, hopping about like a madman trying to pantomime a character, when he jumped a bit too high and cracked his head on an overhead pipe! He fell and ended up landing on his knee. He was on crutches for a month and is still awaiting surgery. | tell you, the things that we do for our games. If we only had the time to create a gimpy crutch-walk- ing zombie-animator enemy... —Nigel Cook Golden Axe: Beast Rider Senior Producer Secret Level — RT nn 220 m ‚= ОМЛОРСОМ > CRAPPY SONG SELECTION When we were making Guitar Hero Il, our Project Lead Daniel Sussman went to Norway for vacation. Right before he left, he played a show with his band, and he had me and another producer come up and sing backup on some songs. One of us—probably me—accidently muted him by stepping on his guitar pedal, and at the end of the song he made some comment about how a “big girl” stepped on his pedal. And | was like, “Motherf***er—he just called us fat!” So | decided we had to get him back. While he was in Norway, we decided what we were going to do. | realized the most annoying thing that could possibly happen would be if our publisher, RedOctane, demanded that we put a song in the game. Then we started to think of the worst song for them to want to put in the game, one that would destroy him. It had to be Avril Lavigne—she would be the worst thing for the game. I started drafting up an e-mail, but then I realized | had to actually had to get RedOctane involved because Daniel had to think it’s coming from them. So | called RedOctane and told them | wanted to prank Daniel, and they were all for it. So | wrote the prank e-mail and told them to send it to Daniel the day before he gets back from Norway. After that, | sent a note to everyone who works at Harmonix (excluding Daniel) saying that some of us have to act like we're really mad and others will pretend they're for it, because we figured if everyone was for it, he'd know it was a prank. So RedOctane sent the e-mail, and Daniel got it when he came back. Then, all of sudden, he storms into this meeting looking completely crazed and asked if | checked my mail. | said | hadn't in a couple of hours, and then he started freaking out saying the worst thing that could ever happen is happening. | asked him what was going on, and he yaps back, “They want Avril Lavigne in the game!” | told him “that’s їег- rible,” and he screams, “I will quit! I will f***ing quit! I'm quitting before they let Avril Lavigne in Guitar Hero. Guitar Hero is my baby." Immediately, people start taking sides—one of our producers starts talking about how we really need more women in the game. This, of course, pissed him off. So he went to our vice president and complained about how he was trying to push back but it wasn’t working. Our VP then asked him if he even listened to the song. This angered him even more. At this point, we let it go a few days. During this time, Daniel was going insane. He'd call me into his office and tell me it was the worst thing that’s ever happened to him in his entire life. He’d be like, “I’m going to quit! | mean, I’m not going to quit, but | wanna quit.” I’d walk by his office and he’d be listening to this horrible Avril song with his face all contorted. | finally told him the truth at this big company lunch we had. Me and the other pro- ducer told everyone that we wanted to sing a song for Daniel, so we did a karaoke rendition of the Avril song and changed the lyrics to tell him it’s a prank. | think the lyrics went, "We weren't trying to be mean/We lied about Avril Lavigne." He was so shocked, he couldn't even understand what was going on. | told him, *OK—that's it! It's a prank. We're kidding." And he asked what part. And | told him the whole thing. But he still believed that they wanted the song in, and | had to tell him that | picked the song. He was actually going to fire people because he thought they had no taste in music for agreeing to put the song in the game. The prank completely warped his mind, and | don't think he's ever completely forgiven me for it. —Helen McWilliams Rock Band Associate Producer Harmonix * CRUEL KAMIKAZE The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) was a mixture of games, sunshine, > UMFRIENDLY FIRE and booze. In England, we’re used to hotels that serve all night long, but the Los Angeles hotel we were staying at closed its bar at 11 p.m. So after A lot of weird bugs occurred while spending three hours drinking, the bar started closing up. At this point, making Tools of Destruction. the waitress was coming out and gathering up drinks. I, however, was still One of them occurred when you pretty damn drunk. The waitress came past us with a tray full of leftovers changed into the Pirate costume. when | saw it. In the middle was a six-inch tumbler nearly Mr. Zurkon—which is our full of a dark purplish liquid. I thought, “Hell, what's the backup robot who shoots worst that can happen?” | picked the purple drink up and carried enemies for you—didn’t on drinking. | don’t even remember what it tasted like, nor do | remember recognize Ratchet for getting into bed fully clothed. The next day was utter hell. | needed to lie whatever reason, so he down spontaneously at various points in the day, the worst of which was at started shooting the the intersection between Microsoft’s and Sega’s booths. Not the best. pirates (including Ratchet, obviously). So in our focus : Сб она test—we didn’t catch this bug until Project Gotham Racing 4 Associate Producer E BizarreiGreations afterward—players would turn into the pirate costume, only to get shot from behind by Mr. Zurkon. : 9 Ес ^ ys 2: —Brian Allgeier Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction Creative Director Insomniac M thousand years of memories lost, Hs time to discover them. An immersive and deep gameplay experience. Engaging and unparalleled emotional story. An epic storyline with breathtaking visuals as intense as a blockbuster action film. See the trailer, screenshots and stunning game art om www.xbox.com/lostodyssey em EE: ven aac ци” pu Thun es ot Achat 22211 FUHNHY BUSINESS cont) We were really close to a deadline, and we told all the artists that we couldn’t turn anything new in, because when they turn something in, it always has the potential to break the game. We went up to one of the artists and said, “We want you to make Ratchet have a happier expression on his face, but whatever you do, be careful that you don’t break anything—make sure it works when you turn it in.” The artist was wondering why everyone was putting all this pressure on him, especially since he already had three people tell him to be careful. So he decided to give Ratchet an expression where his eyes and tongue were sticking out like a Looney Tunes cartoon. This was right before our deadline, and we booted up the game. And, of course, Ratchet has this crazy expression on his face, and | think our lead programmer almost exploded. Fortunately, he fixed it before the deadline, but that was a crazy moment, indeed. —Brian Allgeier Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction Creative Director Insomniac When [completing] a game, you need to burn [it onto a disc] to check if everything works OK. It's pretty boring. Now, back in the old days, we needed to burn DVDs to use on the Xbox. At the time, we couldn’t burn full speed because the disc would fail sometimes, so we'd just burn them at a slower speed with a guarantee that the disc would work. A few days prior to burning, we had a salesman call in, and his nov- elty item was a fold-up scooter, which pretty much everyone in the office decided to buy. This led to scooter races around the office. All was going well until someone decided to spice things up by using bins as "track obstacles." And he put them just after a corner. A blind corner by the administrative corridor...where all the walls are made of glass. Needless to say, we all went tumbling over it and into the glass, nearly knocking into the disc-burning machine. Now try explaining that to security at 3 a.m. — Chris Pickford Project Gotham Racing 4 Associate Producer Bizarre Creations A thousand years of 77212) foul pts time to 777712 hem. From the famed creator of. Final Fantasy, 252 Sakaguchi, comes a revolutionary RPG experience rich in depth, emotion, and cinematic сатра). Inan 4% that has harnessed the dark power of magic, ESRB CONTENT RATING — www.esrb.org STE > THAT'S OL MAYBE THE EVERYONE’S NINTENDO CHANNEL will be worth the wait. Nintendo President Reggie Fils-Aime recently told the New York Times that the upcoming Wii channel will not only let you down- load Wii and DS demos, but it will also let you download complete games to your DS. Yeah, we'd love to replay some classic Game Boy and Game Boy Advance relics, but let’s keep the prices low, Nintendo. Even nostalgia has a price, and it’s cheap. SKATEPARK TOUR PUBLISHERS SURE ARE COCKING THE SEQUELS— Ubisoft announced that the jungle shooter Far Cry 2 is coming to both the 360 and PS3, while publisher Eidos is saying why not to a 360/PS3 sequel of the open-world action game Just Cause (original shown above). And for those who aren't trig- ger-happy, publisher Namco Bandai announced Tales of Vesperia (a new title in the long-running role-playing game series) is coming to the 360. No word on a PS3 version...yet THIS JOE Music Executive Our monthly look at the industry’s most interesting gigs У OVERHEARO “Compared to male characters, | have a really hard time trying to draw women. That's prob- ably because my mind wanders i 3 and Га rather be looking at—or nap = itive? Riley’s typical better yet, touching—real i | T | i ick women rather than draw- i 7 e vpicallv cr: h pi ing them. [Laughs.] Men are : an anc 5 easier to draw as the urge i à ў Activisioi SEC ITO to get touchy-feely doesn't 5 really come ир....” — Capcom Art Director Daigo ІКепо explains why the Street Fighter series is dominated by shirtless buff dudes. Oh, and thick-thighed chicks. 30 + ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM ЕЗ 272777 17 f 2 74127] ЖУА ari хүж 77 22) МИ 254 Photograph by Kate Romero THE GRANE OE LINES 5 Lives: No need to search too hard for a pretty = PlayStation З exclusive—Uncharted: AF = Drake's Fortune is one good-looking gem. But do the developers behind this beaut have any brains? We tracked down Evan Wells, copresident of Uncharted developer Naughty Dog to see if he’s got the smarts to answer our five questions. Evan Wells: Drunk or stoned. EGM: Correct. Lives remaining: ееебее EW: Оһ boy. Cavedog? Lucky Chicken? EGM: Correct. Lives remaining: өөөөӨ EW: Oh ту god! Larry, Curly, and Moe? EGM: Incorrect. The rings are Thought, Evocation, Mutation, Division, Variation, Advancement, Blood, Will, Bile, Perfection, and Intuition. Lives remaining: e6666R EW: The Funkapotamus? EGM: Incorrect. It's Funklord. Lives remaining: 6668 EW: Oh my good god. | know we made four. I’m going to say nine. EGM: Incorrect. EW: You counting the Game Boy Advance games, too? EGM: Yes. EW: OK, 11. EGM: Still wrong. Correct answer is 14. EW: Ah, s***. Lives remaining: COR Game Over: Well, Mr. Wells—fortune was not with you today. If only your brain were as developed as your polygons. ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM.1UP.COM » 31 LYHLS 553449 We’ve put our favorite video picks for the month all in one spot, and that spot is Broken Pixels The boys (EGM's Shane, Crispin, and Seanbaby) take on China Warrior and Air Cars. And lose hilariously. "S Гв Street Fighter IV Channel Check out exclusive Street Fighter IV gameplay videos and about an hour’s worth of interview clips from ЕСМ“ candid chat with SF4 Producer Yoshinori Ono. Line See the first footage of the new ver- Sion of Line Rider, coming to Wii and DS later this year. Halo 3 Epic Suicides Some dude named Evlmidget25 uses Forge to commit grenade-assisted suicide via elaborate, Rube Goldberg machine-esque means. ММС MONTHLY • ЕСМ > ONLINE SCENE Fun with Forge Looking at five wacky modes in Halo 35 Forge (mostly) unscathed, and you're already a General in multiplayer. You might be asking yourself “Is there anything left to do in Halo 3?" Fiddle around with Forge—the game's all-purpose map editor—and you'll tell yourself, "Yes. Yes there is.” Don't believe us? Well, we've searched through the dark recesses of the Bungie.net forums to discover five of the most creative Forge creations. > ЕНС-НИН Dmiller360, AlkalineProdigy, MDK x2002x In this Infection variant on Foundry, one play- er spawns as “Pac-Man” while the remain- ing players start out as sword-carrying “ghosts.” The Pac-Man Spartan—armed with a Gravity Hammer—is completely helpless until he picks up one of the four power pellets placed at the corners of an almost perfect re-creation of the original Pac-Man maze. After that, it's whack, whack, whack, and the ghosts are dead. 9. Grabbing a power pellet and taking out the entire cadre of ghosts in quick succession is too sweet. > SHARK Methic Shark takes place in i the water on the out- skirts of Last Resort. The victims spawn precariously perched on top of towers armed only with a pistol while the "shark" stalks its prey in the water with a sword and superspeed. It sounds tough for the landlubbers, but the shark is susceptible to headshots (he has no shields), so it’s pos- sible to turn the tide. 7. While this concept is super- creative, the matches sometimes degrade into an exercise in spawn-killing the shark until everyone runs out of ammo. Then you, well, die. > STORM THE BEACH Trickmyster Welcome to war—in this re-creation of the D-Day landing on Utah beach, you're tasked with capturing territories while avoiding turret fire and random artillery explosions in the form of fusion coils falling from the sky. Fight back with weapon upgrades that are left behind in some of the territories. 8. From the bullets whizzing over your head to the fusion coils exploding all around, this hellishly hectic match type offers a seemingly insurmountable challenge while also reward- ing players who use their tactical minds to patiently make a strategic offense. > BUNGIE E00 Glimflicker Take the road in this VIP variant where you drive around in a Mongoose until you reach the finish line. Afterward, you’re launched back to the beginning of the track. Don’t try cheat- ing, though—if you try to score laps by crossing back and forth over the finish line repeatedly on foot, you’ll be moved to the penalty box; your only recourse is to kill yourself and accept a long respawn time. 9. This game type works best with at least six drivers. It’s a perfect example of the unique experiences that can be created in Forge. > GEIFCEHRLL. BurnieBurns GriffBall is like a juiced-up version of Rugby. A bomb is placed in the middle of an empty arena for two Gravity Hammer- wielding teams to sprint to. The rest is mad chaos as the "ball" is constantly changing possession while both sides use rapidly changing strategies to score. 10. GrifBall is a simple concept that is surprisingly deep. EGM Extras: Wanna know where you can play these genius games? Easy—head over to EGM.1UP.com to get links to all the modes listed above. ü po Елемес 4 ROW NINJA STARS! | UP WALLS! & Tace ММА, tendo. jo DS is a trademark cof Nint wnets. UID. Nintend епу of their respective 0 ку of Тесто, rks are the prop! Partial Nudity iolence ВІ RB CONTENT RATING Em www. WWW.ESTD.Org Ninja Gaiden® Dragon Sword. © 2007 Тесто. үүр. Ninja Gaiden and тесто are registered trademarks of Tecmo, үр. Team NINIA and the Team NINJA logo 2 цадетай © 2004 Nintendo. The ratings icon is а trademark of the interactive Digital Software association. All other {aden Ips. ! UPDATE Cameos that Forced Guests make us scream “Yessss!” GUEST STARS SOMETIMES SHINE BRIGHTLY IN TELEVISION SHOWS, but over in videogame land, the number of ridiculous cameos could permanently blind you. Or in Namco Bandai’s case, light you up—the publisher recently announced iconic Star Wars badasses Darth Vader and Yoda will both be playable characters in this summer's Soulcalibur IV (PS3/XB360). You might be asking yourself, “What the hell does Star Wars have to do with Soulcalibur?” The answer? Uh...yeah, we ard: Everyone in Kingdom Hearts Michael Jackson in Space Channel 5 34 + ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY e EGM.1UP.COM have no clue either. But we’re not com- plaining. Of course, it makes absolutely no sense for Vader and Yoda to be duking it out with the Soulcalibur regulars, and yeah, they could potentially break the game, but it’s pointless to bitch about it. Fitting or not, Star Wars characters are in Soulcalibur IV. And that’s crazy cool. Except for one little thing. Like the guest characters in Soul Calibur II, both Yoda and Darth Vader will be exclusive to a system (the green-skinned midget will appear The Burger King in Fight Night: Round 3 Hornet (Daytona USA) in Fighters Megamix on the 360 while the breathing-impaired whiner will show up on the PS3). Though we’re bummed we can’t stage an epic duel between the two, we're hearing that you'll eventually be able to purchase the one you don't own via downloadable content. Not only that, but word is you may even be able to buy additional Star Wars characters in the future (we're crossing our fingers for golden hottie Yaddle). This sounds great, LucasArts, but please don’t whore out Jar Jar Binks to Smash Bros., OK? We're no scientists or anything, but, um, shouldn't a lightsaber cut through steel? ww TODIGHT'S MATCH-UP =// Bill Clinton in NBA Jam а Exc Ka X 2.1 Е LETTERS ї кыйынын оаа ат |» єл ! г р | 40% у: | x q == ы ци d) omg M 23 “2 2 ја А 2 | : ee 242. рээ эгээл SS euere t سسس‎ ү ty ! AS AN AMERICAN | YOU CAN TAKE AN ORDER. | \\ PLACE AN ORDER, \\ CANCEL AN ORDER. AN ORDER CAN BE TALL. LARGE. OR MADE-TO. ini! YOU CAN QUESTION AN ORDER OR FOLLOW IT. AS AN AMERICAN AND A MARINE CORPS OFFICER YOUR ORDERS WILL IMPACT THE FUTURE OF THIS NATION. FEW CAN BE MARINES. EVEN FEWER CAN LEAD THEM. CAN YOU? EVI ж MARINEOFFICER.COM о к PS Ё 2 2 vz ЕЗІ > PREVIEWS Double Duty Ninja Gaiden's man in black, Ryu Hayabusa, will be | one busy assassin this spring, as he’s called to both the Xbox 360 and Nintendo DS 36 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY , EGM.1UP.COM NINJA GAIDEN II XB360 е Microsoft Game Studios • Spring 2008 The setup: Developer Team Ninja’s outspoken leader, Tomonobu Itagaki, explains that Ryu Hayabusa’s clan has been in a Hatfields-vs.-McCoys-style feud “for as long as anyone can remember. So what you’re going to see is the intense conflict [with the Black Spider Clan]." As for where the action game falls in the franchise time- line, it takes place after the events of Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword (DS). The scenery: NG2 is set in our world...sort of. While you'll hack and slash ninjas in Venice, Tokyo, and several other metropolises, "we're not trying to re-create [these cities] as is," says Itagaki. "We're changing them around and adapting them to our game." Still, we hope the final game has some pedestrians populating its pretty-yet-currently-barren cities. Tools of destruction: As you'd expect, NG2 will feature numerous sharp instruments, including Ryu's Dragon Sword, a giant scythe, and bladed gloves that would make Wolverine jealous. Though, as Itagaki explains, some will also factor into the story. “We treat the swords as impor- tant parts of the game," he says, "not just as weapons but as plot points as well. In the last game, yours became the true Dragon Sword toward the end, which unleashed its true power. W If the past few NG editions are any indication, definitely expect some kind of downloadable content for No. 2. We'll be doing that throughout the course of this game as well." New ninja tricks: Besides the changes to the locales and weaponry, you'll see some welcome tweaks to the gameplay. Magic (or Ninpo as it's called here) will now be used more offensively than defensively. "Also in the previous game, [magic] affected every enemy onscreen equally," says Itagaki, “like a smart bomb in an old shooter. But now, the effect differs depending on how many enemies there are, and if you jump into a throng of enemies and use your Ninpo, it'll kill some enemies, injure others, or throw them off their feet." ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY , EGM.1UP.COM “ 37 Our resident assassin also now has the rather handy ability to regenerate his health. “Because he’s a super- ninja,” says Itagaki, “he’s able to concentrate and focus his energy to regain some of [his health] back. But you can’t get it all back.” On the flipside, Ryu can now use Obliteration techniques, which are like the finishing moves in Mortal Kombat, only less cartoony, humiliating, and showy. Though they’re no less pain- ful—one that Itagaki pulled off when DS г Tecmo * March 2008 The setup: The series’ first foray on the DS actually tells the story of what happened between Ninja Gaiden (XB) and the upcoming NG2. And while the Black Spider Clan will be your main adversary in the new console game, the Fiend Clans (including NGT’s voluptuous pink nightmare Alma) pro- vide Ryu’s opposition here. The scenery: Even though Nintendo’s portable system is far from a graphical powerhouse, we’re pretty blown away by what this game is spitting out. It's definitely helping set new stan- dards for DS visuals, as Dragon Sword does an absolutely masterful job at blending 2D environments with 3D characters. playing the game had Ryu dicing a guy like he was hosting some late- night infomercial for Ginsu knives. Body count: As you can imagine, the Obliteration techniques are quite bloody, a quality the entire game shares. Unlike other action games, NG2 shows Ryu cutting off his ene- mies’ limbs with surgical (and graphi- cal) precision. Not that it’ll stop them. Genshin, head of the rival clan, is so focused on destroying the Hayabusa ш Dragon Sword requires you to hold the handheld like a book. And while most of the Clan that, “if any of his lesser ninjas try but fail to kill Ryu,” says Itagaki, "they'd be killed by their own boss for failing." As a result, enemies will keep coming at you, even when they've lost an arm or a leg—very nice. Support: Like last year's stellar Ninja Gaiden Sigma (PS3), this one will also feature a female playable character. But Itagaki still refuses to provide any details regarding the series’ new femme fatale. controls here are mapped to the stylus, you can press any face or shoulder button to block. NINJA GAIDEN: CRAGOM SWORD Tools of destruction: Obviously, Ryu will arrive with all the ninja essen- tials (sword, shuriken, etc.), but the ultimate weapon here is your stylus. Yep, in the vein of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, you'll control the assas- sin by manipulating the DS touch Screen. You'll hold the stylus down to make Ryu move, single-tap to throw shuriken, double-tap to jump, and use vertical/horizontal strokes to attack. Surprisingly, we found Dragon Sword's control setup quite respon- Sive and never skipped a beat while slicin’ up foes. New ninja tricks: Casting magic in this game also involves the touch Screen. You'll first activate a Ninpo 38 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM spell via tracing its symbol, and then use the stylus to guide fireballs (or whatever else you've conjured up) through the environment. Body count: While Dragon Swora's visuals undoubtedly impress, it still manages to pack a large number of enemies onscreen (and they ain't exactly chumps, either). Plus, the game always runs at a decent clip— even when you're encountering one of the gigantic bosses. EGM Extras: Head to Support: Ryu won't be alone on this mission, as the lady ninja Momiji makes her franchise debut. It's too bad her role falls off drastically after you play as her in the tutorial. 4 to see videos of Ryu tearing it up in both upcoming Ninja Gaiden games. RULE THE © SEIZE THE LAND FORGE A LEGEND. Swashbuckling Sword Fights Intense Tactical Ship Combat Blood 42526 Mild Suggestive Themes 2 cohol and Tobacco (34 CHOICE piratesoftheburningsea.com WINNER FLYING Las SOFTWARE PUBLISHING Not Rated by the ESRB © 2007 Flying Lab Software, LLC. Flying Lab Software and Pirates of the Burning Sea are trademarks or registered trademarks of Flying Lab Software, LLC. Platform Publishing and the Platform Publishing logo are trademarks of Sony Online Entertainment LLC. The ratings icon is a registered trademark of the Entertainment Software Association. All other trademarks or trade names are properties of their respective owners. All rights reserved. Scholarship Edition Bullworth Academy is making some changes to its curriculum By Bryan Intihar Platforms: the freckled-face star of Bully Mess И spent one long year punching and slingshotting his way Publisher: A i Бэ дүр top of the student body...and now he's gotta do it While the Wii version receives a new control setup, those all over again. This March, Rockstar is porting one of the i who purchase the 360 edition will now have Mr. Hopkins Developers: psy Mast big hits to the Wii and Xbox 360. to aid them in jacking up their gamerscore. Barrera won't Rockstar Toronto/ 5 ч Mad Doc The extra horsepower of these consoles will naturally go into specifics, but he assures us that some of the Achievements here will be just as creative as the game itself. пао equate into a prettier.year оп campus (even more so with ј March 2007 Microsoft's machine). But members of the Bullworth faculty Cross your fingers that hooking up with lots of girls (or even sucking face with a dude) earns you some nice points. have also made some other alterations and additions for this school year. | WII SCREENSHOT Expect to hit the books even harder in тї ттт ° Scholarship Edition, as you'll have to excel at four additional minigame-based classes. The newcomers include Math (think along the lines of Brain Age), Music (play- ing a vibraphone and other instruments), Biology (dissecting all sorts of wildlife), and Geography (correctly placing a country/ state's flag onto a map). Music and Biology were our favorites, especially when played using the Wii-specific controls. Scholarship Edition also introduces a multiplayer mode, where one person assumes the role of Jimmy and another plays as Gary (the game's main nemesis). You'll be able to compete (offline only) in several of the class minigames and other school activities. "We didn't want to go waggle-crazy," says Producer Jeronimo Barrera about the Wii- ified control scheme, which mostly comes into play during skirmishes; thrusting the Nunchuk and Wii Remote forward throws a left and right hook, respectively, while humiliation finishers are performed via fol- lowing the onscreen cues. The new fighting mechanics work well, but aiming the Wii- mote when tossing snowballs and firing your slingshot could use more fine-tuning. xeseo Scholarship Edition features eight new mis- sions, and look for Jimmy to get involved in some weird and wild stuff. One task has him helping a homeless Santa with making improvements to his back-alley North Pole (while fending off crazy elves that work for a competing Saint Nick), and then snap- ping pics of li'l rascals as they tell Santa what they'd like for Christmas. Another has Jimmy filling in for a sick musician at the town's annual rendition of The Nutcracker. 40 • ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM.1UP.COM PLAYSTATION. Ə Y 6 XBOX360-"* а ии www.darksector.com 22 ane Dark Sector © 2007 Digital Extremes, London, Canada. Dark Sectorand the Dark Sector logo are trademarks of Digital Extremes. Digital Extremes and the Digital Extremes logo are trademarks of 1085522 | Strong Language Ontario Ltd. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Published by D3 Inc. under license Iram Digital Extremes. AN other trademarks are property of their respective owners. Microsoft, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE and D: e D3PUBLISHER. the Xbox logos are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. ‘PlayStation’, 'PLAYSTATION and "PS" Family logo are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc WITH THEIR OFTEN DINKY SCREENS and numeric-keypad inter- faces, mobile phones haven’t been known for delivering worthwhile gaming experiences. But as the handsets become sleeker and better developers try their fortunes in the booming mobile-gaming business, on-the- go games are actu- ally getting—gasp!—good. We pick the top five titles for phones and the ubiquitous iPod that just might make you switch your Nintendo DS and PSP to standby mode...at least for a few minutes. Crash of the Titans clickgamer.com What is it? Crash, the original east- ern barred bandi- і coot made famous on the original PlayStation, may be all played out on the consoles, but he’s finding new life on mobile phones thanks to this beat-em-up with 50 levels, boss fights, and graphics that look good on the small screen. | Why is it great? Crash beats the crap out of enemies with special moves and mask power-ups that are actually fun. What you need to play it: The game's available for any Java-enabled phone. THAT Asphalt 3: | Street Rules = WANTED 42 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM.1UP.COM SimCity: Societies eamobile.com What is it? An old-school strategy game borrows from the PC version, let- ting you build every- thing from tennis courts to skyscrap- ers. Global-warming worrywarts can even use green sources of alternative power. Why is it great? Long commutes demand complex, detail-oriented games, and there's a lot to do in Societies. Graphically, it's a few steps above the blocky visuals in most other mobile fare. What you need to play it: Any Java- enabled phone will do, such as the LG VX3800 or Sony Ericsson K800i. Assassin's Creed gameloft.com What is it? A | hardcore plat- former with lots of sword fighting, this surprisingly cin- ematic game has , more in common i with the original 2D Prince of Persia than the so-so, ultra- repetitive PS3/XB360 version of Creed. Why is it great? Some of the death-defying jumps and scripted action scenes—horse carts run amok, thrilling vine catapults—will have you ignoring incoming calls until you reach the end of the level. What you need to play it: Any Java- enabled phone. Orcs & Elves И Sims Pool eamobile. com | What is it? A smartly designed pool game with 9-ball, 8-ball, and trick-shot modes. Sound effects are pretty good if you pocket the iPod earbuds and go with real headphones. Why is it great? Right, pool. It might — | sound like loser PC retro gaming, but the iPod wheel is well suited to lining up the cue stick and thwacking a power shot at just the right angle. The visuals are also a perfect fit for the iPod's slightly rectangular high-res screen. What you need to play it: iPod (game supports Nano, Classic, and Video models). FIFA 07 eamobile.com What is it? EA’s » FIFA franchise goes mobile with about 100 FIFA soccer teams, easy-on-the-eyes graphics, and music that even sounds good on a tinny, tiny mobile-phone speaker. Why is it great? The forgiving gameplay leads to some great action (quick passes and lobs) and something the console ver- sion rarely allows: scoring a goal. What you need to play it: Any N-Gage- enabled Symbian OS phone, like the N95 pictured at the top left of the page. You read that right: N-Gage! $h o uoneiodiog ETE > FREUTEN: HOD Сич Platform: PSP Publisher: Square Enix Developer: . Square Enix Release Date: March 2007 REE TARGET CRISIS CORE: Final Fantasy VII A primer to this long-awaited PSP spin-off By Torrey Walker SQUARE ENIX SEEMS CONTENT TO MILK the lucrative Final Fantasy VII teat till it's concave. But honestly, why craft something truly new when something old sells better? To get you ready for the series' oft-delayed portable installment, we go ahead and answer all the nec- essary questions. When does it go down? Crisis Core takes place before FFVII when Cloud Strife, the famed protagonist of the PS1 role-playing classic, was just a plebeian guard for the energy conglomerate Shinra Electric Power Company. As such, one character who famously kicks the bucket in FFVII is just kicking it here while another who goes bats*** insane has yet to happen upon the guano stash. Who's the star? Cloud's compatriot Zack Fair may have gone out like a punk in FFVII, but in Crisis Core he wields a gargantuan sword and hands out some serious beatings along the way. Bare-armed and 44 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM spiky-haired, this SOLDIER second class really means business. What's Sephiroth’s role? As we hinted earlier, this premanic SOLDIER first class gets plenty of face time on the PSP screen. And quite frankly, we couldn't imagine а FFVII spin-off without the series' beloved villain. You can expect some other memo- rable characters to appear in the game, as well. Is there an overworld? From what we've seen, the game proceeds mostly as a series of missions from hub locations, making the whole exploration aspect seem contrived. How does your party shape up? What party? It’s a one-man show. What’s combat like? Crisis Core drop-kicks turn-based combat in favor of an action-oriented approach for the (mostly) random battles. You'll also find a slot system called Digital Mind Wave that randomly fires off helpful status boosts during combat. It's all a bit unwieldy at first, but like Zack's hair, you get used to it. What about magic? The well-liked Materia system from FFVII is back, and some magic can be fused to form new spells. And summons? Your favorite crea- tures not only return to wreak havoc in this portable powerhouse—you also fight them. When summons are called forth, the game seamlessly transitions to a gorgeous video of the esper laying waste. Are the graphics really that good? Crisis Core is easily the best-looking PSP title to date thanks to its highly detailed 3D graphics and Advent Children-quality CG cut-scenes. If only Square put that much effort into the storyline (it's unintelligible). ќа EGM Extras: Don't forget to stop ЭЛЕОМЛЕВРеот to see Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII in action. COMING SOON Look what's springing up in March Sega Superstars Tennis Wii/PS3/XB360/PS2/DS * Sega If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Nintendo must be really happy with Sega. The publisher has basically ripped off the Mario Tennis formula and swapped in its famous faces. And you won't find us complaining: The game sports super- simple and responsive controls plus a unique selection of minigames (just imagine taking out House of the Dead zombies with Sonic’s powerful backhand). MLB 08: The Show PS3/PS2/PSP ® Sony Computer Entertainment America From graphics to gameplay, the MLB series resembled a wet-behind- the-ears rookie in its first season on the PS3. As you can see from these screenshots, 08 has definitely addressed those visual concerns, thanks to much more detailed player models and stadiums (fans now even hang K signs after the home hurler tosses a strikeout). The game also gets more realistic on the field with what the developers dub the E Final Fantasy: Crystal i "Progressive Batting Performance" feature. This means that when Chronicles—Ring of Fates you're hot at the plate, you'll get more hits. But if you're cold, just like in DS • Square Enix real life, it'll be tougher to break outta that slump. Remember the annoying magical bucket that your party always had to carry in the GameCube original? Well, it won't be drag- ging you down here, which should make hacking and slashing More March Releases а ч х Battlefield: Bad Company MLB 2K8 ШОО dungeons with three SHE friends much more enjoy PS3/XB360 « EA Games Wii/PS3/XB360/PS2/PSP 5 able. It's just a shame you can't take the adventure online. 2K Sports Bully: Scholarship Edition Wii/XB360 е Rockstar N+ PSP/DS • Atari E Ninja Reflex [m Wi/DS*EAGames 1 7“ Command & Conquer " 3: Kane's Wrath The House of the Whether you're tossing XB360 * EA Games Dead 2 & 3 Return shurikens at cardboard Wii е Sega cutouts of foes or catch- Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII ing flies with chopsticks i PSP е Square Enix Viking: Battle for Asgard Mr. Miyagi-style, this four- | : PS3/XB360 • Sega player party game is all about seeing if you’ve got the hand- 37 Destroy All Humans! eye coordination of a silent-but-violent assassin. But perhaps verdi al MEE СРЕ the true test will come when you're faced with the prospect of Wii/PS3/XB360/PS2/PSP • dropping $50 for a grand total of six minigames on the Wii. By ` God of War: Chains of Olympus Konami sh our ninja calculations, that seems like a really steep price for a і PSP e Sony Computer very limited amount of content. i Entertainment America ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM • 45 Resurrected Rumors: Here's a small one you kiddos might not remember. A good while back, | had a small rumor about the Food Network cooking up a game based on the popular culinary battler Iron Chef. Well, it's almost ready to be served. Reanimating dying rumors A LOT OF PEOPLE ASK МЕ if | ever get tired of searching for juicy scuttlebutt. Nope, can't say that | do. Digging for rumors is my life, guys. It pays my bills. It keeps me alive. But most importantly, it counts as community service for my probation charges. Hmm, maybe | shouldn’t have mentioned that.... Anyway, if you still need convincing, just get a load of all the goods | gathered for you this month. And ask better ques- tions next time. Back from the dead Now that the 360 has been out for a couple of years, we've been able to enjoy quite a few exclusive hits. One of my favorites, the zombie-infested Dead Rising, deserves to get resur- rected. Capcom seems to agree, because my undead mole tells me Dead Rising 2 will rise again on multiple systems. Sounds excit- ing...until you hear this: Apparently, the game is being outsourced to a Los Angeles-based developer. Yikes! Break the chains It’s finally becoming cool to like the PSP again, thanks to all the sweet nongaming things you can do with it. 46 • ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM ашар ғ РА d But if you're not into that stuff, you can always stick to the games, like the upcoming God of War: Chains of Olympus. This is one title everyone will likely be hooked on. Especially since my Sony spies say that Chains of Olympus will also pop up on the PS2 sometime in the future. Long fight coming Waiting for Street Fighter IV is tougher than taking on both Akuma and M. Bison at once, especially now that we know it’s actually real. But many of us have forgotten about the upcoming Super Street Fighter И Turbo HD Remix (phew—that's a long one!). The Udon Comics-cre- ated remake is taking its sweet time, > Q-TIFZ %) * It's not every day that a unique shooter like Everyday Shooter pops up. That's N why I’m hearing it'll find a new home on the PSP. huh? Well, word is the studio didn’t realize making 2D, games is, well, kinda time consuming. Because of this, Capcom has forced Udon to outsource the animation all over the world in order to finish it. So don’t expect HD Remix to come out anytime soon—I’m hearing it's “try- ing" to hit this summer. Wii envy I've told you before that Sony wants to make a Wii-like motion control- ler for the PS2, but apparently it’s really going to happen soon. Sure, Sony dances around the thought in our cover story interview, but obvi- ously they don’t want to prematurely announce it. йй ) ° Though it's slightly flawed, the artsy PS2 classic Ico is in need of a sequel. \ Looks like it’s coming—and I’m hearing it'll be revealed very, very soon. ©) My wish may come true. Nah, it's not for a Final Fantasy Vil remake. Better— % a дате based оп the new American Gladiators show тау come to Wii. ©2008 ESPN, Inc. YOUR NBA DESTINATION WEDNESDAYS ___ “FRIDAYS ne 11:11 С є а IN A WHITE-BRICK BUILDING AT BOSTON’S NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY, MBA students are hearing a tale of corporate hubris, an underdog rival that innovated its way back to the top, and TV ads starring creepy babies crying in white rooms. It's a lecture on a proud Japanese electronics giant that shrewdly rose to the top of the videogame-hardware business, only to see its fortunes flip-flop. ^I contrast the marketing strategies of [Sony and Nintendo] and their products and discuss why they took the approaches they did and the results of each approach,” says Professor Gloria Barczak, who figures her students can learn a lot from what Sony did wrong with the PlayStation З and what Nintendo did right with the Wii, which outsold Sony’s new system nearly three to one in the U.S. last year. “It’s a valuable lesson to examine two companies in the same industry with two different strategies and two different results.” The bigger question, though, is whether this lesson is being learned outside academia—namely at Sony HQ. The company has already made some smart moves, dropping the price of the lower-end 40GB model to $400, getting out impres- sive games like Uncharted: Drake’s 48 • ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM, 1UP.COM its winning Blu-ray format flick giveaways. Sony such maneuvering million boost in North Ame sales during the holi an on-track outlook projected 11 million wide by the end of М: But with the PS3 behind the Wii and categories beyond just. areas such as console features, and game quali system still has a way t PlayStation 3 gair The PS3/PSP love 2 PS3 ports start to shi Blu-ray is ing. . Turning gamers into gar Home's grand openin The exclusive games. SOLID SNAK Working to put | mustaches and the PlayStation brand back in vogue in 2008. | AMOLS чалпоо Has the system already beaten the Xbox 360 overseas? The ever-shifting lineup of PS3 con- figurations (each offering different levels of PS2 back- ward compatibil- ity) just got much simpler in Japan, where Sony has discontinued every- thing but the bare- bones 40GB model. Expect a new model sporting a larger hard drive to be introduced later this year... 50 * ELECTRONI THE PLAYSTATION 3’S UNDENI- ABLY SLOW START IN THE U.S. has cast it as the underdog in the domestic console race, but it's not faring quite so poorly on a global Scale. Even though Sony's plan to simultaneously launch the Р53 all over the world fizzled (the Japanese and American launches occurred less than a week apart in November 2006, but Europe had to wait until March 2007), the console has been more successful at fending off Microsoft's Xbox 360 and (to a lesser extent) Nintendo's Wii abroad. Considering that the PS3 faces the same obstacles in these territo- ries—prohibitively high price, scant titles, and fierce competition—one has to wonder what's causing this rift between U.S. gamers and their overseas counterparts. “When you look at a broader view of where the PlayStation 3 stands, you should start in Japan,” says Sony Computer Entertainment America Senior VP of Marketing Peter Dille. “First of all, the Xbox 360 is irrelevant—it doesn’t even exist.” It's a hyperbolic statement to be sure (we've seen plenty of used 360 hardware languishing in Japanese shops for less than $175) but not without some basis in truth. To date, Microsoft has convinced only 240,000 Japanese gamers to invest in its Western-bred console, yet the company shows no signs of giving up on the region. “If you look at the Xbox 360 as a somewhat expensive outreach campaign to Japanese third-party publishers, it’s worth it to Microsoft,” says Newsweek Technology Editor N’Gai Croal. “Now 360 gets games like Ace Combat and Rez first and/or exclusively—that's a big turnaround, and even after blow- ing $1 billion on the [360 hardware problems], Microsoft can still pick up the tab for its Japanese white elephant, er, console.” But the PS3 isn't finding an out- pouring of love in Sony’s Japanese homeland either, as Nintendo’s quirky and affordable DS and Wii have all but cornered the videogame market. But Sony has sold 1.6 mil- lion systems over there (as opposed to the nearly 5 million Wiis Nintendo has moved during the same time period) despite a serious lack of games that pique Japanese gam- ers’ interest. Once key exclusive franchise titles such as Metal Gear Solid 4 and Final Fantasy XIII finally surface, expect Japanese PS3 sales to ramp up considerably. Besting Microsoft in Japan isn’t surprising, but pulling off a similar coup in Europe could be instrumen- tal to Sony's plan for victory. “The PS3 is enjoying tremendous success in Europe," Dille says. "Microsoft is a U.S.