ТЕС A EXCLUSIVE Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Four-page blowout! ЯЗЬ Тһе Helghast are coming! iLLZON Everything you need to know about the PS3's killer app «P ® UFC 2009 * Left 4 Dead * Yakuza 2 * Brütal Legend * Lego Batman * Persona 4 e Away: Shuffle Dungeon e StarCraft Il e Mercenaries 2 1ТОР.Л OM САМЕН PALADIN 515 19.1 енча LI" Color Options [|_| GAMER PALADIN 850XZ 4. anim + LI" NVIDIA® 750i SLI™ Chipset Dual PCI Express Motherboard Intel® Core"2 Duo Processor E7200 $829 GENUINE Windows® Vista™ Home Premium Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor E8300 5869 Silent 8: Overclocking Proof CPU Cooling System Intel® Core"'2 Duo Processor E8400 $899 Eagletech® Sidewinder Gaming Case + 550W SLI"-Certified Power Supplylntel^ Core"2 Duo Processor E8500 $989 Corsair 2GB DDR2-800 Memory Intel® Core™2 Quad-core Processor 06600 $919 250GB SATA II 7200RPM Hard Drive Intel® Core™2 Quad-core Processor 06700 $989 2X NVIDIA® GeForce™ 8600GT 1GB Video Card-SLI™ Enabled Intel® Core"*2 Quad-core Processor Q9300 $999 20x Double Layer DVD+RW Drive, 16x DVD-ROM Drive Intel? Core™2 Quad-core Processor Q9450 $1069 Surround 3D Premium Sound Intel? Core™2 Quad-core Processor Q9550 51279 GB Ethernet LAN Intel? Core™2 Extreme Quad-core Processor Qx9650_ "ma: 600 Watt Surround Sound Speakers Logitech Deluxe Keyboard & Optical Mouse Free Wireless 802.11g 54MBps Network Adapter Add ViewSonic? 20" Wide VG2030WM TFT LCD Monitor @ $288 ee € P M 600 Watt Surround Sound Speakers Logitech Deluxe Keyboard & Optical Mouse Free Wireless 802.119 54MBps Network Adapter NVIDIA® 7501 SLI™ Chipset Dual PCI Express M GENUINE Windows® Vista™ Home Premium i Certified CPU Liquid Cooling System - Overclocking Proof — Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor Gigabyte? Poseidon Gaming Case + 800W SLI"-Certified Power Supply ^ Intel? 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Core2 Quad-core Processor 06600 $1199 500GB SATA II 7200RPM Hard Drive Intel® Core™2 Quad-core Processor 06700 $1269 2X NVIDIA® GeForce™ 9600GT 512MB Video Card-SLI™ Enabled үе Core2 Quad-core Processor 09300 $1279 20x Double Layer DVD+RW Drive, 16x DVD-ROM Drive Intel® Core™2 Quad-core Processor 09450 $1359 Surround 3D Premium Sound Intel® Соге""2 Quad-core Processor Q9550 $1559 GB Ethernet LAN Intel® Core™2 Extreme Quad-core Processor Qao Los = $2049 g Ф 1 kl SE ESO ease At a m n m NVIDIA® 780i SLI™ Chipset Dual PCI Express Motherboard Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor E7200 ws s GENUINE Windows® Vista™ Home Premium Intel? Core"2 Duo Processor E8300 Certified CPU Liquid Cooling System - Overclocking Proof Intel® Core2 Duo Processor E8400 NZXT® Lexa Blackline Gaming Case + 800W SLI"-Certified Power Supply Intel® Core" Duo Processor E8500 " Corsair 468 DDR2-800 Memory Intel? 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GENUII INE Windows® Vista™ - ix Firewire IEEE-1394 Ports Home Premium = 4-in-1 Build-in Media Card Reader - Intel® Centrino™ Duo Mobile Technology - Free Deluxe Carrying Case - Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor - Intel® 965 Chipset Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor - Intel® 4965AGN Wireless 802,11 a/b/g/Draft-n (800Mhz FSB) : ми а ы Б6006Т 512MB video T8100 (3MB L2Cache,. 2.1692) $1039 ory 18300 (3MB L2Cache, 2.4GHZ) $1079 - 160GB SATA Hard Drive Р 19300 (6MB L2Cache, 2.5GHZ) $159 7 - Removable 8x DVD+R/+RW Drive 79500 (6MB L2Cache, 2.6GHZ) КЕИ - Built-in 2.0 Mega Pixels Digital Camera - Built-in Fingerprint Security —REE SHIPPING: Color Options | ПГ] TOLL FREE 888.462.3899 Intel, the Intel logo, Intel Core and Core Inside are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other counties. 31039. - 17" Wide Screen WSXGA+ TFT LCD - Built-in HDMI 1680x1050 Display - Gb Ethernet LAN & 56K Modem - GENUINE Windows® Vista™ - 3x USB 2.0 Ports Home Premium - 1x Firewire IEEE-1394 Ports - Intel® Centrino™ Duo Mobile Technology - 3-in-1 Build-in Media Card Reader - Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor - Free Deluxe Carrying Case - Intel? 965 Chipset Intel? Core" 2 Duo Processor - Intel? 4965AGN Wireless 802.11 a/b/g/Draft-n (800Mhz FSB) - NVIDIA® Mobile GeForce™ 8600GT 512MB video T8100 (4MB L2Cache, 2.1GHZ) 51299 - 2GB DDR2-667 Memory T8300 (4MB L2Cache, 2.4GHZ) $1339 - 160 GB SATA Hard Drive T9300 (4MB L2Cache, 2.5GHZ) $1419 - Removable 8x DVD+R/+RW Drive 79500 (4MB L2Cache, 2.66Н2) $1639 3 AR vien AS RA am EREE SHIPPING $1 29 WWW.IBUYPOWER.COM © ЗНЕИРЕРИНА NVIDIA, nForce, SLI are trademarks or registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. THIS TIME THE SECRET AGENT 1S THE GADGET. Secret Agent Clank is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. Developed by High Impact Games. ©2008 Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc “PlayStation,” “PS” Family logo and “PSP” are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Holo-Monocle Look at your enemy and become him. Then mess with his mind. Cuff Link Bombs Every secret agent needs bombs. And linked cuffs. Done and done. Tie-A-Rang 2 Danger lurks at every formal shindig. For that, a razor-equipped boomerang bowtie, naturally. Jet Boots The only thing sneakier / than sneakers аз been wrongfully ailed an о ус Embark on a top-secret intergalactic rescue mission, using state-of-the-art gadgets to overcome challenges in stealth, puzzle-solving and hand-to-hand combat. You'll need to use everything you've got. Literally. Animated Blood 5 Crude Humor n arm Fantasy Violence | Mild Suggestive Themes NE 4 ШИТ Tobacco Reference ESRB PlayStation Portable CONTENTS > issue 231 • august 2008 ч “=. : i ta P Cover Story: | | PF. 3 B ES Don't call it a “Halo killer." Really—don't. The Guerrilla team tells us why their upcoming PS3 shooter stands on its own.... + LETTERS, 28 Sick Play 68 We Love Golf! We kick off our series on gaming's scariest 69 Battlefield: Bad C. subcultures with a look at speed gamers Die Рау 10 If you сап“ say anything nice, write to us 5 йн 70 Civilization Revolution у FRESS START 32 Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Ж i 72 SingStar 14 Where are the Games? Hands-on with the latest from LucasArts 9 We find out if there are really fewer games, 42 MAfterthoughts: Boom Blox 72 Top Зрт 3 or just fewer good ones Mom always said, "Don't play ball in the 73 Haze б д house.” Clearly, these guys weren't listening 22 Foreign Object 3, 74 Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots Stress relief through virtual packaging 44 Guitar Hero: World Tour materials—for real The game that started it all gets a few 78 Supreme Commander more instruments and create-a-rocker 79 Spectral Force 3 24 Legal Lockdown How four famous copyright lawsuits changed 46 Rumor Mill 79 Don King Presents: Prizefighter the gaming industry 80 Ninja Gaiden II 26 Away: Shume Dungeon Д > REVIEWS 84 Final Fantasy IV Our exclusive first look at an upcoming DS role-playing game from Mistwalker, the 66 Reviews Intro 86 Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness makers ot Loe Оу ВУ 68 Final Fantasy Fables: 86 Но? Shots Golf: Open Tee 2 Chocobo's Dungeon 88 Download Roundup B ZIFF DAVIS MEDIA ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY ZIFF DAVIS MEDIA GAME GROUP Senior Editor Scott Sharke B Sorvices Mgr. Editorial Director Copy Chief - Jason Wilson e ipler Ubbelohd ved, Copy Editor A Editor-in-Chief, Videogame: ^ a Art Di е п Production Manager ily Reime Site Director Senior Art Di It's good to rule the world. ead your civilization from the dawn