-based company, and for whatever reason they did not enjoy the type of success with the Xbox in Europe as they realized in North America." Although the Xbox 360 has done well in the U.K. (it's moved over 1.5 million units compared to the PS3’s 500,000), the PS3 has quickly pulled ahead in France, Italy, Spain, and Belgium. This momentum won't go unnoticed by publishers. *The more PS3 succeeds in Europe, the more publishers and developers will have to consider leading develop- ment on PS3,” Croal says. “Its eso- teric architecture means that the best way to optimize a PS3/360 game is to lead development on PS3.” PS3 software sales have already been surprisingly strong in Europe, with Assassin’s Creed and Pro Evolution Soccer (aka Winning Eleven) handily outselling their 360 counterparts in some countries. “In Europe, we'll soon see more and more multiplatform games that sell more units on the PS3 than on the 360,” says Gearbox Software President Randy Pitchford. “As astonishing as it sounds, it's not unreasonable to expect that by the end of the year that will be the rule in Europe, not the exception." > MAHNIMS HIS STATION A senior VP talks about a “Sony that listens" in "08... Peter Dille (pro- nounce it "Dill-y") is Sony Computer Entertainment America's senior VP of marketing. NTHLY e EGM.1UP.C EGM: A year ago we asked Sony Computer Entertainment America President Jack Tretton to weigh in on the Wii. He said he didn't know if it would expand the market. Clearly it did. Doesn't the Wi validate going in a less-pricey, less technical direction with hardwa success Peter Dille: Well, if you want a less- pricey, less-technical way to enter the game market, we feel like we've got one: It's called the PlayStation 2. It's less expensive than a Wii. We sold more PlayStation 2s than we sold PlayStation 3s [over the holidays], so clearly many consumers are price- sensitive.... If the Wii is successful in bringing in new consumers to the marketplace, that's...good for all of us. But when we talk to consumers who've been waiting on the fence to jump into PlayStation 3.... We've got a very loyal Тап base— more than 40 million PlayStation 2s out there. A lot of what we're hearing is price had Tapping the benefits of the PSS/PSP love connection EVERYONE KNOWS THE PS3 CAN PLAY GAMES. Blu-ray movies? Well, most people know that. But what about all the cool things you can do when you connect a PS3 to a PSP? Anyone? Yeah, thought not. Strange, too, once you realize exactly what this incestuous couple can do. Shortly after the system's launch, some tech-savvy gamers managed to discover one of the PS3's hidden little secrets: remote play. The ability to transfer data from the PS3 over to the PSP— introduced randomly in last year's first-party exclusive Lair— was made public sooner than Sony expected. "It was kind of dis- covered almost accidentally that you could play remotely," says Sony's Peter Dille. “Frankly, [Lair developer Factor 5] hadn't fully implemented the feature, so that wasn't the one we wanted to get behind and say, see, you can do this.” So instead of taking the time to shill this innovative feature, Sony instead quietly buffed it up ina recent PS3 firmware update, this time allowing users to remotely play any PS1 game on their PSP. Again, no big mention of how cool this is... yet. "We can do a better job mak- ing sure that we merchandise [the PS3/PSP] connectivity," says Dille. "It is significant.” Sure is, especially considering Sony's ambitious plans to exploit the valuable relationship between the PS3 and the PSP later this year. We know about the games—those been an issue for a lot of these folks throughout 2007, and we addressed that [during] the holidays [with a PS3 price drop]. So some of these guys—to use a metaphor—they were stepping out on us and having a bit of an affair with the Wii. It's a great way to tide them over before they have to make that commitment to a next- generation system. EGM: So why didn't Sony take the PlayStation 2 and repackage it with an interface similar to the Wii? Maybe put an end to the affairs? PD: First of all, you can't just say, ^ the Wii's selling well—let's put in a make sense — but Sony is looking to turn the PS3 and PSP into the grand multimedia devices it origi- nally intended them to be. Later this spring, the company will start mov- ing forward on a video-download service. *Imagine a future where you can download a TV show,” says Dille, “and if | wanted to access the episode of Lost that | downloaded to my PS3, | could pick up my PSP and access it remotely and start watch- ing it anywhere." Microsoft has already been pro- viding TV and movies via the Xbox Live Marketplace, but the ability to remotely watch your downloaded content anywhere makes the PS3’s upcoming store a little more compel- ling. No word on what type of pricing policy Sony will adopt (it’s toying around with offering an all-you-want subscription service), but we do Sony's announce- ment that PSP owners can transfer Blu-ray movies to their system seems like a concession that the struggling UMD movie format is dead. “But not everyone will have a Blu-ray device,” says PlayStation Network Director of Operations Eric Lempel. “So UMD will still be a part of the picture. We'll support both.” know that you'll be able to both rent and purchase content. Disc lovers shouldn't feel left out— Soon it will be possible to watch any Blu-ray movie on the go. At this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Sony announced the PS3 will be able to transfer Blu-ray content onto a PSP. Sounds cool, but we just hope by the time everything comes to fruition, consumers won't be clue- less as to how it all works. motion-control sensor. Those things take time to develop and you've got to have the software for it as well. But at the same time, we're very confident in our plans for PlayStation 2; we're seeing great success on that platform. | think whether motion control is a long-term trend remains to be seen. If it is, you can expect that we'd find a way to bring that to our platform. If it's not, we've got three very, very healthy platforms that give consumers all sorts of ways to be innovative and play games in different ways. EGM: Speaking of motion control, not many PS3 games take advantage of the Sixaxis, and the one that required it—Lair— wasn't very good. In hindsight, wouldn't it have been better to launch the PS3 with a conventional controller to help lower the price? PD: Ра take issue with your comments. It's a fair thing to say when the system first game out. When you do introduce a new technology like that, people have to have the time to implement it. Since then, | think there's been a ton of great products: Warhawk's a great one that comes to mind. Lair was a good one as well. It didn't review particularly well, but | don't think that had anything to do with the Sixaxis. So from ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM.1UP.COM * 51 COVER STORY AXOLS ЕГА Ти =] Can the Xbox 360 and Wii maintain their momentum? Last year, Nintendo revealed nebulous plans to release a Wii that offers DVD playback in 2008, yet nothing has materialized. Considering that it’s still impossible to walk into a store and purchase a Wii, we have our doubts. Plus, the DVD-playing Q (a GameCube manufactured by Panasonic) never left Japan. The Panasonic Q: sexy yet irrelevant. MICROSOFT AND NINTENDO BOTH TOOK BIG RISKS with their respective consoles this generation: Rushing the Xbox 360 to market required a premature euthanasia of the original Xbox, while the Wii shat- tered industry paradigms with its unique controller and defiantly anti- quated graphics. Shockingly, these gambles paid off handsomely—both systems have trounced Sony’s pricey PS3 in North America. But while all signs point to Sony's box reversing its fortunes in 2008, some industry insiders believe that its competitors could actually be headed for trouble. The Xbox 360's popularity with hardcore gamers can't be denied: A steady stream of top-quality shooters and the user-friendly Xbox Live online service have fostered a competitive community of dedi- cated players. But at the same time, the “boys club” mentality has kept the console from gaining massive mainstream acceptance. So far, our perspective | think Sixaxis is something that consumers really responded to. Yeah, | think people wanted to see it across all games. | think sometimes gamers are a little bit impatient and don’t understand how game companies make the products that come to market—understand the lead times that are required—but | think what you're seeing now is not only the incorporation of the Sixaxis into software, but now of course the other thing that people were clamoring for—the DualShock capability—will be coming to market in 2008. EGM: About the DualShock, wien the PS3 launched, Sony’s message 52 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM. 1UP.COM Microsoft’s attempts to appeal to younger and nontraditional gamers (Viva Piñata, Fuzion Frenzy 2) haven't taken off, while Sony has already demonstrated a commitment to a wide variety of game types on PS3. Realistically, the challenges of market expansion aren’t going to put the 360 in a tailspin, but the well-publicized reliability concems surrounding the Xbox 360 hardware (namely the nefarious “red ring of death” epidemic) might. Even though outgoing Microsoft CEO Bill Gates recently told the BBC that the com- pany is striving to make the 360 “the most reliable videogame box out there,” the multitude of broken units has undoubtedly created a stigma in the eyes of many consumers. Ultimately, Microsoft Game Studios could present the biggest hurdle for the 360’s chances for continued success—its first-party publishing arm simply doesn’t seem capable of keeping pace with Sony or Nintendo. Its output has always seemed a bit scattershot, producing high-profile hits (Gears of War, Halo 3) and worthless throwaways (Tenchu, Kingdom Under Fire). The fact that Microsoft can't seem to maintain its relationships with its second- party partners only exacerbates this problem—in the last year alone, big-name studios such as Bungie (Halo), Bizarre Creations (PGR), and BioWare (Mass Effect) have drifted away from exclusive partnerships was that rumble wasn’t important. At the same е, you hyped PS3 backward compatibility as being better than the 360’s. Now it’s seems almost a flip-flop: Rumble’s going back in, but PS2 backward compatibility has been nixed from the 40GB PS3 model. Why is rumble suddenly important and backward compatibility isn’t? PD: Backward compatibility: Let’s talk about that first. It’s important to us; if you want it there’s a [model] in the marketplace that offers it, and | think our stance [on] backward compatibility stands in stark contrast to our competitors’. First of all, nobody has with Microsoft in one way or another. The potential pitfalls the Wii faces couldn’t be more different. Sure, the console has been phenomenally suc- cessful with kids and nontraditional gamers, routinely selling out since its release. Yet some believe that the bubble will inevitably burst. Obviously, the system’s dated visu- als make it less viable in the long run for consumers wanting a cutting- edge experience. Plus, a cavalcade of crappy Wii software could damage the Wii's long-term sustainability. Nintendo's first-party Wii games (including the endlessly enjoyable Wii Sports that comes bundled with the hardware) are so ubiquitous that few. gamers even bother to sample other | publishers’ Wii fare. And the fact that | Nintendo allows all manner of third- party dreck to clog store shelves (see: Balls of Fury, Jenga, Ninjabread | Man, etc.) only makes Nintendo's own games seem even more desirable. Don't look for that situation to change anytime soon. “The first third party to truly solve what Wii gamers want will become very wealthy," says Newsweek's N'Gai Croal. “But | don't believe that most third parties apply anywhere near the amount of time and resources necessary to resolve it. Sure, they'll experiment with some exclusive brands and titles, but at the end of the day, they'll treat it like the [Game Boy Advance] and the DS—licenses and brand extensions aimed at casual gamers and kids." pulled it off besides us. Second, when they migrated from one platform to the other, they completely stopped making software for their platform. Then they stopped making hardware. And they said, "Third parties, if you want to continue to make software for this platform, knock yourself out, but we're moving on." What we said is, based on all of our research, price was the single biggest issue that people wanted to address with PlayStation 3. With an eye toward reducing the price, [backward compatibility] was one of the attributes that was addressed. Having said that, there's still a model in the marketplace that supports it. If Multiplatform games will stop hitting the system later and lousier FOR A SYSTEM THAT HYPED SUPERIOR TECHNOLOGY as one of its selling points —technology that came at a higher price, to boot—it was the ultimate black eye: third- party multiplatform games that ran better on the Xbox 360. It started infamously with EA Sports’ football titles, followed by choppy ports of various games in Valve's Half-Life 2: The Orange Box compilation (which, adding insult to injury, also shipped a month after the 360 version). Sony execs blame the games' poor show- ing on developers’ year head start with the first-to-market 360. “They developed tools for the 360 prior to getting the PS3,” says Sony's Peter Dille. “And when you port from 360 to PS3, when you're going from a lower-denominator platform and try- ing to eke out any sort of greater effi- ciency, you're just not going to do it." But developers we spoke with say the 360's head start is only part of the reason 360 versions ran better. “The 360 is not as complex or eso- teric in its hardware design as the Р53," says Gearbox President Randy it’s important to you, you can pay the additional $100. EGM: Does nixing backward compatibility from one model kill any chance of someday offering PS2 games for download from the PlayStation Network Store [PSN], just like you sell PS1 games now? Eric Lempel, director of PSN operations, chimes in: We haven't talked about that yet, but there are possibilities through technology an software emulation to make that possible. | wouldn't talk about any specific plans at this point. Pitchford, whose studio is making Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, Borderlands, and an Aliens game, all for PS3 and XB360. “Plus, the 360 has enjoyed a head start creating a larger installed base and bigger tie-in ratios [software sales tied to hardware sales].” A key point: Third- party publishers pay more attention to a system's sales numbers than its specs. “For a fiscally minded entity such as a game publisher looking at high-definition game development," says Scott Steinberg, managing director of Embassy Multimedia Consultants, "it only makes sense to make a game's Xbox 360 edition the primary one, since it has the poten- tial of appealing to the most people, as well as looking sharpest given tight turnarounds.” But now that the PS3 has gotten a healthy holiday sales boost and developers have had more time to wrap their heads around the system, the advantages of leading devel- opment on the 360 are starting to dwindle. *One thing we have done to avoid having a lead platform is we have distributed PS3 and 360 development kits and test stations evenly throughout our team," says Daniel Willfór, producer of Avalanche Studios' Just Cause 2. Meanwhile, the first multiplatform games that. perform better on the PS3 are starting to appear. Capcom’s Devil May Cry 4 takes advantage of the system's universally packed-in hard drive to minimize load times after an PD: Let's talk about rumble for a second. Rather than couching that as a negative— Sony flip-flopping—keep in mind that we had a legal issue there with [rumble patent holder] Immersion, but we heard loud and clear that rumble was important to gamers and took the necessary steps to make it happen. I think we get painted a lot as a company that doesn't listen or is arrogant. From our perspective, [making rumble happen] is doing the right thing by the consumer, offering initial lengthy install. And Criterion Games' high-octane Burnout: Paradise runs slightly better on Sony's black box. "The PS3 is a more forward-looking machine," says Paradise Producer Nick Channon, “so we felt like if we could get the game running well on the PS3, then it was more likely that it would run well on both platforms." Just don't expect a majority of multiplatform games to suddenly start outperforming on PS3. Rather, as developers spend more time tailoring titles for their respective hardware, we'll start to see games that claim equal but miniscule per- formance victories on both systems. For instance, Dark Sector, a third- person action game due this spring, has more vibrant graphics on the 360 but runs at a smoother clip on the PS3. "It's not so much about which machine you lead on," says Criterion’s Channon. “It’s more about the way you develop your game.” them something that means a lot to them. We'd like to put that into the good-news category and not frame it as somehow going back on our word. We'd be the first to say that we pay attention to the marketplace and want to make sure that we offer gamers the best experience possible. EGM: Are you doing anything to streamline the fleet of PS3 models with various hard-drive sizes that have come out since launch? They COVER STORY Malin Bay Heights Г. 8650879 When Grand Theft Auto IV missed its October 2007 release date, pub- lisher Take-Two laid the blame on "technical issues." Industry rumor has it that those issues centered on the PS3, not only because developer Rockstar was still struggling with the system's steep learning curve but also because of its weak installed base at the time. [Gamers] were stepping out on us and having a bit of an affair with the W —Sony's Peter Dille ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY , EGM.1UP.COM , 53 AXOLS anoo Blu-ray is winnin Hope you didn't buy an HD-DVD player.. "The Warner Bros. announcement of Blu-ray exclusivity will go a long way toward helping consumers make up their minds about which format to support in the coming year. My guess is that the PS3 will be priced at $299 late in the year, making it a very inexpensive alternative for high- definition movie playback, with the game console essentially thrown in for free.” — Wedbush Morgan Securities Analyst Michael Pachter 54 + ЕЕ THE START OF THE YEAR BROUGHT DEFINITIVE EVIDENCE that Blu-ray is on its way to becom- ing the reigning HD media stan- dard—and that HD-DVD is rush- ing toward a date with Betamax, Laserdisc, and MiniDisc. In January, Warner Bros.