of man to the space age and beyond. Go h head-to-head with history’s greatest leaders / el as you wage war, conduct diplomacy, discover 7 5 new technologies and build the most powerful _ ri empire the world has ever known. Hor 23 Triple your strength by combining three units The best Civ multiplayer ever! Featuring ranked Developed from the ground up by legendary into an army to pulverize your enemies. games, leaderboards and exclusive downloads. game designer Sid Meier. CIVILIZATION ИМ >. REVOLUTION civilizationrevolution.com 4 Alcohol Reference E ж) ХВОХ 360 ди Tobacco Reference NINTENDODS Mild Suggestive Themes © Ён Violence кї РУ ч" =з ТОРІ Т1 07 ГТ 23 s Civilization xis Games, the Firaxis Games logo and i е all trademarks oft group of companies and are N PlayStation atings icon is a trademark of the Enter reserved OPT & Seanbaby’s Rest of the Crap Forgotten gems of the future Retro: The Story of Story How gaming narratives evolved Seek and Enjoy Brain games for summertime blues Top Tchotchkes The 10 oddest pieces of free gaming paraphernalia. Worth every penny! Next Month Done with this mag? Read this page then lay your head on your desk Hsu & Chan The hills are alive with the sound of Helghast. It's the Killzone musical! ZIFF DAVIS MEDIA GAME GROUP PR Mgr. - Nikki Рул Marketing Мог. Dir., Consumer Sales Nat! Dir. of Online Sale ng. and Promotions В Promotions Coordinator VP of Marketing, Research and Events Research C GAMING MONTHLY ENTS ОНТ. ^ THIS MONTH'S EGH EXTRAS EGM.1UP.COM SuperGuides Find the best Metal Gear Solid 4, Ninja Gaiden II, and Battlefield: Bad Company cheats, tips, tricks, and strategies, courtesy of our friends at MyCheats.com. Seek and Enjoy Can’t find all the cleverly hidden games? Check online for the answer key. And check out our podcast on EGMLive.1UP.com and our message boards at boards.1UP.com. Assistant Mgr. Coordinator Ве Director of Ad Operations and в Chief Exec. Officer evelopment, Young Advertising a Senior Technical Analyst Coordinator anie Russe Bi Sea Change stalwart buccaneers like yourself might notice a few subtle transformations taking place, and l'Il take this opportunity to explain them. The first thing you'll notice is that EGM is now covering PC games. My rationale is that it's better to bring you a preview or review of a hot PC game than it is to cover a mediocre console game. Don't worry—PC coverage won't take over the mag, but you will find a page or two devoted to a PC title in every issue. Now, more than ever before, EGM will be your one-stop spot for everything gaming-related. Another new thing you'll notice is the addition of one-man reviews. Ryan Scott, our executive editor of reviews, addresses this in his opening editorial for the Reviews section, but the gist of it is "bigger info on smaller games." A release that gets a one-man review can still be a triple-A game, but in the case of, say, a tactical-role-playing game, you'll be better served by a bigger, more in-depth review than by three tiny reviews with less to express. You may also notice the extra oomph we're putting into our cover designs these days (did you spot the "EGM" etched into the Helghast's rifle on our cover?). These will only improve with each passing month. It's a new era at EGM, and we hope you'll agree that our goal of reinventing the mag into something even greater is slowly but surely taking place before your very eyes. See you next month. —James “Milkman” Mielke, Editor-in-Chief АЛ 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 prohibited. All rights reserved. ALUP a NETWORK "Did you hear who's making the best trades?" At the ultimate video game store, trading season's never over. | You always get the sweetest deals when you trade in your old games for new titles. _ Hit gamecrazy.com for a store near you. ЧЕТ ТЕР * band camps, familiar faces, and quickies This month's EGM question: What's the only non-Killzone game developed by Guerrilla Games? E-mail the answer to EGM@1UP.com (subject head: Trivia: EGM #231) for a chance to win something potentially awesome, For writing this month's LOTM, Kyle gets a copy of Marky Mark: Make My Video...or something else from our dusty old collection. The YouTube-ification of gaming For the past few months, I’ve been playing nothing but Call of Duty 4 and Grand Theft Auto IV. lve had so many “wow” moments in both games, both in single-player and online, and it really sucks | have nothing to show for them but words. The same goes for my friends and, I’m sure, millions of others. | think it’s about time that it becomes expected for great games to include replay features like that one game that came out last fall. [That'd be Halo 3 for those of you who are a little slow on picking up the hint—Ed.] Recording online matches is obvi- ous: Just record recent matches. But in single-player, I’m sure they could record at the very least the last minute of gameplay, so when you do some crazy stuff, you just pause and cycle through it, saving what you want. | mean, who doesn’t want to make a montage of all their encounters with those GTA ladies of the night? —Kyle Richards We were with you right up until that last bit there. That’s just creepy. Shooting Stars of Destiny Suikoden for the PS1 is one of my favorite games of all time. But while | never had the chance to play Suikoden II, there's no way I'm ever going to pay the horrendous amount that copies are selling for on eBay. The only glimmer of hope I’ve ever had was when | heard about Suikoden Гапа II being ported to the PSP, but Гуе heard nothing more than that it’s being ported. | don’t know if it’s going to make it to the U.S., or even if it was ever ported at all. | was hoping you guys could shed some light on the situation for me. Thanks. —Nathan Leinweber Well, we’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that Suikoden 1 & Il was, in fact, released on the PSP, in February of 2006. The bad news is that you need to be able to read Japanese to play it: It was released only in Japan, and last we heard, Konami has no plans to release it elsewhere. Which, if you ask us, is a damn, dirty shame. We 10 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY , EGM.1UP.COM | JE wh ЧИ vec ds BIS, ору item Les Б. ЕЙ [< кя кж [‹ ки ия. | == JA АЖ. ш Yeah, Guitar Hero: World Tour will be exactly like Rock Band. can always hope for a downloadable release on the PlayStation Network, but it's hard to say how likely that is at this point. Battle of the bands Yesterday, | was trying out Guitar Hero Ill's new Muse tracks, and | have to admit that | had a lot of fun. The con- tent was a great choice for the game. Funny that Activision's announcement of Guitar Hero: World Tour shows just points off the back of the Rock Band box? It's one thing to replicate designs from one game and put them into another, but it's a different story when the whole game is replicated. More instruments is not necessarily better; it's just different. Rock Band is fantastic with a friend or three, but | can't recommend it over Guitar Hero for the person who will be playing alone; Rock Band makes compro- mises for the sake of the drummer, the opposite sort of choices. Now, ГЇЇ be reasonable; seeing a feature like song creation is great news. Some band [announcements] are pretty nice. And it even looks as though World Tour may buff the downloadable content features. But these things are minor compared to the real news: more instruments! Will they even photocopy the bullet bassist, and singer. So World Tour will be filled with gui- tar solos