—one of the three remaining major movie studios in the HD-DVD camp—announced it would jump ship to support Blu-ray, leaving Paramount and Universal to hold down the HD-DVD fort. Shortly after, the Financial Times reported that Paramount could fol- low, citing a clause in Paramount's contract with HD-DVD overseers Toshiba that allows the studio to dis- solve the relationship specifically if Warner defects. Though Paramount quickly issued an official denial of the claim, the wording of the denial can be confusing to consumers, particularly once you started cutting out features like backward compatibility... PD: The “fleet” is really a function of some [models] coming and going, just existing in our recollection over this last short year. | think our theory all along is that there’s two [models] at any given time, and that’s happening now because the 60 [GB unit] has kinda gone away. We think that’s the way consumers are responding to this. The split between the 40 and 80 [GB models] is pretty close to 50-50. Frankly, you could do another article on that, because it was our (‘Paramount's current plan is to support the HD-DVD format”) left room for a future move. Meanwhile, Universal declared it was no longer exclusively supporting HD-DVD. Perhaps most relevant to gamers, though, was a Reuters story quoting Albert Penello, group marketing man- ager for Xbox hardware, about the: fallout of Warner's defection. Penello revealed that Microsoft would “con- sider” supporting Blu-ray. “It should be consumer choice, and if that’s the way they vote, that’s something we'll have to consider,” he said. “1 want consumers to have a voice in this.” (He later said he was misconstrued.) Regardless, all the new-year studio news is a very big deal for Blu-ray. Barring any shocking developments, it appears that the HD format war is now effectively over. expectation that—given everyone's focus on price being the biggest issue—the $399 [40GB model] would have a much higher share of business. | think we can do a better job—and we're already looking into it—at coming up with more marketing, consumercentric ways to refer to these different units, rather than just refer to them by their hard-drive capacity. | think we can take a page from other companies here. Apple does it. Microsoft does it. We do it on our PSP line with the Star Wars Entertainment Pack EGM: Analysts tell us that having Blu-ray is great and all, but the PS3 is still overpriced. How confident are you that the $400 price for the low-end model is the sweet spot? PD: | don't know that $400 has ever been a sweet spot for a game console. It is expensive. It is coming down, but the other thing that we keep telling people: 10-year life cycle. We just passed year one. We're certainly not here outlining the road map for future price reductions, but as you get to the manufacturing efficiency that you're able to achieve when you're doing the kind of volume that we're doing today, and layer on top of that the presumed manufacturing efficiencies that $299 (possible price) 2008 March/April Look to the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo for an announcement of a price drop during the summer doldrums—perfect 2 tes like шинээ СОР А Killzone 2, Metal Gear Solid 4 en LittleBigPlanet, Final is the year’s flagship Fantasy XIII, and title that Sony is Resistance 2 (not 1 4 2 т i 11 hoping will galvanize shown), Sony hopes gamers. to finally dominate. (units sold) Sales during the holiday period, 408,400 according to Sony, Gran Turismo 5: (more 360s sold) show PS3 still Prologue and the. lagging perinde multiplatform Grand The year's biggest competitors but \ gap between PS3 gaining momentum. Theft Auto IV (which 1 59,000 and Xbox 360 sales RE nh (units sold) comes during the g BEREITS TES ET T E month of Halo 3's gamers some much July's new value- release. а en oriented pricing й structure has a definite impact. But that same month, Xbox 360 sells roughly the same number of units, and Wii sells almost triple the amount. will come from Blu-ray becoming about a PS3 price drop, just to keep product that's coming out from a third a standard across all consumer people loyal to the PS3 for GTA4? party called Metal Gear Solid 4 that's electronics products, it stands to going to be exclusive to our platform. reason that over the next 10 years, PD: No. | can assure you that we We've got a great first-party lineup of there will be other price moves.... don’t approach the market by paying software. This is a year that’s got a lot We're seeing consumers respond to too much attention to what our of games that consumers have been this and appreciate the value that the competition is doing. We've got our clamoring for, whether it's Metal Gear PlayStation 3 represents at this point own plans. We'll execute that plan and Solid or LittleBigPlanet, Resistance 2, in time right now. we're very confident in it. GTA is going Killzone, or Gran Turismo. We have a to be a great product this year, but great lineup of software and GTA will ЕСМ: What about when Grand Theft we're frankly focused on another big be one of those as well... Auto IV comes out this year? It'll be huge, and people who might be waiting on the sidelines to buy + | don't know that $400 has ever been either a PS3 or 360 to play it will ^ just get the system that's cheaper. a sweet spot for a game console. It is Say Microsoft drops the 360 price > 5 о even more. Wouldn't that bring expensive. it IS coming down. ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM.1UP.COM “ 55 “чо umhoa LittleBigPlanet is part of Sony's push to turn gamers into gamemakers We asked Naughty Dog's Amy Hennig if she was at all worried that users might get too good at creating games, (see: garage devel- oper Jon Mak, who created Everyday Shooter): “1 don't think there’s any reason for develop- ers to feel threat- ened or diminished by user-generated content. The bigger issue is the poten- tial lack of quality.” Everyday Shooter IF YOU’VE SPENT A HOLIDAY CREATING CUSTOM MIIS WITH THE FAMILY and Wi-Fi-ing them to some friends, you've had a taste of it. If you've killed a few hours (and ideally a few buddies) mess- ing around in Halo 3's Forge editor, you're practically a pro. User-gener- ated content— in which the gamer creates and shares his or her own levels, characters, and more—has always been a tempting, empower- ing prospect. And it’s been in prac- tice for years: Which of you fogies remember molding the perfect track in Excitebike (NES)? But with the current crop of con- soles sporting impressive power and easier-than-ever online connectivity, this subgenre is primed to take off. Thanks to a few key products (nota- bly LittleBigPlanet), Sony looks to capitalize on that charge. “I believe that [user-generated content] is a natural evolution as players become more sophisticated with [regard to] EGM: Speaking of third-party exclusives, you have big ones like Metal Gear Solid 4 and Final Fantasy XIII. But what are you doing to secure more now that most third parties are shying away from exclusivity deals? PD: First of all, we should all get comfortable with the fact that the world has changed a little bit. The costs of development and the need to amortize those across global platforms is here to stay.... Having said that, even in this environment where we know that third parties are going to approach the market in a cross-platform fashion, you can look 56 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY * EGM.1UP.C the types of options they expect from their broadband-connected consoles,” says Rockstar Producer Jeronimo Barrera. “I think it’s going to stretch beyond user-created levels to more community-driven content.” Sony’s SingStar (due in May) looks to embrace that community route. Set up a PlayStation Eye camera as you croon in this karaoke game, and it will take pictures and video of your performance. You can then unleash this on the public for glory or ridicule. But while this American Idol- meets-YouTube approach will satisfy some gamers' wannabe-celebrity complexes, it's not what most people think of when it comes to user-made content. Hardcore PC players have been making mods— collections of new weapons, levels, and match types—for their favorite games for years, a trend that has surfaced in the Р53% recent Unreal Tournament 3 (although a PC is needed for the creation process). "There may not be a ton of people creating mods, but there [are] a ton of people who want to download mods and try out at what we've accomplished to date with some of the exclusives. We'll continue to have those discussions going forward. | think our approach is a little bit different than our competition: It's not just as simple as writing the biggest check. It's talking to them about how they can host their content on our platform, how we approach online. And then there's also different ways to skin the exclusivity cat that we've got, whether it's the deal with Unreal Tournament and the technology that goes into that —which not only shows up in Unreal but in other games that are based on that engine—or the exclusivity that you can have for a period of time vis-à-vis some new things that other people created," says Eric Lempel, direc- tor of operations for the PlayStation Network. “It's something we've wanted to do for a long time on our platforms, but technology just wasn't quite there yet." And that's what has people stoked about this September's LittleBigPlanet. “We've really stretched the power of the PS3," Says LBP Technical Director Alex Evans, “to hide all the complexity of creation and make it feel really easy, natural, and physi- cal." What that leaves is a fledgling developer's dream: a user-friendly platformer editor with a wealth of options and power. Up to four play- ers can collaborate online to set objectives and drop created objects into a whimsical, physics-rich worlds. When done, they can share their masterpieces with the PSN commu- nity. Ideally, the whole process will be fun, not just the try-it-out part. According to Amy Hennig, game director at Uncharted developer Naughty Dog, it’s this balance that Sony must nail to succeed in the creativity-empowering circle (a tall task, as Nintendo’s upcoming Super Smash Bros. Brawl also features a stage editor): "We're talking about content generation as play—not just as a prelude to gameplay.... The goal is to give [players] constrained tools, templates, and parameters that they can modify—to give them а play- | ground for their creativity so that it's fun, not a chore.” something like Haze. We'll continue to have conversations with third parties about it when it makes sense for both parties involved. But taking two steps back, we knew that the third-party community would start to approach the market in a cross-platform fashion, [so] we made sure several years ago that we had a worldwide studio organization that was able to crank out more software across more platforms than any other publisher in the industry. We've got a bigger development organization than Microsoft and Nintendo combined. We're supporting PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, [PSP], and some really great games for the PlayStation лоте u 1101: 3 (5 The Ро35 free online network might finally outdo the competition doors KILLZONE тес “ІТ WORKS!” EXCLAIMS ERIC LEMPEL, THE PLAYSTATION network’s director of operations. He's being cheeky today, referring to the Р53 online network's hitch-free run over the holidays while rival service Xbox Live suffered from hiccups that left Xbox 360 gamers feeling decid- edly disconnected. But is a smooth-sailing PSN really worth bragging about when the ser- vice itself —regardless of whether it's free—still lags behind Xbox Live in so many areas, from cross-game friends lists to a centralized Achieve- ments system? "That's something we're working on,” Lempel says. "But we don't want to just throw things out there first and figure out how to get them together later on." Later on, of course, is when Sony releases Home, its online service that promises to deliver everything 360 gamers can get on Xbox Live— except with a virtual-world vibe inspired by Second Life and World of WarCraft. Home owners can set up house in their own virtual apart- ments, gossip with other players in Network. So we knew that the obligation is ours to differentiate our platform.... There's some really great stuff in the pipeline coming forward, some of which we've announced and some of which we look forward to sharing with you guys soon. EGM: Nintendo of America President Reginald Fils-Aime was quoted as saying the one game he wished the Wii had was LittleBigPlanet. What exclusive game from your competitors would you like to see on the PlayStation 3? PD: Huh. Hadn't thought about it. I'd hate to give you a knee-jerk answer.... public spaces, play simple arcade games, display Achievement-like 3D trophies from PS3 títles, watch demos in theaters, share movies and music with pals back at the apart- ment, and much more, all for free. PS3 players who'd rather bypass Home's pomp can initiate multiplayer games, chat with friends, etc., from the system’s Cross Media Bar. Sony isn't saying how much of the Home experience will be ready once it launches in beta form later in the first quarter or even when the service goes live for real this spring, but we expect that most of the pieces will be in place. “It would be a shame from our perspective to screw up that first impression," says Sony's Peter Dille, *and then have people say, ‘Aw, that wasn't great.” Developers we spoke with were excited about Home's possibili- ties—namely that the service will let them set up virtual spaces dedicated to their games. "[It's] where a fran- chise like Uncharted can continue to live, evolve, and grow between game releases," says Naughty Dog's Amy Hennig. "But it'll be more engaging than, say, visiting an official website, because so much of the experience will be driven by customizable con- tent and user interaction." Some of that interaction, she says, will involve the developers themselves, who will visit Home's public spaces to share behind-the-scenes material. At the same time, however, game- makers are eyeing the grand opening EGM: Well, an obvious one would be Halo 3, which helped the 360 outsell the Wii back in Septembei PD: | think Halo's a great product. If you're a consumer and you're interested in playing first-person shooters and that's all you want to do, then maybe the 360's a good bet for you. Not only Halo, but Gears of War is another great product. Our view, however, is that's kind of a narrow offering. PlayStation's always been of Home with strained enthusiasm. “Keeping these spaces alive and fresh introduces a whole new set of asset-creation tasks for the develop- ment team," Hennig says. In other words, someone at the game studios has to build all this virtual crap. One developer creating a major exclusive game for the PS3 has already told us they're not supporting Home because they're too busy finishing their game. "Hopefully it won't be too much of a burden— as long as we continually keep the Home space in mind [throughout development]," Hennig says. “We build so many “Outside of the price drops, Home is the first thing that really has те. talking PS3 to my customers. | know it was pushed for all the right rea- sons, but sooner is better than later. Fm not saying rush it, but it might be time to open up. the beta to a less exclusive clientele." assets for the game, it should be —Anonymous fairly easy to create Home-specific GameStop Assistant versions of our models, textures, Manager etc., as needed. And of course we can always partner up with outside agencies to take some of the con- tent-creation burden off of the team." Sounds ambitious. We'll see if Lempel still shouts "It works!" when Home has its full launch this spring. a brand that stands for innovation across all types of game genres and is open to multiple consumer segments. That's why you saw just this last Christmas games that ranged from Uncharted down to Ratchet. It would have been easy to hold Ratchet for later in the cycle and say, well, that's when kids come on, but our approach is, there's kids that are playing PlayStation 3 now, and that's also a great game that you can play with the whole family. Like | said, there > | think we get painted a lot as a company that doesn't listen or is arrogant. ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM.1UP.COM * 57 | COVER STORY AXOLS 4500 The games Sony may finally have the exclusive answers in 2008 What the readers s “Рт not completely sold on Metal Gear Solid 4 being the saving light for the PS3. In Japan, probably; in Europe and America? It will sell well, but it’s not a system seller the same way that Grand Theft Auto was for PS2 and Halo was for the Xbox. It just isn’t that mainstream, and mainstream equals big numbers and sales.” —Anthony Amendola | BLU-RAY, THE USER-CREATED CONTENT OF LITTLEBIGPLANET, PSP CONNECTIVITY, setting up shop in Home—these features and more will undoubtedly help con- tribute to 2008 being “the year of the PlayStation 3.” But all of these factors combined don’t come even close to the biggest difference- maker: the games. Software is—and will always remain—the one con- stant in a system’s success rate. And if you were to compare the PS3’s current library to that of its family members at the same time in their respective life cycles, it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that Sony's third console is currently bringing up the rear this generation. But times, they could finally be a-changin'. One look at the PS3’s exclusive ’08 lineup and you'll find plenty of heavy hitters, with each possibly providing an answer to something you'd find on the compet- ing machines. are great games on every platform, and | mean this sincerely. It’s a great time to be a gamer, because you really do have some great choices. If you wanted to play the Wii and that style of game, that's there for you. If you wanted to play first-person shooters and that's all you wanted to do, then maybe the 360 is the way to go. But if you want a system that has the variety and is going to stand the test of time and be around for 10 years and have a free online gaming service versus paying a monthly fee, we think PS3 is a pretty compelling proposition. EGM: But clearly first-person shooters are important to you guys. 58 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM.1UP.COM Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots Konami * June 2008 PS3’s answer to: Splinter Cell: Conviction (XB360) Just as Ubisoft’s stealthy hero is going through changes (look for a Bourne Identity-esque makeover for Sam Fisher’s next mission), Solid Snake’s following suit. And we’re not simply talking about his rapid trans- formation into a geezer. Even though MGS4 is being billed as Snake's swan song, in many ways this game is a fresh new start for the franchise. The developers have completely reworked the cumbersome controls, created real-time battlefields on which you're free to support either side, and added moments of intense shootouts (à la Gears of War) in between sneaking around—not to mention all the work they've done to improve the online mode. So while MGS4 is shaping up as a huge step forward, the people at Kojima Productions are also well aware of the game's importance to Two of your biggest first-party mes this year [Resistance 2 and Killzone 2] are shooters.... PD: They're all important, and that's my point. We're not just focusing on one genre or another... Warhawk was a [great game that] delivered a slightly different experience. We're not going to abdicate any genre to anybody. But we'll also make sure that we offer the depth and breadth that we think is not available on other platforms. EGM: You mentioned your free online service, and we know you're getting ready to release an early version of Home. But why haven't the platform. “The pressure of devel- oping a killer triple-A title for the PlayStation 3 has pushed our team to the limit,” says Assistant Producer Ryan Payton. “Most of us have spent the better part of three years [work- ing] to deliver this game, but it feels worth it when you see the building excitement for the title.” In many ways, MGS4 has become the early poster child for the con- sole. And if the insane wait to play the demo at last fall's Tokyo Game Show is any indication, this iteration should do much better saleswise than MGSS (which got lost in the holiday '04 shuffle between Halo 2 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas). Also, this one has the advantage of being the first series installment on the powerful PS3, so that should heighten gamer interest. “I think it's interesting how MGS4 is not only the Spiritual successor to MGS2," says Payton, “but it's also releasing rela- tively early in the hardware's life span and represents what the PlayStation 3 is capable of, similar to what MGS2 did for the PlayStation 2." Gran Turismo 5: Prologue Sony CEA * Spring 2008 PS3’s answer to: Forza Motorsport 2 (XB360) Competition doesn't seem to bother developer Polyphony Digital. And when asked about the likes of Forza, the Gran Turismo maker doesn't shy away from explaining why they you beefed up PSN in the meantime with features like cross-game friend lists to compete with Xbox Live? PD: | think it’s easy to armchair quarterback, but we’re not holding stuff back and saying, “Let’s make them wait.” What we're doing is working on improvements to the service every day. Again, it stands to reason when you launch a service on day one against a service that's been out for five or six years, you're going to be behind where the other guys are. What we've always said is the service that got launched on November 17 of [2006] wouldn't represent what this thing will look like a day later believe they belong in the pole posi- tion. “I think our tremendous dedica- tion and passion for automobiles and driving really sets us apart,” says Producer Taku Imasaki. “It’s also important to note that no other game developer works with the auto indus- try—car manufacturers, race drivers, content providers—as closely as Polyphony does. These strong rela- tionships are clearly reflected in the world of Gran Turismo.” They clearly have a great relationship with con- sumers, too; according to Sony, the franchise has sold more than 47 mil- lion copies worldwide since its 1997 debut. A series with that kind of sales power could do wonders for the PS3's hardware growth. Even though this one isn’t a true sequel (hence the subtitle), it'll still come packed with several attrac- tive options. The series finally goes online here (supporting up to 16- player races), plus introduces what Polyphony calls GT-TV, “featuring exciting automotive and motorsport programming," says Imasaki. Resistance 2/Killzone 2 Sony CEA * Fall 2008 PS3’s answer to: Halo 3 (XB360) Hey, when you're facing a monster like Master Chief's latest entry (Halo 3 recently broke the 8-million-unit mark in sales), it may just take two top-of-the-line first-person shooters to compete. And even though the Resistance and Killzone properties or a year later. There’s tremendous improvements that have been made to the PlayStation Network in the year that it’s been up and running, and we're working on a lot more of the We know people are clamoring for Home. We would have liked to have that out in the marketplace by now. | think, though, that we have a long reputation across the corporation...of not just launching stuff out there that's not ready for prime time... What we really want to make sure you guys and ultimately your readers understand is that we hear you and we're working on it. It's easy to assume, and it might be because of history or the way we engaged with continue to catch the interest of many gamers, they both have a long way to go before becoming as iconic and lucrative as the Halo brand (maybe Sony should start talking to Dr. Pepper and 7-11 about some cross-promotional deals this fall?). Resistance 2 details are finally: trickling in. Aside from the standard story mode, the follow-up to devel- oper Insomniac's PS3 launch title will have a totally separate 8-player online co-op campaign. And on the multiplayer front, the number of com- batants has increased to 60. If you take into account Insomniac’s track record with the Spyro and Ratchet: series and how those respective first sequels turned out, the outlook is good for this shooter. Killzone 2, meanwhile, burst onto the PS3 scene amidst controversy. (Was the initial footage shown at a trade show real? No.) But after checking out the demo last summer, this sequel is still shaping up as one of the best-looking titles for the con- sole. We only hope the developers have addressed some Ал. issues; no the press historically, that, “Oh, Sony doesn't listen. They've got their mind made up and they're not going to do this. It's not important to them." It's real important, and we're working on it, but it's not something that you can just go back into your closet and bring out to the next room the next day. Some of the stuff is being implemented across a worldwide network and it takes a little time. more jumping over cover and step- ping directly into gunfire, OK? nal Fantasy XIII Square Enix * Late 2008 PS3’s answer to: Mass Effect and Fable 2 (XB360) If you don't think software—let alone one key title—can have a big effect on the fate of a console, just ask Nintendo. When Square decided to release Final Fantasy Vil on the up-and-coming PS1 instead of the Nintendo 64, it was a gigantic blow to the system. The N64 really never recovered, while Sony’s system flourished thanks to securing one of the greatest role-playing games of all time. And the FF train still hasn't left the Sony station; every single “true” sequel has remained PS-exclusive. This stunning RPG will act as a first piece in Square’s ambitious- yet-horribly-named “Fabula Nova Crystallis” project, which even includes another exclusive FF title for the PS3 (Versus XIII, which is due out much later). The game will 5, - EGM: We've noticed a few times during this interview that you've seemed concerned about people perceiving Sony as arrogant or a company or that doesn't listen. Has what happened to the PS3 had a humbling effect on the company? PD: | don't think that anything that's happened with the PS3 has been terribly unexpected from our lineup here, Sony is quick to hype original PSN Store games —such as the upcoming strat- egy title PixelJunk Monsters (below)— that you can't find on Xbox Live Arcade. “It's not a race for us to pump out as many games as we can in a week,” says John Hight, direc- tor of external pro- duction. “Some of them will be niche, some of them will be mass-market." | don't think that anything that's hap- pened with the PS3 has been terribly unexpected from our perspective. ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM.1UP.COM • 59 COVER STORY AXOLS uanoo (cont.) You'll notice that all the PS3 titles mentioned here are best suited to combat Xbox 360 games. So what's Sony's plan of attack against Nintendo’s sys- tem? Apparently not much. "It's not clear to us that [the Wii] really is the way people want to play first-person shooters or sports games,” says Sony’s Peter Dille. "It's a different way to play those games, but we don't really think it's the replacement way to play them.” surely be a sales slam dunk when it arrives in the U.S. and Europe, but it should really fire up PS3 sales over in Japan—only Dragon Quest games rival FF’s popularity in that territory. Just cross your fingers FFXIII actu- ally hits its 2008 release date (rumors of a delay continue to run rampant). SOCOM: Confrontation Sony CEA * Fall 2008 PS3’s answer to: Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 (XB360) Yeah, yeah — we know the last GRAW installment landed on both the PS3 and 360, but the game was defi- nitely a much bigger deal (especially among online gamers) for Microsoft's system. Luckily, PS3's 2008 come- back trail should include a tactical, squad-based beast of its own. And it just happens to come from the same franchise that convinced so many people to go online with their PS2s. “Our goal is to make Confrontation perspective. We knew we weren't first to market. We knew we were the most expensive system. We also knew what our hardware supply was when we were launching. You can look at those cards and know how it's going to go. | think the change in tone, if | could maybe even take a little credit for it, | think we had a philosophy of dealing with the press going back to the last cycle that's different from how we're engaging the press now. | think we have a more open approach to our management team. To the extent that the PS3 had issues that people want to talk about, it's important for us to talk about them, and to articulate our point of view on it. We don't want the leading online console game just as previous versions of the series were," says Seth Luisi, director of development for Sony CEA. Developer Slant Six Games will spearhead the project (longtime SOCOM maker Zipper Interactive. is apparently working on another game in the series), and since this will be an online-only affair, Luisi tells us a lot of the effort is going into the game's clan and community aspects. He also promises us that by the time Confrontation launches, we'll see much prettier battlefields than those initially shown. “When I introduced the game to the press last May," he says, "it was extremely early in development and the team had only been in full production for a few months. As with any project, the game has evolved significantly since then and when we reintroduce Confrontation, | don't think anyone will be disappointed.” Infamous Sony CEA * Fall 2008 PS3’s answer to: Crackdown (XB360) While the Metal Gears and SOCOMs are important, the PS3 will also need some exciting original properties to complete its comeback. Infamous could be one of those games. It comes from the folks at Sucker Punch (of Sly Cooper fame), but it's definitely quite a departure from the developer's previous work. You won't to make it combative, but when you launch 200,000 units into the North American market at launch, it stands to reason that you're not going to have enough to go around. If that ends up being something that gets positioned as less than successful, we understand that. EGM: Yeah, but there were also quite a few PlayStation 3 boxes find any cartoony backdrops or furry characters here: Infamous takes place in a gritty open world where you play an unassuming bike mes- senger who suddenly realizes he’s got some pretty wicked powers. A major emphasis for Sucker Punch here will be evolving the whole “good-versus-evil” mechanic in character development. “It’s really a minute-to-minute part of game- play,” says Producer Brian Fleming. “Sure it's cool to have people love you. But when you have the power to command giant lightning strikes, you need to be thoughtful if you want to be a truly great hero. It's not a binary 4 chose the дооду-дооду person’ answer to a question.” Infamous does reminds us of open-world crimefighter Crackdown (they’re both original titles set in big cities with heroes sporting ever- increasing abilities). Yet Fleming promises their game will go many steps further. “Our part of the bar- gain is to tell a great story, develop compelling characters and situations, and empower the player to experi- ence them all firsthand,” he says. left sitting on store shelves at the launch and after.... PD: Ah, well, that’s part of it. Prices come down over time and games get released over time. We're looking at having just completed a really successful holiday. | think our attitude has always been one of confidence, and that hasn’t really changed as we sit here in January of "08. #% Our attitude has always been one of confidence, and that hasn't really changed. “а hectic, noisy symphony of destruction. We wouldn't expect any less.” - Gamelnformer.com "has the intensity of a wartime battlefield down perfectly...” - IGN.com “I walked away impressed by the refinement and intensity that Frontlines brings to multiplayer matches.” - РС Gamer WWW.FRONTLINES.COM FLY, DRIVE AND SHOOT 60 WEAPONS AND VEHICLES IN AN OPEN WORLD THE WAY амо Game KAOS power to the players ты Der 10's е ESRB CONTENT RATING _www.esrh.org for Windows @ XBox шу А 2007 1UP NETWORK EDITORS’ CHOICE AWARDS IT’S A REGULAR JUSTICE LEAGUE OF GAMING EXPERTS: The 1UP Network—built from the staffs of EGM, sister PC mag Games For Windows: The Official Magazine, and 1UP.com—marshalled its forces to sort out the great from 2007’s nitty-gritty. And then we went a step fu her to include you, the readers, in the voting fun. The result: Two-double-oh-seven seen from every perspective, starting here with our console Game of the Year Awards. For the · PC-gaming side of things, pick up the March issue of Games for Windows: The Official Magazine. Then go to 1UPawards.1UP.com to see how you voted in genre-specific categories. Ken Levine: Handsome for a man. Person of the Year: Ken Levine President and creative director of 2K Boston, Ken Levine is the big daddy of the developer that brought you BioShock, the undersea shooter that’s casting a wide net for our awards this year. But that’s not the only reason we're picking him as 2007's person of the year. A veteran of just about every media indus- try—including the movie biz—Levine drew on his background to push storytelling in games a step fur- ther, creating a highbrow fantasy that's as much about how games manipulate players as it is about blowing 5*** up. "| tend to find inspiration in strange places,” Levine tells us. *The Manchurian Candidate obviously had a really big impact on BioShock, and that movie's over 40 years old. But it was so far ahead of its time. It has so much to teach us about narrative even now." Easygoing and well-spoken—as well as a hardcore gamer himself—Levine served as the perfect ambas- sador for gaming in 2007. He deftly defused any main- stream outcry concerning his game's potentially con- troversial "harvesting" of little girls. And he showed that gamemakers, players, and the games themselves all have a thoughtful streak that belies their Mountain Dew-fueled image. Plus, Levine still makes time for the important things—like when we caught him buying comic books during a major 2007 game-industry trade show. “Hey, it was Wednesday, man,” he tells us. “I had to go get my comics." True to form, Levine plays down his creative pro- cess, instead chalking his success up to a life spent consuming media. “It’s like the whole media world is a big salad bar: You take a little bit from here and a little dab of this, and you put it in a stew with what you're thinking of for the game,” he says. “I don't think I’m as much of a creator, an inventor, as | am a chef. | mix things together and get new flavors you don't expect." For more food for thought from Levine, see his take on our award categories throughout this feature. This first-person adventure is as much music to our ears as it is pleasing to the eyes. From the bellowing roars and subwoofer-pulsing stomps of a seeing-red Big Daddy to the old-timey tunes of crooners Perry Como and Billie Holiday that creepily play throughout the decaying fathoms-deep-city Rapture, BioShock succeeds in an area where many games fail or downright ignore. Just think back to how much harder it was to harvest a Little Sister after hearing her “No, no, no!” scream. How many games have audio that leaves you with a guilty conscience? Runner-up: Everyday Shooter (PS3) “My parents never really understood exactly what | was doing all these years. They sort of thought | was making Pac- Man-type stuff. | think with BioShock... there were things in the game [like the music] that they really connected to, andi think it helped them understand what | was doing and, strangely enough, really helped my relationship with them. It sucks when your parents don't get what you're doing, you know? My father-in-law was pushing me to make a bird-watch- ing game for a very long period of time. That's our next title, Bird-Watcher USA." ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM. 1UP.COM “ 63 WINNER. Best Multiplayer Experience: D 7 Rock Band (PS3/XB360) Rock Band is not designed for solo shows—it’s the band or bust for this all-too-lifelike music game that transforms ` rhythmless scrubs into record-selling rock stars. Sure, Guitar Hero popularized playing along to your favorite tunes, but Rock Band cranks up the fun by adding three other musicians to the mix. The result is an experience that suc- cessfully emulates the thrill of jamming, only without the trouble of actually having any real musical talent. Runner-up: Halo 3 (XB360) та Best Narrative: BioShock (XB360) In a year when even war games pack an extra clip of heady concepts (Call of Duty 4's fatal irradiating of your hero made us go “У/һоа!”), BioShock went a step further and truly brought interactive storytelling into a realm where writers in other mediums may never tread. The game's gasp-inducing “would you kindly” reveal is both a postmod- ern commentary on the typical role of game players as well as a blindsiding twist only possible in a videogame. And that's what we call going deep. Runner-up: Mass Effect (XB360) 64 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY = ЕВМЛОРСОМ The plucky Portal is built around a simple concept anchored by the best firearm since you hurled Hondas with big-brother Half-Life 2’s gravity gun. Shoot your specialized piece here and it tags a portal on most surfaces; take another shot and you get a second portal and a magical linked path- way between 'em. The beauty is that the spatial puzzles that ensue—like sending rockets through seemingly impossible routes or using your momentum to leap through floors— prove to be class-A mindbenders. But the real draw here: making an infinite loop that'll have you free-falling till you yak. ilit, Runner-up: Halo 3's Forge (XB360) Bejeweled clones and crosswords may be wonderful time-wasters for the casual crowd, but they hardly qualify as innovative. So it’s nice to see a game like Cooking Mama 2—simple to play but also highly original and fun. This sequel doesn’t go crazy with the new stuff; you still cook a variety of traditional foods, with step-by-step recipes broken down into minigames. But its quirky sense of humor and unexpected highlights— deboning an eel so you can win new eyeglasses for Mama, for example— make it the casual game you aren’t embarrassed to be addicted to. Runner-up: Sd 1 5 5) Picross DS (DS) 4 ісі ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM 65 ІШЕ AWARDS SAME Amb Runner-up: Portal (PS3, XB360) Runner-up: Odin Sphere (PS2) Nintendo's mustachioed mainstay has hopped and bopped his way through all manner of obstacles during his legendary career, but Galaxy thrusts Mario into completely unfamiliar territory—outer space. The sheer number of unique planetoids you'll traverse would make Carl Sagan proud, and each of these wickedly creative levels offer gameplay surprises, such as exhilarating zero-gravity platforming and gimmick-free uses of the Wii Remote. Plus, many stages come with clever bonus strategies that you'll only find when playing with a friend in Co-star mode... It's not just that the water effects, rust, lighting, fire, enemies, shadowing, weapons, etc., etc., all look so good (and they all look really good). It's how everything comes together to create such a nightmarish atmosphere in a world that's completely convincing—no small feat considering that we're pretty sure most of the game's players never visited an art deco underwater city stuck in a time before most of us were born. The realm of Rapture is more than just a dripping-wet place in BioShock—it's another character in a game full of hard-to-forget characters. 66 + ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY * ЕСМ.ТЏРСОМ коет, = < Produced Бу е ; << Force www.koei.com New Renbu attack system, motion-capture, Swim and climb to evade enemy units. New character designs, new weapons and and 6O frames per second deliver lighting-fast Advanced enemy Al and their packs of dogs new lands to conquer. combos and true cinematic kung-fu action! are prepared to track you down. WWW.KOEI.COM/DW6 ; PLA=STATIONnS3 XBOX 360. Е ESRB CONTENT RATING www.esrb.org Dynasty Warriors and the KOEI logo are registered trademarks of KOEI Co., Ltd. ©2007-2008 KOEI Co., Ltd. All rights reserved. "PlayStation", "PLAYSTATION" and "PS" Family logo are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc Microsoft, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE, and the Xbox logos are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. The ratings icon is a registered trademark of the Entertainment Software Association. All other trademarks are properties of their respective owners. Runner-up: Hotel Dusk: Room 215 (DS) »" Runner-up: Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) p Every fall gaming season has its great tragedies: brilliant titles lost in the _ shuffle of publishers trying to grab as much of the holiday pie as possible. Zack & Wiki had the odds stacked against it even steeper, with cutesy box for to the Disney Channel's The Suite Life of Zack & Cody. But below its _ childis| exterior lies a fascinating, deviously challenging puzzle adventure _ take a chance, although fans of the Disney Channel show can walk on by. art that screams “anime shovelware” and a name that’s too close for com- Planet Puzzle League Falling-block puzzle purists have worshipped Tetris Attack since its 1996 Super Nintendo debut, but this Yoshi-free DS remake improves upon perfection with online multi- player and touch-screen play. rooted in classic LucasArts point-and-click adventures. It’s not too late to Super Paper Mario It's a topic just begging for a phys- ics student's undergrad thesis: Games that mix 2D and 3D. PSP. puzzler Crush did it great, but Super Paper Mario combined both dimen- sions in revolutionary ways. “| played a game on the PSP which | loved called Jeanne D'Arc, which was one of the best tactical turn-based games to come out in a long time. I’m not sure if it was up for any game of the year stuff, but | really enjoyed that.... | played a lot of PSP games and DS games for 20 minutes before | could go to bed. It was just an insanely good year...it's hard to settle on anything." No other game in 2007 captured (then beat up, mutated, frightened, and absolutely f'ed with) our imaginations better than BioShock. Nothing is by the book with this game, from the lost-in-time underwater world of Rapture to grandpa's favorite radio stations to the twisty storytelling that'll have you smiling and cursing the evildoers (includ- ing those manipulative, sadistic writers at developer 2K Boston) at the same time. BioShock is an amazing experi- ence, from that first, chilling toe-dip all the way through to the nightmare-ending reemergence into fresh air. “[Two years ago], we didn't really know anything about [BioShock’s] story or world. Everything evolved from the concept of these different A.I. types, which eventually became the Big Daddy and the Little Sister. That sort of economic relationship of those A.l. types, that one was gathering resources and the other was protecting her, just got me thinking about the extremist potential of capitalism. | didn't want to do a screed about capitalism. | run a videogame developer that's part of a major corporation—l'm not gonna pretend I’m driving the Good Ship Greenpeace. But like everything else, we want to talk about extremes. This game is about extremes." ж Passing the Bruckner: Fans of the. awful will find our annual Tobias Bruckner Memorial Awards, honor- ing the year's worst, on pg. 90. 