that Rock Band can't afford to include for the sake of its four instruments, right? Well...no, appar- ently not. | hope Activision has a lot of confidence in the Guitar Hero name, because it seems the only thing that will be holding their sales up as both Guitar Hero Ill players and Rock My workplace recently hosted a miniature- golf-course design contest. We decided to go with a theme that was truly inspiring: Super Mario Bros. My girlfriend and | spent weeks painting PVC tubes for warp pipes, making cutouts, and putting together a 6-foot castle. We set up a red ball that bounced back and forth between two ball launchers to simulate Bowser's fireball. Everybody loved the course, їн Minus world would Бе appropriate for golf. and we won first place. —March Hom Want to see your own story in this space? All you have to do is tell us how hard-effing- core you are. Dish up the goods on what makes you more into games than anyone else, and send it to EGMG1UP.com, subject head: “I Am Hardcore.” Remember, it doesn't count if you can’t prove it, so send photos, too! ©2008 The Gilletie Company Go ahead. Make yourself more comfortable. Kick back and relax with Gillette's most comfortable shave* Gillette Fusion has five blades spaced closer together to reduce pressure with less irritation than MACH3. gillette.com / " Gille "Among manual razors The Best a Man Can Get™ > OOPS! In last month's Arkanoid DS review, we incorrectly listed the ESRB rating as "DS." It should've said "Everyone." Then again, the DS is for everyone, so we weren't that far off... OK, we were. Band players are turned off. —Andrew “Spud” Jenkins Not so fast there, Spud. Plenty of folks were ready to count Guitar Hero Ш out when Rock Band start- ed making its noise. There’s no rea- son to doubt World Tour’s ability to distinguish itself at this early stage. Separated at birth? Recently, while enjoying a GTA4 gaming session, | decided to take a break and watch a movie. | popped in Behind Enemy Lines, a decent war movie. While watching, | noticed a striking resemblance between a sup- porting character, whose name is only mentioned as Sasha, and main GTA4 protagonist Niko Bellic! The resem- blance is uncanny: clothing, hair, not to mention the exact scar on the left eyebrow! Even gloves! | continued to make comparisons; the front box of GTA4 even has a graphic that is dead- on! Maybe Rockstar created ol’ Nicky in the likeness of renegade Sasha? —Adrian Wardlow Holy crap, you're not kidding! Sasha was even Serbian. That's gotta be entirely intentional. Getting serious In a letter to your magazine (EGM #229, "Hitting home"), a reader contributed his story about how he watched some anime about a widow of an Imperial Japanese Army soldier and felt pangs of guilt for playing Medal of Honor: Rising Sun. | have to question one thing: Does the writer or anyone else feel bad for the widows of the Japanese soldier's German com- patriots? Because the МА during the WWII era committed atrocities on par with their Nazi brethren. Postwar Japan is a very different story, of course, and I’m assuming that's where some of his guilt is com- 12 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM ing from. But a simple bit of research as to why someone was an enemy and why they are portrayed that way would make you seem more educated than naively *enlightened." Then we can all get back to shooting Russian and Chechen guys in the next Tom Clancy game. Although, after reading about the Rape of Nanking, | think Га rather play something more cheerful. --4ау King Ain't war games fun? Maybe your mom can help Memo to [Ninja Gaiden designer Tomonobu] Itagaki: Easier equals larg- er audience equals more money. It's called the game industry for a reason: It'S a business. The original [Xbox] Ninja Gaiden was a great game... except 99 percent of the population couldn't play it. —John Craig Clearly you're just bad at games. Jump around | have had it with uneven difficulty in videogames. I'm so tired of dumping hours into a game just to end up stuck at a ridiculously difficult boss. When this happens, | would just about rather visit the dentist than pick up the con- troller again, but after putting so much time into it, it seems like a waste to quit. Aren't games supposed to be fun? Maybe it's just me, but trying to beat the same damn boss for three hours is about the furthest thing from fun | can think of. My suggestion is for developers to give us the option to skip parts we can't get past. | don't think this will ruin the games at all; it will just give us more options for how we want to play. Movies have a fast-forward but- ton—why can't games? It's almost to the point where | am thinking of giving up gaming altogether. — Shawn Smith What's with all the griping about difficulty this month? Are we becoming a nation of gaming pansies, or what? You, at least, are in luck, Shawn: The new Alone in the Dark is going to feature exactly the kind of system you describe. The game will be broken up into “episodes,” and you'll be able to jump around at will, just as you would on a DVD. Difficult to stomach The sole reason | purchased a PS3 was for Metal Gear Solid 4. Now I’m worried. l've played three games on it already, and for some reason, Call of Duty 4 and GTA4 make me feel sick. Have you guys heard of this? I think it may be the camera somehow giv- ing me motion sickness or something. | was hoping you could tell me how MGS4's camera is. | would hate to ruin a good gaming experience by blowing chunks all over the screen. —James Seeva Well, MGS4 does dispense with the fixed camera of previous MGS games, so there's a chance it will also make you sick. But don't be too worried: Director Hideo Kojima experiences the same difficulties you do! In an interview with 1UP in 2005, he said, “1 have a weakness for 3D sickness, so | wanted to overcome that, but | also wanted to experience, in MGS4, a new 3D camera that doesn't make me sick." We'd recommend a rental before you buy, though, just to be sure. QTE tip Why is it that whenever someone brings up “quick-time events," they act like God of War invented them? Resident Evil 4 had quick-time events, and it came out two months before God of War. —Andrew Brasuell And Shenmue had them five years before God of War, and Dragon's Lair had them 17 years before that. What was your point again? Ask our livers With so many companies deciding not to attend ЕЗ due to the extensive costs and lack of motivation, it seems like E3 and other big media confer- ences will be a thing of the past. Do you guys prefer to attend the big con- ferences or the "gamers' day" events of the individual publishers? — Wayne Roper Oh, each format has its benefits. The food's usually better at gamers" days, for example, but the open bars usually last longer at E3. Oh, yeah—and you see more games at ЕЗ. We like that. rs CONTAC EGM EGM@1UP.com EGM Letters 101 2nd Street, 8th Floor San Francisco, CA 94105 Web: www.zdmcirc.com Phone: (800) 779-1174 ‚чирле? = TIME OF DEATH: 13:09:03 TIME OF DEATH: 13:04:04 те oF деят пой Я пме OF сеять, 150905 TIME DF DERTH: 13:09:10 DID ME OF DEATH: 13:04:11 TIME OF DEATH: 13:04:12 TIME OF DEATH: 13:09:08 o> © TIME OF DEATH: 13:04:13 ^ TIME OF DEATH: 13: E OF DEATH: 13:04:15 Pd TIME OF DE TIME OF DEATH: TIME OF DERTH: 13:04:14: гс... TIME OF ПЕВТН 13:04:17 Wm TIME OF DEATH: „13: йен A vty) 1 ХОС neath: 13: te AES aon Әу, ау ` 2-4 BE CAREFUL WHEN YOU FIGHT THE MONSTERS, LEST YOU BECOME ONE. -FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE TOOVHUMAN Language m ESRB CONTENT