68 • ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • ЕСМЛОРСОМ 7 j play editis мом), BUT oe DAY 774. МАКЕ THEM, THE PROFESSORS AT INE MET TONS OF GAMERS AT DEVRY. DEVRY ARE VERY IN THE KWOW. WE во WTO THE LAB, TALK ABOUT OUR IDEAS. 7's A BUNCH oF py, Freedom A. Evans DeVry University '09 9096 of DeVry grads in the active job market* find careers in their areas of study within 6 months of graduation - in fast growing fields like Business, Information Systems and Healthcare Technology. Classes start soon, so find out about the DeVry program that is helping Freedom find his game plan for success. University Call 1.877.31GAMER or log on to DeVryGamerNow.com/EGM We major іп careers? *System-wide for the 10-year period ending 2/07. Accredited by The Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association (NCA), www.ncahlc.org. Programs vary by location. DeVry University operates as DeVry Institute of Technology in New York. ©2008 DeVry University. All rights reserved. The Platform Evolved. AMD's First Comprehensive PC Platform. iBuypower recommends Windows Vista™ Home Premium 0 Color Options - - B 15.4" Wide Screen 16:10 WXGA TFT LCD 1280x800 Display GENUINE Windows® Vista™ Home Premium AMD® Turion™ 64 X2 Mobile Technology - AMD® PowerNow! Technology - HyperTransport Technology - Enhanced Virus Protection Technology ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2600 256MB w/HDMI 2GB DDR2-667 Memory Removable 8x DVD+R/+RW / CD-RW Drive 160GB 5400RPM Ultra-ATA 100 Hard Drive 10/100/1000 MB Ethernet LAN & 56K Modem M Wireless 802.11g 54MBps Mini-PCI Network Built-in 1.3 Mega Pixels CMOS Camera рр" 4x USB 2.0 & 1x Firewire IEEE-1394 Ports 4-in-1 Built-in Media Card Reader High Performance Li-lon Battery; Free Deluxe Carrying Case 17" Wide Screen 16:10 WSXGA+ TFT LCD 1680x1050 Display AMD® Turion™ 64 MobileTechnology GENUINE Windows® Vista™ Home Premium AMD Turion’ 64 MobileTechnology AMD® Turion™ 64 x2 Mobile Technology - AMD® PowerNow! 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Gamer Mage 550-511" Mn тм E Asus M2N-E SLI™ Dual PCI Express Motherboard eae emo Quad-Core er GENUINE Windows® Vista™ Home Premium Н " 9500+ $969 NZXTÓ Hush Silent Gaming Case + 500W SLI™-Certified Power Supply сн Silent 8: Overclocking Proof CPU Cooling System Arch GANE de oE Corsair 2GB DDR2-800 Memory 5 500GB SATA II 7200RPM Hard Drive 6000+ $919 2X NVIDIA® GeForce™ 8500GT 512MB Video - SLI™ Enabled EUM НЭЭ 20x Double Layer DVD+R/+RW Drive; 16x DVD-ROM Drive 5000+ 5858 8 Channel Surround 3D Premium Sound 4800+ aes 10/100 /1000 MBps Ethernet LAN 4200+ $819 Logitech X-230 2.1 Configuation Speakers ism Logitech Deluxe Keyboard & Optical Mouse Add ViewSonic? 20" Wide VG2030WM TFT LCD Monitor @ $258 Gamer Mage БИ" Asus M2N-E SLI™ Dual PCI Express Motherboard AMD Phenom™ Quad-Core Processors GENUINE Windows® Vista™ Home Premium 9600+ $1119 Eagletech® Viper Gaming Case + 500W SLI"-Certified Power Supply 9500+ $1069 Silent & Overclocking Proof CPU Cooling System AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 dual-core Processor Corsair 2GB DDR2-800 Memory 6400+ $1039 320GB SATA II 7200RPM Hard Drive 6000+ $1019 2X NVIDIA® GeForce™ 8600GT 512MB Video - SLI™ Enabled 5600+ $999 20x Double Layer DVD+R/+RW Drive; 16x DVD-ROM Drive 5200+ $969 8 Channel Surround 3D Premium Sound 5000+ $959 10/100 /1000 MBps Ethernet LAN 4800+ $939 Logitech X-540 5.1 Surround Sound Speakers 4200+ $919 ‚ Logitech Deluxe Keyboard & Optical Mouse M Free Wireless 802.11g 54MBps Network Adapter " TUPUEUE AMD Phenom™ Quad-Core Processors Asus M2N-E SLI™ Dual PCI Express Motherboard 9600+ $1379 GENUINE Windows® Vista™ Home Premium 9500+ $1329 Eagletech Sidewinder Gaming Case + 800W SLI"-Certified Power Supply AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 dual-core Processor Corsair 2GB DDR2-800 Memory 6400+ $1299 500GB SATA II 7200RPM Hard Drive 6000+ $1279 2X NVIDIA® GeForce™ 8800GT 512MB Video - SLI™ Enabled 5600+ $1259 20x Double Layer DVD+R/+RW Drive; 16x DVD-ROM Drive 5200+ $1229 8 Channel Surround 3D Premium Sound 5000+ $1219 10/100/1000 MBps Ethernet LAN 4800+ $1199 600Watt Surround Sound Speakers 4200+ $1179 ЕЕЕ AMD Phenom™ Quad-Core Processors Asus M2N-E SLI™ Dual PCI Express Motherboard 9600+ $1699 GENUINE Windows® Vista™ Home Premium 9500+ $1659 NZXTÓ Lexa Gaming Tower Case + 800W SLI"-Certified Power Supply AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 dual-core Processor Silent & Overclocking Proof CPU Cooling System 6400+ $1629 Corsair 2GB DDR 2-800 Memory 6000+ $1599 750GB SATA II 7200RPM Hard Drive 5600+ $1579 2X NVIDIA® GeForce™ 8800GTS 512MB Video - SLI™ Enabled 5200+ $1549 20x Double Layer DVD+R/+RW Drive; 16x DVD-ROM Drive 5000+ $1539 8 Channel Surround 3D Premium Sound 4800+ $1519 10/100/1000 MBps Ethernet LAN $1499 Logitech Deluxe Keyboard; Optical Mouse Free Wireless 802.11g 54MBps Network Adapter AMD Phenom™ Quad-Core Processors MSI K9A2 CF-F AMD 790X CrossFire Dual PCI Express Motherboard 9600+ $1319 GENUINE Windows® Vista™ Home Premium 9500+ $1279 Eagletech® Dragon Gaming Case + 800W SLI™-Certified Power Supply AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 dual-core Processor Silent & Overclocking Proof CPU Cooling System 6400+ $1245 Corsair 2GB DDR 2-800 Memory 6000+ $1225 500GB SATA II 7200RPM Hard Drive 5600+ $1205 2X ATI Radeon HD 3870 512MB Video - running Cross Fire 5200+ $1175 20x Double Layer DVD+R/+RW Drive 5000+ $1165 8 Channel Surround 3D Premium Sound 4800+ $1145 600Watt Surround Sound Speakers 4200+ $1125 10/100/1000 MBps Ethernet LAN Logitech Deluxe Keyboard & Optical Mouse Add ViewSonic® 20" Wide VG2030WM TFT LCD Monitor @ $258 > Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors FIFA Street 3 Devil May Cry 4 Turok The Club Advance Wars: Days of Ruin Wipeout Pulse Patapon Reviews Wrap-Up In this month’s upset special, we have the PSP's rhythm-action-real-time- strategy gem Patapon taking the Game of the Month crown over anticipated titles like Devil May Cry 4 and Turok. Even though | wasn't on the review, | had plenty of hands-on time with it and couldn’t help but adore it, from the game’s charming art style to the characters’ gung-ho attitude. Maybe it’s that whole “root for the underdog” thing (except when it comes to my powerhouse Patriots, naturally), but | always love seeing an out-of-nowhere game get some love—kind of like the virtually unknown Hotel Dusk (Hotel Dusk?) getting a 10 from us. And given this month's scarcity of releases, it's a good time to try something different. Another thing | enjoy: being a tease. With that in mind, you can look forward to a big change next month. —Greg Ford, Reviews Editor 72» ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM.1UP.COM colorful slimes, in-tune chimes, dino mealtimes, and pandora 10 to 9 8.5 to 7 6.5 to 5 4.5 to 3 2.5 to O You can also find the lead EGM review on 1UP.com. The second and third reviews—you'll find those here. We dole out awards to games based on their scores. Platinum: all 10s; Gold: 9.0 average and up; Silver: 8.0 average or higher. Game of the Month goes to the highest-scoring game with unanimously “Good” scores, and Shame of the Month is the reverse. Simple. The Review Crew is the 1UP Network's ensemble cast of writers from all of our publications, both online and in print. We believe that games are more than the sum of their parts, so we tack- le them subjectively, as Dan *Shoe" Hsu tor-in Everyone's gunning for Shoe in the new Advance Wars—mainly because he won't stop talking trash around the office. He has a pretty good multiplayer record overall, but Ryan Scott did beat him once in record time.... Now Playing: Call of Duty 4, Now Playing: Crisis Core: ЕРУІ, Review Advance Wars: Days of Ruin Patapon, Wipeout Pulse {осон Blog: egmshoe.1UP.com Blog: egmshane.1UP.com Ryan Scott Revie Editor Jennifer Tsao Crispin Boyer Games for or Senior Editor Windows: The The other EGMers say they don't hear it pata pata pata pon but Jennifer's absolutely, positively sure pon pon pata pon there are tribal drums beating loud chaka chaka pata pon and clear throughout the day. She's not crazy! Now Playing: Isn't it obvious? Blog: egmjennifer.1UP.com Bryan Intihar Previews Е The Browns barely miss the NFL playoffs, the Buckeyes lose in the BCS title game yet again—it was definitely one rough month for Bryan. But at least he can always rewrite history with a few games of Madden NFL and NCAA Football (poor guy). Now Playing: Devil May Cry 4 Blog: egmbryan.1UP.com Michael Donahoe atures Ed Michael discovered he adores two things this month: war and dinos. You could call Michael a bit of a player, however, because he claims his one true love is a box. Hopefully, one day he'll love a real human being. Now Playing: Final Fantasy Tactics (indefinitely) Blog: egmhoe.1UP.com James “Milkman” Mielke Executive Editor, 1UP.com Milkman's still reeling from the THIS MONTH'S REVIEW CREW Its not you—it’s them Shane Bettenhausen Exe e Editor After the departure of longtime intern Brooksie, Shane’s been forced to fetch the staff's requisite morning coffee, ship outgoing packages, and work on the dreaded Table of Contents. Wholly unacceptable. The postholiday gaming lull has given Crispin time to catch up on his exposure to Vitamin D, while post-oil spill surfing in the San Francisco Bay Area has given him time to catch up. on his exposure to petroleum- based carcinogens. Now Playing: Mario Galaxy Blog: egmcrispin.1UP.com Greg Ford Reviews Editor A month with no reviews? No problem. Ford found room in his heart for some portable love, finally digging into Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and Dracula X Chronicles. Coincidentally, this marks the first time he’s actually wished for a longer commute. Now Playing: Mario Galaxy Blog: egmford.1UP.com Sam Kennedy 1UP.com Site Director With a lot of his time spent improving 1UP's websites lately, Sam has been squeezing in game time on his PSP. And with Wipeout Pulse this month and God of War and Crisis Core right around the corner, he'll be on it a while. Now Playing: The Orange Box Blog: capnsmak.1UP.com Nick Suttner Associate Editor, Reviews Nick would like to take this opportunity to sing the addictive experiences. news that Darth Vader and praises of the recent XBLA Нәк смао Yoda will be in the PS3 and release of GripShift. Give it a ReviewCrew.1UP.com XB360 versions of Soulcalibur shot. Also keep your eye on the to meet all of the 10Р IV, respectively, but not enough 2D, multiplayer, level-creating Network's expert reviewers. And check out 1UP.com for reviews of games we didn't have enough time or room for. to stop him from firing up his lightsaber when the game ships. Now Playing: Devil May Cry 4 Blog: milkman.1UP.com awesometacularity of the upcoming gem N+. Now Playing: Patapon Blog: rocksolidaudio.1UP.com FAGE PAGE PAGE Devil May The Club: Pulse: We Cry: But not Members can feel a likely only? strong beat Features Editor 1UP.com Andrew Pfister Official Magazine Ray Barnholt Staff Revi MyChe Tyler Barber Staff Reviewer Andrew Fitch Staff Reviewer Gord Goble $ i Joe Rybicki Staff Reviewer Todd Zuniga Sports Guy Staff Reviewer ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM • 73 DRAGON QUEST SWORDS: THE MASKED QUEEN AND THE TOWER OF MIRRORS W Publisher: Square Enix Developer: Genius Sonority/Eighting Ш Players: 1 Ш ESRB: Teen Fighting big bosses up close Uneven sword motion sensing Overdone British, French, and German dialects fill characters’ dialogue By the power of Lameskull Square Enix’s venerable role- playing game series goes first-person in Dragon Quest Swords, which puts you in an arcadelike quest with your Wii Remote as a virtual sword and shield. But it’s more proof that devel- opers still have a way to go before the Wii gets a sword-based game that feels at least halfway natural. Having to hold the controller faceup and swing it in straight lines is way too robotic, and it isn’t too success- ful with diagonal slashes, either (the game even warns you that you'll have trouble with them). The typical Dragon Quest look and feel are strong here, making things somewhat enjoyable as you strike down familiar creatures, but the fun fades when you go through level after 74 • ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM level, fighting the same monsters in the same predetermined spots. The brief quest doesn't tax your patience (or forearm) as long as it could have, but that has little to do with the actual frustration you'll encounter. Wii motion controls are great when they help transform com- plex interfaces into something simpler and intuitive. Swords, alas, is the other kind of Wii game: one built on the premise that replacing substance with flailing is a satisfying trade-off. It plays like a dumbed-down Dragon Quest, with a single town and on-rails dun- geons but nevertheless a need to go through the experience-points grind for levels. It’s too poky and awkward to work as a new-age light-gun shoot- er, too shallow to work as an RPG, and too mediocre to merit attention. RPGs will always be my first love, but I’m a busy dude who doesn’t have the copious free time | had in my younger, Final Fantasy- obsessed days. That's why | love the concept of Swords: It condenses the often-bloated role-playing experience into manageable bite-sized chunks, with just enough story exposition to keep the player moving forward. Why, then, did the developers sabotage it with so much unnecessary grinding? The classic Dragon Quest touches, like the ubiquitous cute |i’! slimes, had me hooked at the start, but the constant backtracking taxed even this hardcore DQ nut. ќа. With these shoddy goalies, this game to 20 will last...oh, about 45 seconds. PS3/XB360 FIFA STREET 3 Ш Publisher: EA Sports Big Ш Developer: EA Canada W Players: 1-8 Ш ESRB: Everyone Who's got the yellow card? + TODD: This third in the series isn't the charm for the arcadey FIFA Street. To wit: its one-and-done single-player experience, one meaning one hour. The gameplay's passable, and | had a few thrill- ing moments (bicycle kicks and wall-climbing dribbles), but this game lacks the creative and dramatic spark needed to keep it in my system after a few kicks. The game modes are too limited: You won't find any tourneys, created or otherwise, and the snooze-filled Street Challenge rotated me through the same boring rule sets time and again. This is a "street" game—let's take some chances! Spot my opponent three goals, or make me play a man down. Something—anything—to mix it up. Though, really, what I'm angling for is a narrative (but | guess the game would need create-a-player for that). This play-and-unlock system is past-gen thinking on a now-gen pitch. | like the art direction and the back-end stat track- ing, but otherwise Street 3 is a novelty. ІЛІ stick with FIFA 08. + BRYAN: Ronaldinho, Gattuso, Crouch—all it takes is a glance at Street 3’s box art to see that it has star power. But what a shame they play such an uninspired brand of soccer here. From the lack of defense to the dumber-than-dirt goalkeepers (you're supposed to toss the ball to the guy on your team, OK?), matches simply consist of who can get down the field the fastest while jamming on the trick buttons. The new /ncredibles-esque visuals and accessible dribbling mechanics are welcome, but this arcadey pitch still needs grooming. + ANDREW Р: | was recently of the opinion that Mario Strikers Charged might have been a bit too crazy for its own good. Thank you, then, Street 3, for proving that idea wrong. The stylized character design and downbeat THE VERDICTS soundtrack (I liked it, at least) deliver a nice то тој facade, but the game is too reliant on offen- TODD: Sive trickery—it seems like you're supposed to do more fancy dribbling than goal scoring 5 (or mounting an effective defense). Like most BAD: arcade sports games, the “play and forget it” BHAVAN approach is fine. But Street 3’s lack of energy 4.5 and strategy gives you no reason to go back. BAD: The Good: Simple controls, stylized graphics ANDREW Р: The Bad: By-the-books single-player mode, brain-dead 50 goalkeepers AVERAGE Bizarre: The techno-laden soundtrack. Is this a German disco light show or something? Paid Advertisement - Legal Notice If You Purchased Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Before July 20, 2005 You May Be Eligible for Benefits From A Class Action Settlement If you purchased the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas ("GTA:SA”) before July 20, 2005, you may be part of a class action Settlement. This Notice is just a summary. For more complete information, you should read the full Notice. You can get a copy of the full Notice by calling the number or visiting the Web site below. What is the Class Action Lawsuit About? The lawsuit claims that Defendants, Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. and its subsidiary Rockstar Games, Inc., manufactured and sold СТА:ЅА with hidden content that, if unlocked by the user, could display scenes of a sexual nature, which became known as the *Hot Coffee" scenes. The lawsuit claims the marketing of the game with this content under an improper rating violated Consumer Protection laws. Who is Included? The Class includes everyone who bought GTA:SA before July 20, 2005. Resellers are not included in the Class. What Are the Terms of the Settlement? Class members who meet certain eligibility conditions may be able to claim cash payments ranging from $5 to $35, and/or to exchange the game for a copy without the content at issue. For full details about the qualifications to make a claim you should read the full Notice. Who Represents Me? The Court has appointed attorneys to represent the Class. You may hire your own attorney, if you wish. However, you will be responsible for that attorney's fees and expenses. Class Counsel will ask the Court for an award of attorneys’ fees and reimbursement of expenses in the amount of $1,000,000. This amount includes approximately $955,000 in attorneys’ fees and approximately $45,000 for reimbursement of expenses. Defendants have agreed to and will not oppose this request. The Court may consider the request at the Final Approval Hearing on June 25, 2008 at 10:30 a.m. What Are My Legal Rights? * If you wish to stay in the Class, you do not have to do anything. If you want to get a benefit you must file a claim as explained below. If the Court approves the Settlement, you will be bound by all the Court's orders. This means you cannot sue the Defendants covered by the Settlement in the future. If you qualify, you must complete a claim form to receive any payment. Depending on the kind of proof of purchase you have, you may be eligible for different amounts of cash payments. You can get a Claim Form by calling the toll-free number or visiting the Web site below. Claim Forms must be postmarked no later than May 16, 2008. If you do not wish to be a member of the Class, you must submit a letter to the Settlement Administrator indicating that you do not want to Бе а member of the Class postmarked no later than April 25, 2008. If you request to be excluded from the Class you cannot make a claim for a cash payment under this Settlement. You can tell the Court if you do not like this Settlement or some part of it if you do not exclude yourself. To object or comment, you must send a letter to the Court postmarked no later than April 25, 2008. Will the Court Approve the Settlement? The Court will hold a Final Approval Hearing on June 25, 2008 at 10:30 a.m. to consider whether the Proposed Settlement is fair, reasonable, and adequate and the motion for attorneys’ fees and expenses. For a Notice of Proposed Class Action Settlement and a Claim Form Call toll-free: 1-800-409-0328 or Visit: www.gtasettlement.com Or Write: GTA: San Andreas 1st Edition Settlement Administrator, c/o of Rust Consulting, P.O. Box 1912, Faribault, MN 55021-7167 EINE] - | 76 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY * EGM.1UP.COM DEVIL MAY CRY 4 W Publisher: Capcom Ш Developer: Capcom Ш Players: 1 Ш ESRB: Mature Pinpoint control, lovely visuals Serious backtracking, re- cycled bosses Trish and Lady's décolletage Slash your way to hell...and back Coming into this sequel, Capcom's pioneering slash-n-shoot franchise teeters on the edge of los- ing its triple-A status. The last two games felt like slight missteps— Devil May Cry 2 was a lifeless, repetitive retread while DMCS's absurd difficulty curve made it impenetrably tough for most gamers. The good news? In many crucial ways, DMC4 feels like the return to form that fans so desper- ately desire. But at the same time, an obnoxious design choice keeps it from being an unqualified success. From the outset, DMC4 pulls some surprising punches—benching cock- sure, wisecrackin' Dante in favor of decidedly emo newcomer Nero may seem like a dumb move, but the gam- ble actually pays off. Nero's truly the star of this quest, and you control him through nearly two-thirds of the game as he attempts to rescue his lovely lass from a corrupt theocracy. It's a far more serious and earnest adven- ture than you'd expect, even if the “angels” you're fighting look more like Gundams. And Nero offers a remark- ably different style of play thanks to the Devil Bringer, his demonically enhanced right arm. Its various uses include tossing foes around, pulling off unique finishing moves, and grappling across chasms—all of which add some depth to the proceedings. Nero's new proclivities definitely tweak the formula, yet the fundamen- tal DMC gameplay remains wonder- fully intact. Few games boast such excellent controls — you'll instantly find yourself pulling off impressive combos thanks to the tight, responsive, and intuitive setup offered here. And you'll feel a real incentive to master com- bat, as the game constantly rewards stylish play with a branching tree of unlockable skills and attacks that expand your death-dealing repertoire. Like its predecessors, DMC4 unfolds in a strictly linear fashion, with a diverse mix of combat, puzzle solving, and platforming in each of its 20 stages. Even though it's divided into chunks, the game world stands as one interconnected, realistic realm packed with dense jungles, aban- doned mines, and massive castles. But unlike the past games, this one takes an overly frugal approach to level design: Once you've battled ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY * EGM.1UP.COM « 77 Multiplatform Showdown Although Devil May Cry 4 was originally announced as a PlayStation 3 exclusive, publisher Capcom later changed its plans and opted to simultaneously release it on both PS3 and Xbox 360. But we've all seen multiplatform fare that fails that deliver a consistent experience across the two consoles...how do these two versions stack up? Controller Achievements Graphics PS3 Loading times Required hard drive install minimizes in-game load times to 2 seconds or so Offers a silly Sixaxis motion-controlled camera, better trigger buttons Surprisingly, this version offers full Achievements and online leader- boards, but no Home interactivity Completely lovely...except for a few bits of slowdown and flickering shadows through the holy empire as Nero, you get to trudge back through it all over again (including the bosses) as Dante. Sure, this crimson-clad badass controls like a dream—his godlike strength, agility, and special attacks erupt with a fury that Nero simply can’t match—but having him merely retrace the other hero’s steps feels like а missed opportunity. And just when it appears that no further corners could be cut, the game's penultimate stage parades the game's big bosses back out for an unprecedented third battle. Seriously, Capcom? They're good bosses, but not that good. Although it dips into the recycling bin a bit too much, Devil May Cry 4 still remains a must-play title for action-adventure gamers. Its gor- geous trappings, addictive combat, and well-balanced difficulty make it 78 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY , EGM.1UP.COM XB360 No install; in-game load times vary from 3 to 10 seconds Default rumble is a boon, but those bumpers feel kind of iffy in the heat of battle Sports the expected Xbox Live Achievement and online leaderboard integration Suffers the same bouts of sluggish- ness as its PS3 cousin; opening cinema looks slightly worse the most satisfying DMC in years, and Dante's such a killer character that you'll actually want to tackle the game on a tougher difficulty in order to fully explore his amazing arsenal and unlock a plethora of bonus content. Shane is right. ОМС4 goes a long way toward fixing past transgressions by providing some truly amazing combat. There's no short- age of brutality here, even though the spotlight primarily shines on new- comer Nero. While he looks a lot like Dante, his Devil Bringer (and Buster) techniques make for enemy-smash- ing good times and distinguish him from the sword and gunplay antics of his counterpart. It's a good thing too, since his set of Blue Rose pis- tols takes a distant backseat behind the Devil Bringer and his Red Queen sword. That's OK, though, since you eventually unlock a criminally over- powered Dante later in the game. What's less OK is the occasionally counterintuitive level design. It's a shame that no one on the dev team could see this, but despite the fact that DMC4 has some excellent, almost Zelda-like level progression and puzzle-solving, it also has its fair share of “What the hell do | do now?” moments. Most action games like this have you forging ahead to the end of the level, where you beat the boss and then run through to the next area. With DMC4, | left my PS3 on over- night one time because | didn’t realize that after beating the boss | had to run all the way back to the beginning of the level, and | didn’t want to have to replay the stage. And what’s up with having to hit four giant keys down a hallway to open a door? It’s a good thing the combat consistently amazes, because the stage design doesn’t. The preset camera angles still vex at times, but the game is so beautiful, you'll cut it some slack. Devil May Cry 4 is easily the best DMC since the original—and it’s load- ed with massive replay value—but some puzzling design choices ensure that Capcom still has plenty of work to do. Outside of Heavenly Sword and Ninja Gaiden Sigma, this round of consoles has been sorely lacking in the action-adventure department where, like an episode of Project Runway, it’s all about style. Luckily, DMC4 goes a quite a long way to help fill that genre void. Since this game's unveiling, | hadn't been sold on the idea that rookie Nero could step into the lead role here. But those concerns quickly vanished after a few missions, and it all stems from the hero’s powerful right arm. Whether | was using it to literally tear foes apart or slam down the towering, hotter-than-Hades Berial boss, the Devil Bringer adds a wonderful new wrinkle to the franchise's already stel- lar combat system. | enjoyed playing as Nero so much that | actually was disappointed when forced to switch over to Dante. But the series mainstay also brings along some welcome addi- tions, including the ability to toggle through his four fighting styles on the fly (which for skilled demon slayers will equate into some killer combos) and fabulous new weapons like his exploding roses and the devastating, ever-transforming Pandora. Dante’s Wonderful Toys I Dante snags three weapons from felled bosses, but this set of spiked gauntlets and boots fails to impress. Limited range makes them useful only to masters of the Royal Guard style. Б? The far cooler Lucifer backpack grants Dante the ability to toss an unlimited number of exploding blades at foes. And he clenches a rose in his teeth while using it, just for style. By far the coolest weapon in any DMC game, this crazy suit- case transforms into a host of different firearms including a rocket launcher, laser rifle, and a gyroscopic missile array. While the DMC series has never disappointed with its hacking and shooting, it doesn’t have the best rep for delivering the most well rounded offerings. This installment also repre- sents a major step forward in terms of offering a well-balanced experience for all gamers. Unlike DMC3, No. 4's difficulty feels just right thanks to smart placement of save spots and checkpoints. On the visual front, the game turned out to be quite the looker. The two- plus years in the development cooker has helped DMC4 overcome its rocky first showing, producing some gorgeous set pieces with oodles of enemies and relatively few hiccups in the action. And you'll be hard-pressed to find better fighting sequences than those in this one's beautifully choreo- graphed in-game cut-scenes. ah EGM Extras: Dry your boss-fight-induced tears with our DMC4 SuperGuide at EGM.1UP.com ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM • 79 TUROK Ш Publisher: Touchstone Ш Developer: Propaganda Ш Players: 1-16 Ш ESRB: Mature Lush jungle environments, interesting premise Frustrating aiming issues, uneven difficulty, stealth bits Ron Perlman Jurassic Parkinson's Turok has a bad case of the shakes. Shoot a gun and the screen shakes. Get hit and the screen shakes. Draw your bow for too long and the screen shakes. Immersive? Maybe. Annoying? Yep. If I’m sight- ing on a bad guy and my aim gets knocked way off every time | shoot or get shot, well, | get a little frustrated. Surprisingly, though, this issue doesn't damage Turok beyond redemption. This is largely due to the interesting story, solid writing, and fantastic voice work, which all move the game along to a satisfyingly cli- mactic ending. Having to deal with two factions of enemies makes things a bit more interesting than in your average first-person shooter; both the human soldiers and the carnivorous dinos will come after you, but they'll also take on each other if you stay hidden. (Dinos even appear as third parties in the smooth, feature-filled multiplayer, which is a nice touch.) But this ties into one of my biggest gripes with Turok: The game handles stealth with absurd clumsiness. Sometimes enemies see you, some- times they don't, and I couldn't find an obvious reason why. It feels as though something in the game isn't working the way it should—a feeling that's compounded by seriously unbalanced difficulty and graphical glitches that plague the PS3 version (though the 360 version runs much better). These issues guarantee that Turok isn't going to win any awards, espe- cially considering 07's stellar FPSes. But the unusual premise, solid writing, and varied play make it worth a look. | never, ever thought Га be saying this, but | had more goofy fun with Turok: Evolution. Sure, it was a complete mess, but it clung fiercely to the over-the-top Turok spirit, if nothing else. While the dinosaurs make for some refreshing enemies in this franchise reboot and the pro- duction values have their moments, Turok never makes good on any of its more ambitious ideas. It tries to stretch its legs with some interesting lure mechanics (like shooting eggs or flares to get dinos' attention), but winds up crippling them completely by having far too few checkpoints (you'll inevitably forgo the more interesting ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM • 81 options in favor of efficiency when the going gets rough). And while the throwaway story isn’t particularly harmful (Joe must have a soft spot for humbly badass Native Americans), the useless squadmates that tag along serve little purpose other than to destroy any welcome 82 + ELECTRONIC tension that comes from hunting alone. | had some fun, sure, but shooter standards are indeed high and my tolerance is short for anything with dinosaurs that isn't awesome. Wait a minute, Joe—you think the plot is interesting? Interesting AMING MONTHLY е EGM.1UP.COM Even More Ways Tu-Rok If there's one thing inarguably absent from this new Turok, it's a sense of over-the-top, violent whimsy. Specifically, where's the Cerebral Bore gun, guys?! We spitballed a few ideas that we'd put in if/when we ruled/rule the world: With respect to Ratchet & Clank's Transmorpher and our very own Tobies (page 90), we want a weapon that trans- forms our enemies into miniaturized versions of everybody's favorite misplaced frontiersman from Turok: Evolution, Tobias Bruckner. Sure, Turok has a neutral capture-the-flag multiplayer mode of sorts and dinosaurs on the map, but where's the synergy? Make the flag a dino egg with a bunch of angry relatives tromping around and baby, you got a stew goin'. Never heard of the fabled Raptor Rex? Jeez, kids these days. Well, it's a raptor riding a T-Rex, with a whip and a cowboy hat, and we want it in the game. We want to see it, we want to be it, and we want to kill it. in that it manages to combine all the clichéd science-fiction plots (space marines get stranded on an island— yawn) when it could have easily come up with a hook that isn't as old as the dinosaurs? If so, then yes, | totally agree with you. But even though Turok's story is pretty darn prehis- toric, dicing up dinos with a knife is extremely gratifying. And that's what makes Turok stand out from other FPSes. Deciding whether to fend off those carnivorous foes or sic 'em on your human enemies adds a teensy bit of strategy to the otherwise typical run, gun, and reload approach. And | do agree with Joe (for real this time) that the dinos spice up multi- player. Just like it's fun to exterminate the reptiles in single-player, it's even more fun to pick off losers getting attacked by the beasts. ќа. Stick with the guest pass The Club’s premise seems straight out of a cheesy mid- '90s action flick: A group of eight gun- and-grenade-totin' thugs compete in an underground blood sport for the amusement of a disembodied British voice. And this online third-person shooter's gaming inspiration also stems from the mid-'90s: the classic PC fragfest Team Fortress. The Club's lackluster single-player mode is a series of repetitive beat-the- clock challenges, but the imaginative multiplayer-match options are well Smooth 5 E 2 online, multiplayer worth playing. | especially liked Hunter No story Hunted, which pits one player against mode or innovation the seven other combatants. Get killed, and it sets off a deadly game of tag—a welcome change from the typical deathmatch convention of Have no female eye candy? Nights of strategizing Happy-go-pukey storylines make way for gritty, postapocalyptic death and destruction in the newest chapter in this turn-based strategy series. Tactically oriented units and gameplay also court a more sophis- ticated audience. For example, the Flare can reveal hidden units in the Fog of War, and the Rig (formerly the APC) can build temporary airports or naval ports. More significantly, Commanding Officers now join the fight on the battlefield, offering boosts for nearby troops. Dark storyline, deeper The game loses a lot of features strategy from Advance Wars: Dual Strike, how- Way too ever, including dual-screen matches, much (thankfully skip- pable) talky-talky True experience points, and Survival and Combat modes. Most of that stuff’s online play! just fluff, but the missing elements do most shooters. Online play also flows smoothly, as | experienced no lag— other than constantly getting blasted to hell by Tyler. The weak single-player deserves a cap in the ass, but the poor-man's Team Fortress multiplayer left me surprisingly satisfied. Although I crushed in multi- player, | can't say it was all skill. Most of the shooting boiled down to an awkward close-range ballet. And in Team Fortress, at least the grenades work. The Club's throw-and-hope gre- nades are completely useless. Offline, however, the game's focus on urgent shooting sets the stage for a nostalgic triathlon of a fighting game's plot, a beat-em-up's generic thugs, and a light-gun game's choreographed ene- make this sequel feel less beefy. But I’m happy to trade the fluff up for the new 1-on-1 online mode. It worked flawlessly for us and even includes lo-fi voice chat. Online play alone will make this cartridge a near- permanent fixture in my DS. Hell, online play alone makes this the pinnacle of the Advance Wars series to date, even if the voice chat's about as clear as a conversation at a McDonald's drive-thru intercom. The new units—particularly those with midfield deployment options (I love the seaplanes)—add notable substance. Radial CO powers bug me, though; unless you make extensive use of your CO unit, moving and attacking in tight swarms, the bar rarely fills up. But I’m THE CLUB № Publisher: Sega Ш Developer: Bizarre Creations Ш Players: 1-8 Ш ESRB: Mature mies. Luckily, concise, linear stages keep combat fatigue to a minimum. The Club certainly brings nothing innovative to the venerable shooter genre. The gameplay, bereft of inspiration beyond kill or be killed, panders to high-twitch robo-humans like Tyler but otherwise slobbers along repetitively. The enemies—a typical collection of lowlifes, crazed madmen, and the like—aren't nearly as intel- ligent as they are crazily numerous. And the weapons? Expect machine guns and grenades on the menu. Redemption comes in the form of the varied, lag-free online experience, an interesting mix of kill zones, and speaker-busting audio effects. That's just enough for a quick fix. ADVANCE | WARS: DAYS | OF RUIN E Publisher: Nintendo № Developer: Intelligent Systems № Players: 1-4 (2 online) BI ESRB: Everyone 10+ more than fine with the back-to-basics approach— good riddance to those dumb dual-screen battles! Wow, war sure is depressing. Previous Advance Wars games had me chuckling along with the combat, while Days of Ruin has me questioning why I'm even fight- ing to begin with. Well, the answer to that question is obvious: War—while disheartening—is damn fun. I’m also stoked the developers chose to chuck the stuff that didn’t work (game-break- ing tag-team commander powers and annoying dual-screen battles) for a lean (but certainly not lacking) revamp. So don't be turned off by Days of Ruin's new apocalyptic aesthetics— you'll still find joy in the battle. ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM « 83 WIPEOUT PULSE Ш Publisher: Sony CEA Ш Developer: Sony CEE (Studio Liverpool) Ш Players: 1-8 Ш ESRB: Awesome online play, plenty of customization Not very open to newcomers Wipeout HD on PS3 Pulse-pounding racing at 140 bpm Pulse is the type of sequel that clearly caters to its fans—the enhancements you see here will have hardcore Wipeout players raving and casual players or newcomers wonder- ing what the big deal is with this futur- istic racer. Sony has slightly improved the visuals over its predecessor Pure's and has tweaked the А.І. (the rac- ers are much more aggressive here), but the gameplay remains largely the same. New to the series are the Mag Strips, which lock the vehicles to the track and allow for gravity-defying turns and loops, but that's about it. Pulse's career mode is perhaps its biggest achievement, with a pro- gression system set up in grids that unlock as you go. Each event offers a different type of challenge—including 84 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY * EGM.1UP.COM Elimination, where you have to take out your opponents, and Zone, where you have to last as long as you can before self-destructing. Once you add in the online play, rankings, download- able ship skins, and stats galore, you'll find plenty to obsess over. As one of those long- time fans of the Wipeout series, I’m thrilled that Sony has made Pulse harder, faster, and stronger than the excellent Pure. But is it better? I like the fact that Pulse's career mode is more open-ended, but the overly brutal А.І. makes it almost impossible to concentrate on getting through the curves alive, let alone placing in the top three spots. Multiplayer evens things out somewhat, but despite © гє ~ ployer В rc-acarana 421 HMH Everyone 10+ Pulse’s cool online features, this game was made for the hardcore players. Who are you people, and why in the hell are you casually dis- missing Pulse as a “for fans only” indulgence? Not only is this the finest Wipeout since 1996’s XL, but it’s also the most feature-rich PSP game ever produced. Responsive control, cre- ative track design, and chic graphics come standard-issue with this series, but the additions like online play (that ties into your PlayStation Network account to track progress), custom soundtracks, and a user-friendly ship editor significantly pimp out this futur- istic ride. And you guys know that you can manually adjust the enemy A.l. before each race, right? #% Е % 2) ^ Evervone! PATAPON W Publisher: Sony CEA № Developer: Pyramid/Interlink № Players: 1 № ESRB: Everyone Unique, challenging, and cheap ($20)! No paus- ing, vague objectives, forced backtracking An absolute must Tap your foot to a tactical wonder Patapon's colorful, minimal- ist visuals may be reminiscent of the charming LocoRoco, with a concept that borrows elements of both the rhythm-action and real-time-strategy genres, but it still manages to never feel even remotely familiar. And that's just dynamite. By hammering out a regular stream of rhythms, simple tac- tical commands are issued to a small army of Patapon warriors—advance, attack, defend, etc.—who'll carry them out against legions of wild beasts, huge bosses, and villainous Zigapons. Each level feels like a series of carefully plotted rock-paper-scissors matches, accented with various squad customizations you'll decide outside of combat. Patapon poses a serious challenge over its 15 hours (some arcane objectives and explanations don't help), but the understated depth, astounding rewards (both literal and whimsical), and elegant difficulty curve Stick with you to the end. Along with a beat you'll take to your grave... Patapon's guilty of some serious bait-and-switch shenanigans, but I’m actually relieved that it's not merely a rhythm-action game. Jamming buttons along with the beat represents only a fraction of the game's true depth—beneath those trappings lurks a shockingly nuanced tactical RPG. The sophisticated sil- houette visuals, funky tribal tunes, and immensely customizable Patapon troops combine to offer an endearing and addictive quest that's perfect for t let the Patapqns steal Catapult! enjoyment in bite-sized in chunks. The sequel’s begging for some sort of mul- tiplayer interaction, though. This is the least-portable game I've ever played. The slightest distraction in the outside world will make you fail, and you can’t pause the up-to-10-minute-long missions except by putting the PSP to sleep. Add to that the repetitive nature (to level up, you must play the same mis- sions over and over), and Patapon becomes tough to love. But hey, art can't always be easy. The music here is simply fantastic and the gameplay so original and sophisticated that even with its faults, Patapon is as hypnotic as your troops' war chant. All serious gamers should check this one out. аж ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM • 85 LOST ODYSSEY Ш Publisher: Microsoft Ш ESRB: Teen With its futuristic yet strangely gothic archi- tecture and midriff-bearing, man-pretty hero, Lost Odyssey tries hard to capture the Final Fantasy look and feel (some of its creators worked on that legendary series). And while we didn’t get the U.S. version by press time, we spent a lot of time with the import version and came away with the distinct feeling that we've played this game before. Bland levels and a dated-feeling combat system do the game’s unique storyline a disservice. Don’t expect a huge leap in role-playing game design here. NO MORE HEROES Ш Publisher: Ubisoft Ш ESRB: Mature The guys behind Killer 7 waggle onto the Wii with a button-mashing assassin epic (which we played the import of). Testosterone-filled killer Travis Touchdown slices and suplexes his way through a mysterious assassins" organization to reach rank No. 1. Fighting through waves of identical thugs with motion-controlled finishing strikes and body slams never gets old. Unfortunately, the busywork missions between the stages do. Loads of style and ridiculous dialogue round out this mature escapade for the hardcore. This rollicking actioner doles out the goods. Full review next issue. 