RATING — www.esrh.org M XLI итоат а the world * features, previews, caged men, long-winded litigation, and other stuff Even though publish- ers aren't pounding out the big-budget hits as much they used to, we're still seeing some make an impact from time to time. Just look at last year's EGM Game of the Year winner, BioShock—that shooter's been turned into a series. Ч UN > EGH INVESTIGATE: л summer is a time for pool- side parties and skimpy attire. For the rest of us—partying tube-side with plastic guitars and Xbox Live friends, summer is a time of drought, a gam- ing Lent before the holiday feast. But if this summer looks particularly bar- ren to you, you're not alone. We've felt what seems to be a slowing release schedule for months. Looking back over the past two years, the number of games reviewed in the pages of EGM has noticeably dropped off, from 280 games in 2006 to 207 in 2008. Granted, late 2006 saw the release of both the Nintendo Wii 14 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM and the PlayStation 3, whose launch games almost certainly added bulk to that year's offerings. But a drop-off of nearly one-third, even taking into account space constraints in the mag- azine, surely reflects some slowing in the flow of game releases. It's not that simple, though. According to the NPD Group's retail- tracking service, which closely fol- lows game releases and sales, the total number of games released in 2007 (including every version of every multiplatform game for consoles, handhelds, and PC) actually increased from the year before, rising from 1,600 to 1,700 (numbers are rounded—see By Robert Ashley chart). So what accounts for that empty-shelf feeling? We've got a few possible scenarios. The first revolves around the game industry's big-bud- get race to create monster hits. Triple-A? More like triple-$ Admit it: As much as you profess a love for clever game design and artistic expression, you're as wowed by fancy graphics technology as everyone else. Well, it doesn't come cheap. Production costs have risen sharply over the past decade, putting more and more financial pressure on each game released. “А PlayStation 1 game cost less than a million bucks to make," says Michael Pachter, ап ana- lyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities who follows the business of gaming. "|f you made 40 or 50 PS1 games, you'd be OK if 10 or 15 of those didn't work out." In the PlayStation 2 gener- ation, however, the cost of producing a game increased five-fold, to around $5 million on average, according to Pachter. Suddenly, failures made a much bigger impact on a publisher's bottom line, and there were plenty of failures. "There were a lot more mistakes—a lot more True Crime 2s," says Pachter. When developers finally made the switch over to the PS3 and Xbox 360, production costs climbed yet again, and the wiggle room for bombs evaporated. "People learned from the failed PS2 games," says Pachter. “Now they're making bigger bets and spending more time and money on making sure that what they put out is good.” Much of what serious gamers are interested in falls into the category of so-called “triple-A” games, big productions gunning to outdo Halo or Grand Theft Auto—and those games are few and far between. But there have always been appetizer discs—fun, cheap, B-list games to be enjoyed between main courses. The massive amount of money being invested in games at huge publishers like Electronic Arts, Activision, and Ubisoft, however, makes smaller-bud- get filler a less-appealing proposition. “The choice is to go really big and make a few really big bets or to go really small,” says Pachter. “And the problem with going really small is this: If you’re Electronic Arts or Activision, and you want to do $4 billion in rev- enue, you would literally have to make 4,000 games that do $1 million in rev- enue each. They could never manage that, so they end up doing something like 50 or 60 games.” And with so much money invested in so few games, publishers are much more wary of failure, and this greatly contributes to the industry’s current bout of sequelitis. “The risk of failure is greater, so they don’t take risks,” says Pachter. “You can guarantee that there will be a Grand Theft Auto V, VI, VII, and VIII." The fact that so many of this year's most anticipated games are sequels (Killzone 2, Gears of War 2, PAGE К i= [1 Preview: THQ enters the octagon Grand Theft Auto IV) exacerbates that empty-shelf feeling. “You’re just not seeing the same amount of original content as you used to,” says Pachter. It pays to delay From the point of view of publishers and developers, when a competitor makes graphics technology or game- design breakthroughs, it can diminish the impact your games have on the audience. And so a Cold War-style arms race to stay ahead in that com- petition encourages publishers to spend more money and take more time. "Everyone who's making an © Расе PAGE zd = Feature: Preview: Copyright ү catfights J Strong is the Force и Beginning of the end: Big-budget flops Psychonauts and Advent Rising turned publisher Majesco to the casual market. open-world action game knows that everything changed in April when GTA4 shipped, because Rockstar has once again raised the bar," says EA VP of marketing Mike Quigley. *You have to keep up with the Joneses." Quigley stresses, however, that EA is primarily concerned with turning out “доод games." "Skate wasn't built with the idea of, 'Hey, we've got X million dollars, and we want to kick Activision in the teeth, so let's go build a Hawk killer,” says Quigley. “That game was created because Scott Blackwood and a cou- ple of guys on his team just wanted ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM • 15 to make a real, authentic skateboard- ing game." But more emphasis on quality means more delays, pushing those gotta-play games onto the horizon and contributing, once again, to the empty-shelf feeling. EA, in recent months, has delayed Army of Two, Battlefield: Bad Company, Mercenaries 2, and Will Wright's per- petually put-off everything-simulator, Spore. "We have to be fiscally respon- sible," says Quigley. "But when there is a good idea with the right creative team behind it—and | think Spore is а good example of that—we don't shy away from making that investment." Has he noticed any slowing of game releases at EA? “| don't think so," says Quigley. *Our title counts are probably going up, but the diversity of what those titles are is more varied than it's ever been." Which leads us to another scenario: Casual games—quick, fun titles designed for the masses—have grown in popularity in proportion to the success of Nintendo's democratic game box, the Wii, and their always- popular handheld, the DS. Could casual and family-friendly games be filling in the gaps while so-called "hardcore" games, ever more expen- sive and often delayed, land less often on the shelves? Casual hex "Where there has been growth in this business has not been with the hard- core gamer," says Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Lazard Capital Markets. “If you talk to the publishers, where they're seeing meaningful growth in the business is with the expanding demographics." It's not just that the popularity of casual games has grown. The actual boxes of many popular games—like Wii Fit, Guitar Hero, or Rock Band—have expanded, taking up more real estate at shops, and, potentially, pushing unpopular or older hardcore games off the shelves. "Think about it from a retail perspec- tive," says Sebastian. "If you're a Best Buy or a Wal-Mart, you have, > DOWNLOADABLE GAMES TO THE RESCUE While there may be fewer titles on the shelves, online-marketplace services are stocking games you can’t buy in stores. At least one developer has given up on retail for the Wild West of downloadable content. You might know The Behemoth from their hand-drawn, last-gen shooter Alien Hominid. This summer, they'll release their second game, Castle Crashers, on Xbox Live. “The [lack of] profits drove us out of retail,” says producer John Baez. “Getting shelf space is really difficult, unless you're one of the top 10 gam: ital distribution gives small companies a shot at reaching big audiences, no a the sales of a well-to-do disc, a problem Baez wants to fix: "We' essentially, a fixed area available for videogames. If you're dealing with a fixed amount of shelf space, you might have to allocate some shelf space away from the hardcore games and toward the casual." Something Similar is happening with small and midlevel game publishers, who used to be able to afford to compete in the big-production, triple-A game market. Without the deep pockets of larger competitors, these publishers have moved their efforts to the casual- gaming world. Such is the case of Majesco, who've recently had casual success with the Cooking Mama series. "When you look at the strategy of trying to build these big-budget products to compete with Halo and Grand Theft Auto, you're taking shots in the dark," says Majesco CEO Jesse Sutton. "There are companies in our industry that have been able to do that. On the other end, you've got the people who have tried and failed, Majesco being ш Rock Band not only rocked sales charts—its mighty peripheral packaging stole shelf space from other games. 16 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY , EGM.1UP.COM one of those." In 2005, the company ran into serious financial trouble when two big-budget offerings—the criti- cally acclaimed Tim Schafer adventure Psychonauts and the Orson Scott Card-penned sci-fi action title Advent Rising—both bombed in stores. The financial fallout forced the company to cancel all of their high-profile, triple-A gaming projects. “At that point, when things weren't working out and we had this big portfolio of products that were in development already that required significant dough, we had to make a determination," says Sutton. *Do you do what most of our other competitors have done, which is go out and raise a lot more money and just keep trying? Or do you retrench and focus on the mass market?" They chose the latter, turning their focus to family-friendly, broad-appeal fare—the kinds of games that, if you're reading this magazine, you're unlikely to play all that much. Don't despair—going casual isn't necessarily the best way to make a buck. While Majesco has straight- ened out on a diet of soccer-mom DS games, they're not blowing the doors off the bank vault. "They're surviv- ing, but it's not a great business," says Pachter. “Маезсо is going to do maybe $65 million in revenue this year. Activision sold that many units of Guitar Hero last week." For publishers, the serious money's in your wallet—you just might be taking it out less often. Says Pachter: "If you want to make money, you've got to go big." 98 ADVERTISEMENT "Civ" leaders are going places. Napoleon is one of 16 Civilization leaders you can take anyplace with Civilization: Revolution” for the Nintendo DS." LEFT Guess what girls, he’s single! RIGHT Did you know decapitated heads don't float? Limbs do. Briefly. whole new Civilization or nearly two decades, the Sid Meier's Civilization? Fes: has been the benchmark for turn-based strategy games. Now, "Civ" arrives for the Nintendo DS" in the form of Sid Meiers Civilization Revolution", a rewed-up, portable version of the mega-addictive title that many have called, "the world's greatest strategy game." Build an empire from the dawn of man to the space age as you compete against (or ally with] 16 classic civilizations and warlords for world domination. A streamlined time scale delivers faster games and constant action, coupled with an overhauled interface custom designed for portable play. Simple and natural touch screen controls allow you to command massive armies, delegate tasks and build civilizations, all with the use of the stylus and buttons. Multiplayer options abound with support for both local wireless battles and worldwide challenges on the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Grow your empire peacefully with tactful diplomacy and technological innovation, or steamroll other nations with superior weaponry and military might. № game can match Sid Meiers Civilization Revolution for fastpaced, strategic fun and combat action—and now you can conquer the world — anytime, anywhere on your portable Nintendo DS. LEFT Cleopatra hits the local mall. RIGHT Revved-up fime scale and CIVILIz console inter- HY ! face for quicker REVOLUTION зэ SID MEIER'S CIVILIZATION REV@LUTION NINTENDOS, Alcohol Reference men TE 2 . Ў Mild Violence NINTENDE TDS. civilizationrevolution.com FIRAXIS GAMES [ CONTENT RATING —_www.esrh.org © 2005-2008 Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc., and its subsidiaries. Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution, Civ, Civilization, 2K Games, the 2K Games logo, Firaxis Games, the Firaxis Games logo and Take-Two Interactive Software are all trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. Nintendo DS is a trademark of Nintendo, © 2004 Nintendo. The ratings icon is a trademark of the Entertainment Software Association. All other marks and trademarks are properties of their respective owners. All rights reserved. X { ) { | Platforms: PS3/XB360 Publisher: THQ Developer: Yuke's Release Date: Spring 2009 SORRY, ЕА--ТНО is winning the shirtless-videogame-studs fight. Along with the greased-up wrestlers of World Wrestling Entertainment, the macho publisher is now entering the eight-sided cage with an official game based on the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Now's the perfect time to start pounding, too—over the last few years, mixed martial arts has gone from a sleeper pay- per-view sport to a mainstream hit. With ММА popularity currently at its peak, THQ is faced with a huge chal- lenge: knocking out UFC's die-hard fans in its debut match. Talented trainers Just like any up-and-coming fighter will tell you, all of the potential in the world doesn’t mean jack without a tip-top trainer. So while THQ's tout- ing all of the fancy UFC touches for 18 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY * EGM.1UP.COM By Michael D their first game (over 80 fighters, the inclusion of official announcers Mike Goldberg and Joe Rogan, and even some polygon-packed ring girls), it all means squat if the developer can’t hang in the ring. Luckily, the guys at Yuke’s—the company making UFC 2009—are the in-ring veterans of the SmackDown vs. Raw series. Sure, they've perfected sweaty, man-on- man action, but some cynical fans may be wary that Yuke’s will simply borrow the dated SVR engine for UFC 2009. Don't get your spandex in a bunch, naysayers—THQ has told us that Yuke's is building a brand- new engine for the game. Couple that with full motion-capturing and face-scanning from the UFC talent and things should turn out smashing. Especially if it controls well—some- thing THQ hopes Yuke’s will pin down the first time through. “We plan to deliver intuitive controls that satisfy the needs of our brand-new combat