86 • ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM.1UP.COM Electronic Nongaming Monthly This month's nongame: Atari's creepy equestrian lovefest, My Horse and Me, for the Wii Well, to be fair, it features plenty of gamey elements—race times to shoot for, doodads to collect, things to...er, jump over. But without any real motivation or consequence for doing or not doing them (unless you're the world’s biggest fan of unlocking horse-related minutiae), it's something we can't in good conscience give the tradi- tional review treatment to. No! It's actu- ally terrible. We fully believe concepts like these can work— people seem to like their tiny virtual dogs—but a bad game with motion controls is a baaad game. As in riding your horse feels like maneuvering a broken tank, or perhaps a character from Resident Evil 1. And when you're up against timed goals that assume the controls aren't horrendous, even the intended audience of wee girls will projectile-vomit in frustration. The most fun I managed to squeeze out of it was spraying the horse in the butt with the cleaning hose for a solid minute and calling over coworkers to watch. Also, watching the sponge contour to the smooth horse body as you wash it down (what!?). Actually, scratch that; what | enjoyed the most was the completely unrelated “spot the difference between two scenes" minigame | found buried in the menu. Even if you're someone who appreciates "all the excitement and fun of the equestrian life," cares. about the official Fédération Équestre Internationale license, and enjoys reward- ing gameplay features such as “time management,” it's tough to imagine your time wouldn’t be better spent looking at pictures and vid- eos of horses online. You'd still probably have an easier time riding a real horse. —Nick Suttner APOLLO JUSTICE: ACE ATTORNEY E Publisher: Capcom Ш ESRB: Teen If finding pleasure in this new courtroom saga by the makers of Phoenix Wright is a guilty offense, then lock us up. Justice incorporates everything that made the original PW trilogy a hit (engaging characters, plenty of twists, and knee-slapping dialogue), along with several DS-specific features. And since this is the first game in the series built specifically for the specialized Nintendo handheld, the production values are no longer cheap. We only had a chance to play the first case, but that was all we needed to experience to know that Justice is a worthy addition to the PW series. BOMBERMAN LAND Ш Publisher: Hudson № ESRB: Everyone The fuse for this minigame-filled Bomberman outing was lit eons ago (it was originally shown off two years ago), and it's obvious the extra time might have saved it from bombing as hard as failed series reboot Act: Zero. Like Bomberman Land Touch! for the DS, Land adds a very simple (but harmlessly entertaining) role-playing-game-like story mode that follows Bomberman's adventure in a fantasy theme park. Land has a handful of fun minigames and an armful of crappy ones. But, hey, at least you can still play the classic battle mode. CONFLICT: DENIED OPS Ш Publisher: Eidos Ш ESRB: Mature We were able to blast through several levels from a near-final version of Conflict, the new- est iteration of last-gen's successful budget swath of titles. The basic quality may surprise you—satisfyingly destructible environments, novel hot-swapping dual-character control, visual polish—but a bizarrely counterintuitive control scheme, obnoxious use of the Mature rating (nonstop cussing), and a price point that’s a long way from budget ($50) take it right back off the radar. Considering the number of more interesting shooters out there, Conflict is a textbook example of too little too late. © т o = m m o 2 o © = = = Е т 3 > 2 = > = 5 = v Еј Еј 5 > > = ЕЛ a го © т 9 5 = v 2 5 т 3 5 > 2 = m = 5 m = a 2 o Ф v = = v o > = m © m E m © ЕЗ ЕЗ т = = v E] m 5 5 E] © 2 © > E 3 a v СА = 2 = ЕЗ о © = в z Еј 2 го 4 Еј = 5 = 5 SCHOOL OF 800 .226.7625 : 3300 University Boulevard • Winter Park, FL 327 lable to those who quality + Career d ONE OF THE TOP FIVE ll Real World Education PROGRAMS IN THE WORLD — Electronic Gaming Monthly © 2006 Full Sail Inc. All rights reserved. THE SALES CHART Атагоп.сот5 Top 20 for Dec/Jan Name Platform ЕСМ Scores PROFESSOR LAYTON AND THE CURIOUS VILLAGE W Publisher: Nintendo Ш ESRB: Everyone While the heart of Professor Layton is its brain-busting, stylus-heavy logic puz- zles—with their solutions driving the story along—you navigate the incredibly detailed environments adventure game-style. The art is decidedly in the style of French anima- tion (think The Triplets of Belleville), and the score—tinkling glockenspiel on top of accor- dion—gives the game a surprisingly haunt- ing, even melancholy atmosphere. + BOTTOM LINE: We didn't get a chance to play the U.S. release, but the Japanese import we got our hands on is so good, it would be tough to mess it up in translation. DS/PSP DUNGEON EXPLORER: WARRIORS OF ANCIENT ARTS Ш Publisher: Hudson Ш ESRB: Е10+ (DS)/Teen (PSP) Dungeon Explorer (TG16) was a tough but generally fun Gauntlet rip-off; the portable remakes are more like Diablo, trading brisk, accessible gameplay for slow-paced experi- ence-point grinding and character-building. Too slow—and dull 3D graphics make things even pokier. Not to mention all the uninter- esting story sequences. + BOTTOM LINE: "Explore" rhymes with “bore” for a reason, it seems. Both the DS and PSP have better role-playing game offerings, so stick to the original Dungeon Explorer on Virtual Console. It’s cheaper and more entertaining. 88 + ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM 1 2 © 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Super Mario Galaxy Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Wii Play (with Wii Remote) Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day! Assassin's Creed í One of the coolest (and most confusing) parts of Assassin’s Creed is its story. If you wanna know more, the upcoming DS game is a prequel. Rock Band Special Edition Remember, the music doesn't stop with the disc. Harmonix has been updat- ing both Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network with plenty of new hits. Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Halo 3 The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass New Super Mario Bros. Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! Guitar Hero Ill: Legends of Rock Mass Effect Political site Townhall.com thinks Mass Effect is an interactive porno. Y'know, when we write articles, we like to do research. These guys should really try it. High School Musical: Sing It! Bundle with Mic Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party Bundle Carnival Games Guitar Hero Ill: Legends of Rock Bundle The Wii version of GH3 had some sound prob- lems, so Activision has set up a replacement-disc program to appease all the disappointed rockers. Mario Kart DS Mario Party DS Wii XB360 Wii DS XB360 XB360 PS3 XB360 Ds DS DS PS2 XB360 Wii Wii DS DS 9.5 10 10 9.5 8.5 9.5 4.5 6.0 5.0 8.0 7.0 6.0 7.0 6.0 4.5 9.0 9.5 9.0 6.0 7.0 6.0 9.5 8.5 9.5 10 10 9.0 8.0 9.0 9.0 9.5 10 8.0 8.5 9.0 9.5 Not Reviewed 9.0 9.5 9.0 Not Reviewed Not Reviewed Not Reviewed Not Reviewed 9.0 8.5 8.5 6.5 6.5 6.5 g аа“ ШО | ums abovetheinfluence.com | | SAME OVER * press continue for crappy accolades, exotic imports, and intergalactic escapades > SERNEREY'S REST OF THE CRAP PRESENTS - ЕОМ?5 Sixth Annual Tobias Bruckner Memorial Awards THE TOBIAS BRUCKNER AWARDS are an annual event honoring the year’s most impressive failures in videogaming. Before we begin, let’s take a look at the history of Tobias Bruckner. Born in 2002 in a game called Turok: Evolution, Tobias was a Southern gentle- man who joined the dinosaur cavalry and issued himself orders to hold position and wait for Turok to arrive. Only he and God know how he became half-robot or how his pre-Civil War Southern culture perpetuated in a world of dinosaur-head mounted lasers, but they both agree that Tobias set the very concept of ideas back 50 years. Some say Tobias was born during a dark age of gaming following several Todd McFarlane projects. Todd McFarlane, of course, was the eccentric conceptualist who created games by brooding for days about darkness and man’s place in it before bursting into 10 furious seconds of character design. “What about a pirate?! With a peg leg and eyepatch! Done! And a bat with a...a pants!” "Because of this, Soon the character-design bar was lowered so far that Tobias Bruckner managéd to crawl out of someone’s brain. ` And following that, designers got so lazy ! that characters were not even designed : until several months after the release of the game. It’s why the original Tomb Raider was a four-foot breast racing against spiders and Spartans in a monastery cave. ` 90» ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM: 1UP. COM If you eliminate literally millions of more important things, one could say that 2007 was the year of the videogame-school com- mercial. No longer content to tantalize us with dreams of business manage- ment or a degree in gun repair, daytime TV now promises us that we can find a career out of video- games. Little did we know that the design process was two excitable men on a break-room couch whose boss pops in to say, “Hurry up and tighten the graphics on that exciting diversion.” Videogame Career Man 1: “Sure, boss! We decided to use the level 1 sound effect here!” Videogame Career Man 2: “Can you believe we get paid to do this? | mean, earlier today | thought this building was the post office!” Videogame Career Man 1: “You think that’s crazy? I’m designing a rendered cinematic with a PlayStation One controller! And my major was hamster repair!” (бж ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED Oh God...what have | achieved? The I Have Achieved... Oh, God... What Have | Achieved? Award of Achievement Years ago, we measured success in videogames by high scores. When games moved to the home, gamers were forced to measure success using water displacement. Then the Xbox 360 invented the Achievement. Now, they’re everywhere: A few PlayStation 3 games have borrowed the concept, and even Wii’s Metroid Prime 3 publicly celebrates your meaningless in-game success. So long, exis- tential crisis! | hope cell phones start doing it next. Achievement unlocked: “2nd Base” — Engage in anything-on-genital contact with a person at this phone number. Achievement unlocked: “You Want Free Pot Sticker?” — Order Mongolian Beef 15 times from this number. Achievement unlocked: “Who the Hell is Gina?” — Have a “2nd Base” Achievement from this num- ber discovered by your girlfriend. PAGE =? Comic: Hsu the funny The Uwe Boll Award for Continued Uwe-Bollence Uwe Boll continued to turn videogames into movies, and in 2007 he brought us BloodRayne 2 and Postal. Check your local nothings for showtimes. There’s a longish story about how we almost fought, and when it fell through | responded by calling him names and critically crushing every terrible film he’s made. | approached him at the premiere party of Postal, since after what | said about him, giving him the chance to punch me was the right thing to do. Instead, he was very friendly and eager to respond to most of what | said in the article as if my jokes were actual questions instead of, you know, jokes. Some of that could have been my fault by not labeling the irony or sarcasm properly, but as the subject turned to the topic of the night, Postal, he told me that the scene he wrote where Verne Troyer’s ass is sexually assaulted by hun- dreds of CGI monkeys was his “Monty Python moment.” He continued, “You know, over zee top." I think | now begrudgingly respect the balls it takes to say something like that. | sure wouldn’t. Make no mistake about it, his movies are impossibly bad, but watch how when describ- ing it on paper, Postal is crazy awesome (spoiler, as if that would ever affect you): In the final scene, the hero’s morbidly obese wife is having sex with two men dressed > as American Gladiators, “| who all explode. And when her fat hand lands on his car, he reaches out through the broken wind- shield and, for no reason, feeds it to his dog. i P | think I love Uwe Boll? Uwe Boll, Seanbaby, and his girlfriend discuss comedy at the premiere of Postal. The Start, A, B, X, Y, B, R, epo Start, Start! There’s No ‘Way to Skip This?! Award Super Mario Galaxy surprised no one with either its great- ness or its fantasticness. However, many people had no idea that their videogame would be surrounded by so much talking. Here you go, new generation of casual Wii gamers! Welcome to our world of unskippable cut- scenes. Publishers should really start putting labels on their games to warn consumers what the percentage of pure videogame is inside. Like fruit juice does. Or like McDonald’s used to until we realized that “Contains 25 percent human foot” was exactly what it sounded like. Forcing a movie into a game is so clumsy and counterproductive. | mean, try thinking about it from the other media’s point of view. Can you imagine a movie pausing and telling you that you can’t see Meryl Streep cry until Karnov can defeat the Guardians of Madison County? But before we get back to our feature, how much would you at home pay for this deluxe set of stainless steel knives? Select your vehicle and find out by causing $1,875,000 worth of damage to Suzanne Somers and special guest Connie Francis! _ ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.TUP.COM “ 91 & Chan bring TOBIAS BRUCKHER MEMORIAL AWARDS con) The Unearthed Horror Award For people with properly functioning senses of rad, the Wii Virtual Console is a marvel of modern entertainment. Before it existed, getting all these amazing classic games in one place would have taken a PC and an Internet search at any time after 1996! But of all the great titles available for the Virtual Console, one stands out: China Warrior. It's the story of a child's giant drawing of Bruce Lee fighting against pota- toes. You're probably wondering why it's called China Warrior, and not Chinese Warrior or even Bruce Lee Man vs. Potato. And the reason is simple: Some people are much stupider than others. The Press Start to Skip: Most Unread Game Award Puzzle Quest is an addictive RPG where battles are represented in puzzle form. Being sympathetic to the game’s writer, making sense of a scene where an Elf and a giant scorpion sit down and decide their fate with a game of Bejeweled is like handing someone a bucket of fish and telling them to invent a new number. So it’s understandable that they failed. What's strange is how boringly they did it. | think Puzzle Quest uses the same writers as the phone book. These a**holes couldn’t write a stop sign. Luckily, some progressive game-development genius added an option to skip these scenes, none of which are ever more than three letters away from, “A monster appears! Its banter teaches you more about the main sorcerer’s castle or cavern. You respond with Bejeweled. Begin!” The Stagnant Technology Award When the makers of Mass Effect imagined the future, they imag- ined political intrigue between alien races, instant travel between distant star systems, and eleva- tors that haven’t increased in speed since 1968. For every one tough decision you make in this epic space drama, you spend 34 minutes waiting for your team to ride the epic space elevator. To make matters worse, in the main area there are magical tanning beds lying around that can warp you anywhere you want to go—so we know these people have faster-than-elevator technology. But you somehow manage to always be in parts of the universe equipped with WWIl-era elevators. "Shepard to Joker: The people of Ferros are going to have to be happy with spikes through their chest cavities. *ding!* I'm in the eleva- tor, and this dick UPS guy just got in and hit every single button. *ding!* Oh, Jesus—he heard me, and now he’s going on and on about how he’s just trying to make a living. *ding!* Go ahead and park the space- ship; we're going to be here awhile. *ding!*" The Least Wanted or Surprising Sequel Award | Fuzion Frenzy 2 — Thanks a lot, asses. Now I can catch up on my unhappiness. 92 • ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM.1UP.COM The Forsooth, 'Twas You Who Killed My Sister Award for Excellence in Theatrics Did anyone play Two Worlds? It was this insane Oblivion rip-off made by Polish people and set in a world based on other games based on clichés. With the Renaissance Faire-inspired writing and voice acting sucking in all directions, the cut- scenes sound like a beginner's class exercise from a Dungeons & Dragons as a Second Language course. To the creative team’s credit, | think hav- ing the main character respond to the discovery of his sister's murderer with robotic disinterest was a unique and daring approach. “Hark, ’tis my wife’s rapist approacheth. Hold, what's this fortune???!! A silver piece shines at mine feet! And with that, | shall depart and fare thee well, friend." The Desperate Gamble That We're All Idiots Award Data Design Interactive released four budget games late last year: Ninjabread Man, Anubis II, Rock "п" Roll Adventures, and Billy the Wizard. Actually, that's only two games if you consider that Ninjabread Man, Anubis II, and Rock ’n’ Roll Adventures are the exact same game with modified graphics. I’m not even exaggerating. If that weren't criminal enough, they put out a press release stat- ing that within three days, two of them were sold out! When this claim was double-checked with eyeballs near retail shelves, many people noticed an error in the data. No one can say for certain how many copies were sold, only that it was a much smaller number than "all." Keep in mind that this game they repainted three different ways and then lied about was a broken mess to begin with. Plus, one of them is named Rock ‘п? Roll Adventures! What are they, 5 years old? And in 1972? Tobias Bruckner, you might be off the hook. | think next year, this could be called The Data Design Interactive Awards: Rock ’n’ Roll Adventures. ќа. “ American makeovers Ву Jeren D GAME OVER | | | | oly | By ee oranges lai by Bill Мисол р u. < 72 = 8) \ эс m > ER 74. > =- NO If 7. С» - (СА [2 Z Su. I 2 4 U fe = ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM • 95 КЕ ЕДЕ ЕГ] > NEXT MONTH _ Grand Theft Auto IV Capcom USA Inc. www.capcom.com . <5... 4-5 D3Publisher of America, Inc. www.darksector.com. , Disney Interactive Games WWW.disney.com. «isses 14-15 April Issue (#227) e On sale March 11 Full Sail Real World Education www.fullsail.com .............87 Kinsella Communication LTD www.kinsella-novak.com. ......75 Microsoft www.microsoft.com, sur... ‚28, 29 Office for Nati: ional Drug Control Policy www.whatsyaurantidrug.com...89 ‚Schick www.shaving.com .............9 Sony Online Entertainment Wwww.sonyonline.com..........39 THO Ine. www.thg.com ....... tM 61 US ARMY ACCESSIONS COMMAND www.goarmy.com. оаа (Printed in the U.S.A. |... ®....] > HEU & CHAN IH: P.S.: 111 СА ATT ОСОП ФО LOU KNOW Ѓ KNOWING YOu, IT’S, WHATS IN THIS EITHER A PLAYSTATION > boxe OR A DEAD FROG, DON'T OPEN THAT IN THE HOUSE. THIS BOX CONTAINS HOPE — HOPE FOR A GREAT CONSOLE, AND FOR SONY REALIZES THAT А COMPANY THAT'S G me OARS NOT LEARNED FROM ITS HELPING THINGS TO PAST MISTAKES! p DESCRIBE SUCH ACTIONS AS “TOO CLEVER” SONY KNOWS, NOW, THAT PEOPLE DON'T Ѓ WHEN CALLED ON THEM! RESPOND WELL WHEN THEY ACT LIKE SMUG SONY UNDERSTANDS ee | THAT ENGAGING IN HOPER- SONY KNOWS NOT TO У BOLE WHEN DESCRIBING PRODUCE POORLY ITS OWN HARDWARE DISGUISED AD CAMPAIGNS SALESIS— THAT ACTIVELY INSULT THEIR OWN FAN BASE! IF SONY KNOWS ALL LOOK, IT REALL? 15 НЕЧ, YOU'RE PREACHING ТО THIS STUFF, WHY DO AGREAT CONSOLE! THE CHOIR, HERE! THEY KEEP DOING IT? THERE’S AWESOME ers : )| GAMES ON THE WAR, н Hi 9 V KNOW? BLU-RAY’S REALLY жш COME INTO ITS OWN, HO THE PLAYSTATION HOURS, NETWORK'S ALWAYS TO AFFORD IT IMPROVING — ; THING? PURE POETRY. SACK TRETTON Y PAQING VOU OFF? v \ THERE’S — | MEAN, РМ OPEN, | py 17 NOTHING IN OF COURSE -- THIS BOX. 5 f ji - "^f WELL ... SEAH, BUT, NO! 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