system,” says THQ Project Manager William Schmitt. “At the same time, our goal is to make the game a simple, pick- up-and-play experience right from > “We plan to deliver intuitive controls that satisfy the needs of our brand-new combat system.” —THQ Project Manager William Schmitt ан... UFC 2009 is confident about its appearance—all of the major weight classes will appear in the game. the start." We always hear publishers throwing around "pick up and play," but we wonder how it'll translate to the UFC's not-so-simple world of complex choke holds апа technical striking. We have our doubts, but Schmitt explains a scenario easy enough for casual combatants: “To offer an example of how [grappling] might work, take, for instance, an open guard position. From open guard, the fighter on top can throw a punch using a face button, and the fighter on the bottom can catch his opponent’s arm through a specific motion on the right analog stick,” he explains. “At this point, the fighter on top would have the option to use he face buttons or the right analog escape a submission in a couple different ways. In one instance, ould attempt a brute-force >—whi ase of som: LI Е c 2 о a a (cont.) one like Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson, would be attempting to posture up and slam the opponent on his back through a combination of the face buttons and right analog stick.” Of course, this is UFC, so fights don’t always end in such a calculated and predictable manner. “А second option would be to try a technical escape by using the right analog stick exclusively т а more nuanced manner,” says Schmitt. “This would have the fighter trying to roll out of an armbar attempt.” While it’s unlikely that the aver- age UFC fan will know (and, more importantly, care to play) the 80- plus fighters т the game, at least THQ is making sure hardcore fans will get pleasure knowing they can mount almost any man they want. Obviously, the mainstays will enter the octagon (right now, we can confirm Jackson, Forrest Griffin, Chuck Liddell, Anderson Silva, BJ Penn, Matt Hughes, Roger Huerta, Wanderlei Silva, and Michael Bisping), but the fate of past fighters is currently up to the legal judges. Obviously, popular stars who've had past disputes with UFC octagon master Dana White (namely, Randy Couture and Tito Ortiz) have a better chance of sporting spandex in the next SVR than they do in UFC 2009. But that doesn't mean ТНО isn't rul- ing out including some old-school favorites. “We do want to stay true to the UFC brand and provide fans with an extensive number of popular fighters who are active in UFC at the time of the game's release," says Schmitt. “However, we're taking prominent fighters from the past into consideration.” That’s a whole lot of considering—UFC’s been around for 15 years. Sure, we don’t expect the obscure, only-fought-one-match fighters to be in the game, but we'd love to stage a classic brawl between “The World's Most Dangerous Man” Ken Shamrock and Brazilian jiujitsu legend Royce Gracie. But, of course, you can always ditch the pros and construct your own crushing machine from scratch. Like just about every other sports game nowadays, UFC 2009 will feature a create-a-fighter mode to build a competitor to take through the career mode. Remember, UFC isn't too flashy, so if you're expect- ing to whip up a wacky grappler with face makeup and multicolored tassels, ме’ге disappointed to say 20 • ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM. 1UP.COM LAST-ROUNO FICK that no such Ultimate Fighter fighter can be made. “While a brand like WWE lends itself to numerous cos- tume changes,” explains Schmitt, "we've tried to remain true to UFC in our videogame and will only be offering realistic changes that a fan would encounter at a live event.” That also means we won't be seeing any wacky specialty matches made specifically for the game. Remember, UFC is a very serious sport, and it seems that the game won't loosen its grip on reality for the sake of pleas- ing a few videogame nerds. But the content going into UFC 2009 does seem pretty promising, especially if Yuke’s is actually able to craft ап engine that can handle the unpre- dictability of mixed martial arts. And since UFC 2009 isn’t slated until spring of next year, THQ and Yuke's have a ton of time to train their new fighter. Let's just hope that they don't pull a Brock Lesnar and blow their anticipated debut. $h Our hopes for a weight-loss minigame got crushed—expect no exciting weigh-in shenanigans. The remaining official sports licenses waiting to be chosen With THQ set to release an official UFC game, the number of real sports waiting to be turned into videogames is dwindling. But a few (somewhat) exciting sports are still ripe for the picking—here's our list of real games that should be turned into fake videogames. Badminton: First, let’s just get this out of the way: shuttlecock. Ah, much better. But seriously, badminton is a perfect candidate for a videogame because of its highly strategic play. And did we mention the shuttleco—oh, never mind. Women’s National Basketball Association: We're sick and tired of all of the male basketball (| stars hogging all of the videogame glory. Don't tell me 4 that you wouldn't want to do a fly layup with, um, that hot chick from the Dallas team. Wait, does Dallas even have a team? Hold on, checking—nope, they don’t. Our bad. Horseshoes: We can’t think of a game more perfect for the Wii. Well, if you exclude tennis, bowling, and curling. But horseshoes just sounds like so much fun. Think about it: You pitch a horseshoe on a pole. Then you—well, that’s about it. Actually, this sounds like a terrible idea. Trampoline: Bouncing up and uuum 523 DA. down is fun, but it's not nearly < as joyful as watching a polygonal trampolinist. Put in some Tony Hawk- like combos and you have an immedi- ate sports success. We've even got a spiffy one-word title for it: Tramp. Turtle racing: The flood of street, off-road, and kart racing on the - market paves the way for a different kind of relay competition: turtle racing. Have you ever witnessed a turtle power his. way through à neck-and-neck heat, only to make the climatic finish? Neither have Й we, but we bet it'd be pretty sweet. > FAR-OUT РАНЕ Buff Blockbuster: Most puzzle games flex just your mental mus- cles, but design pro Tom Gerhardt pieced together - an over-the-top version of Tetris that will also kick your азз— ег, arms. Gerhardt's force- ful creation, "Tresling," combines the caveman thrills of arm wrestling with block-controlling button pressing. We caught up with Gerhardt to see what the future holds for his masterpiece. EGM: How many viewings of the Sylvester Stallone classic Over the Top did it take to inspire Tresling? Tom Gerhardt: Zero, but it took about 30 references. EGM: Speaking of Over the Top, do you plan to hold a Tresling tournament where the victor wins an orphan? TG: [Laughs] Мо, but if | had any orphans to give away, that would defi- nitely happen. We have had a tourna- ment so far, and the only thing that was reminiscent of Over the Top was probably a bunch of backward-turned hats. Yeah, no orphans, sadly. EGM: So, do you need bulging biceps in order to win? TG: One of our tournament finalists was a very skinny girl—by outwitting people, she got up there. So you can be either a testosterone-pumping male or a small-but-crafty individual. EGM: The Olympics are coming up—any plans to campaign for an official Tresling event? TG: [Laughs] You know, it should be an event. | don't know how many kinds of brains-and-brawn events there are in the Olympics. Plus, every- one loves Tetris. And | think more people could love arm wrestling. Battle of the blocks. 22 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY * EGM.1UP.COM Mugen FUCHIFUCHI Pop goes the WiiWare e GETTING CAUGHT WITH WEED сал СЕТ YOUKICKED | ЫГ ши SOCCER | N | 2 ‚ WEED EST 50 соб. WHEW YOUR BABY . BROTHER Fin 4 you HIGH, «а a шоэ”ээцэр| fulayyenogn 49 SLOWS 381 Wy 129 том ‘JY i'saamsuu abovetheinfluence > БЕТЕП! Legal Lock Dir Great moments in videogame lawsuits The court of public opinion isn’t the only place where game companies have to plead their cases. Here’s a quick guide to some of the landmark court battles that prove it isn’t a good idea to copy. We enlisted Steve Chang, attorney with the intellectual-property law firm of Banner & Witcoff, Ltd., as our tour guide and expert witness. | 27 24 ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY e EGM.1UP.COM ^ Ld 2 p 5 м - THE GHOSTS OF LAWSUITS FAST Two-bit trouble Atari tarred Plaintiff: Atari (and Nintendo) Defendant: Nintendo (and Atari) The case: Atari may have conquered videogaming's Wild West, but when Nintendo started sucking all of the money out of the market, Atari started fighting dirty. Atari (through its subsidiary Tengen) sold plenty of games for the Nintendo Entertainment System but got tired of paying Nintendo for the privilege of being a third-party publisher. Instead of signing up for Nintendo's on-chip 10NES copy-protection scheme, they reverse- engineered it, peeling back the layers of the Nintendo chips with chemicals and a microscope. When that didn't work, they fell back on the hacker's most proven tool: social engineering. They sent someone to the United States Copyright Office and conned the bureaucrats into handing over Nintendo's source code. Nintendo called foul, and dueling lawsuits, appeals, injunctions, and motions to dismiss rippled through the California legal system for years. Atari got its hand slapped, and ultimately the lawsuits ended in settlements. Chang's opinion: "The Digital Millennium Copyright Act now has spe- cial provisions for circumventing copy-protection schemes. This is an early example of why that's important." Our verdict: Crime doesn't pay, even in videogames. Ping (Pong) Plaintiff: Magnavox Defendants: Everyone else The case: No matter what history books might say, Nolan Bushnell and his boys at Atari weren't the only fathers of the game industry. He didn't even invent Pong. In 1967, Sanders Associates took a sidestep from their normal gig as a defense contractor and let engineer Ralph Baer muck around with vacuum tubes to get a blip bouncing between a pair of paddles on a color television. Sanders eventually licensed this tech- nology to Magnavox, who put this proto-Pong into the Odyssey, the first home videogame console, in 1972. Months later, Bushnell found- ed Atari and released Pong, the quarter-sucking blip-chaser that lives in our collective unconscious as "the first videogame." Magnavox and Sanders were not amused. They sued Atari (and Bally Midway, Coleco, Activision, and Mattel). Everyone settled except Mattel, who fought hard and lost. Baer would go on to design Milton Bradley's biggest electronic-game hit, Simon (now available as a key chain at a dollar store near you). Chang's opinion: "Judges have recognized that these are the pio- neering cases in the videogame field. Right at the very beginning of the industry, there's this seminal set of patents that are really key." Our verdict: We're glad defense contractors got out of the business. Oh, wait. America's Army. Alternate verdict: In the long run, Atari and Bushnell still won, prov- ing that sometimes it pays to just take your lumps and move on. THE MODERN СЕКОЕ OF LAWSUITS Your moneymaker shakes Spandex swipe Plaintiff: Marvel Defendant: NCSoft The case: When it launched in April 2004, NCSoft’s PC massively multiplayer role-playing game City of Heroes gar- nered an A from 1UP.com. The flexibility of the character-creation system was (and remains) one of the things we dug the most. Trying to coax Bart Simpson out of the City of Heroes paint box and then putting an actu- al red target on his back was almost more fun than the game proper. Six months later, Marvel sued, arguing that the game’s character- creation system not only made it possible to re-create Wolverine or the Incredible Hulk but actually encouraged players to do so. It turned out, however, that the biggest in-game City of Heroes infringers were actually Marvel’s attorneys. NCSoft, after settling out of court a year later, described the settlement this way: “This case was never about monetary issues.... The fans of their respective products and charac- ters are the winners.” Chang's opinion: “The simple fact that some bad guy can use a tool and improperly copy someone's copyrighted character, that's beyond [anyone's] control." Our verdict: We're still sad that City of Heroes isn't rated M. Let's get ready to... Plaintiff: Immersion (and Microsoft) Defendant: Sony (and Immersion) The case: Since 2001, haptic-tech company Immersion has held a patent on a "tactile feedback man- machine interface device" featuring "one or more vibrotactile units." Despite the teledildonic implications, this turns out to be what's in your vibrat- ing game controller. In 2002, Immersion sued Sony and Microsoft for implementing said vibrotactile units in their PS2 and Xbox interfaces. Microsoft settled in a hurry, writing a big check and buying 10 percent of Immersion in the process, with hooks to get their money back when Sony finally settled. Sony stuck it out, fighting all the way through the launch of the PS3—when it pulled vibration functional- ity from the Sixaxis controller, claiming it would interfere with the still-not-a-Wii motion-control functions. Sony lost, and after a lengthy appeals process, the two companies finally “concluded their litigation" last March. Microsoft is now suing Immersion for their refund. Chang's opinion: *This one changed the market. It's an example of how the videogame industry has matured." Our verdict: Let us know when you're done. We'll be playing Rez HD until we go numb in our, um, toes. $ SPECIAL WF MENTION The Romantics vs. Activision This few-hit wonder sued the Guitar Hero maker because the game’s cover band sounded too good. The judge dismissed the case. No one cared. $h ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM • 25 luuHlz $5344 Platform: DS Publisher: Majesco Developer: Mistwalker/Artoon Release Date: January 2009 THE NINTENDO DS LIBRARY looks pretty crowded of late, but it still comes as a surprise to see dungeon role-playing games taking part in that growth, especially when most gamers would consider them from а dead genre. From Etrian Odyssey to Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer, Nintendo’s handheld is quite the source of moderately sized quests that are light on story and heavy on action. Developer Mistwalker—who you know from the Xbox 360 epics Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey—stands ready to be the next to join the crowd. Aided by developer Artoon and U.S. publisher Majesco, Away: Shuffle Dungeon gives gamers a different kind of challenge in the hack-n-slash RPG universe. The name “Away” comes from the game’s mythology: It’s the name 26 + ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM. 1UP.COM У РАЕМТЕЦ: FIRST LOOK ANO HANDS-ON AA: Shuffle Dungeon A dungeon crawler that pulls the rug out of the phenomenon plaguing quiet Webb Village, where a mysterious force takes away a resident every hundred years. You play as Sword, a young man new to the hamlet who happens to be the sole survivor when the Away returns one day and takes everybody in the village— including Sword’s girl, Anella. Oh, and the force opens a portal to a strange underground dungeon where the floor periodically moves. At its end, Sword finds the village chief. He must then find more portals to rescue the remaining villagers and help them rebuild by finding a spot to put back their houses or shops, but more on that later. With ultracolorful graphics—2D in the dungeons and 3D in the village— plus some purposefully blocky, but no less cute, character designs from Naoto Oshima (the head of Artoon and original designer of Sonic the Hedgehog), Away has a look that’s strongly evocative of the Legend of Zelda series, or at the least the better RPGs of the 16-bit generation. It even has some light voice acting, though outside of full-motion-video cut-scenes, the character voices are limited to one- or two-word exclamations—usually of each other's names. The best news is that Away isn't as draconian as other dungeon The best news is that Away isn’t as draconian as other dungeon RPGs. RPGs, but its big wrinkle provides a fair bit of challenge. The “shuffle dungeons" aren't randomly determined maps—rather, the parts of the dungeon that you see on the top and bottom screens of the DS "shuffle" into new maze formations via a countdown timer. Each cycle, you have to make it to the safe, nonshuffling side before you're literally, ahem, lost in the shuffle and severely hurt. After a few shuffles, the exit to the next floor appears, and you rush there to advance. Even though the game provides multiple indicators of an oncoming shuffle—the beeping timer, the flashing screen border— you still run the risk of getting caught due to obstacles like boulders and fireball-spitting turrets. It can be frustrating, but at least you can retry as often as you like. And you won't always be alone in your quest, either. Sword comes upon a race of cute, blobby little creatures he calls “fupongs,” which he can recruit to trail behind him when he's underground. They соте in dífferent elemental types and can shoot beams of fire and ice, for example, in order to hit enemies from afar or knock out other obstacles. Fupongs get worn out once you use them, but they continue to follow Sword until they recharge, and they can eventually grow into larger, longer-lasting creatures. Several fupongs can follow Sword at once, but you risk losing them in shuffles, even when Sword himself makes it to safety—that’s why it’s important to be quick on your feet. While the central goal of Away involves the rebuilding of the village, there’s an important (if ridiculously Practically every villager you rescue has a service to offer, like Giggles and her fortune-telling. simple) simulation aspect. Like in Animal Crossing, the entire village subscribes to feng shui. As a result, placing buildings of the right colors and in the right locations can alter their rate of growth, which leads to the merchants offering better items that come up for sale sooner than they otherwise would. And yet, these stores only grow when you give them special dungeon-only items that kick-start the upgrade process. It’s clear that Away already stands out among a glut of similar dungeon crawlers, and this additional interaction between adventuring and building only solidifies that separation. The only bad news: Although we've seen a nearly complete English-language version of Away, don’t expect to see it soon, as Majesco plans on releasing it at the start of 2009. 4% ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM • 27 SICK FLAY Speed FRE Our m Remember our Take This Job series? Welcome to its replacement. Each issue, we'll look at hardcore players who go above and beyond the call of gaming. YOU MAY BE FAMOUS for your Donkey Kong world records, Billy Mitchell (see the excellent now-on- DVD documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters for his story), but the two-and-a-half hours you took to complete the game would leave a different breed of competi- tive gamers in agony. Welcome to 28 • ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • ЕОМЛОР,СОМ Р 30 420 10 hly look at gaming’s scariest subcult the clock-watching, points-be- damned world of videogame speed runners, where the top slots belong to the folks who can take a game from title screen to end credits—or any particular segment in between— in less time than most players spend | \40 50 60 Їл 7 8 toppling the first boss. These hot- shots go through years of planning and practice to shave off every last bit of extraneous game time, often edging out the competition Бу mere seconds. Worthy of a Hollywood documentary? Maybe not. But watch runners like Besmir “Zoid” Sheqi tear flawlessly through Metroid Prime in barely over an hour, and you'll wonder what the big deal is about Donkey Kong anyway. Fast cash Speed running has an obscure but active community that’s been giving Web-trolling gamers something to marvel at for years. Hop on YouTube and search for most any game, and you'll typically find at least one video of someone busting through it like there's money involved. And as it turns out, there is. At the unof- ficial hub of speed running, Speed Demos Archive (speeddemosarchive. com—call it SDA when mingling with the locals), curious benefactors offer cash “bounties” for speed runs of select games. “Bounties are offered for a variety of reasons,” explains Tom Votava, who holds more than a hundred high-score records on com- petitive-gaming tracking site twingal- axies.com and can still plow through The Legend of Zelda faster than most folks can cook a frozen pizza, “but it usually comes down to an individual wanting to see an achieve- ment badly enough to pay for it. | offered a bounty for Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts, and one member submit- ted a beautiful run. He didn’t take a single hit. It was definitely worth the price of admission.” Others post bounties as a chal- lenge to the competition to try and topple a record-holding run. For example, if you think that you can zip through Sonic the Hedgehog 2’s Emerald Hill Act 1 in less than 18 seconds, it’s worth $75 of veteran speed runner Joe Stanski’s money. The tricky part is that like most speed runners, Stanski has played READY TO the holy crap out of his choice games. If 18 seconds is the best that he can do, chances are that record's not going anywhere. “There was about a two-month stretch where | played Sonic 2 every day for at least two hours a day,” Stanski recalls. “You have to have a lot of patience; | spent two hours today speed run- ning Chemical Plant Zone 1 [in Sonic 2] and never got past eight seconds into the level." Live fast But the speed-running community isn't just about nominal cash prizes. Together with the record-keeping site archive.org and series-specific gaming sites like highspeedhalo.net and metroid2002.com (guess what they cover), SDA hosts hundreds of videos made by the site’s regulars. They also offer forums for folks to compare notes and post personal speed-running achievements as well as employ a handful of moderators who verify run authentication and establish rules for the 4,600-odd members. “The three basic speed- run categories are ‘any percent,’ as fast as possible; ‘100 percent,’ all items collected; and ‘low percent,’ complete the game while collect- ing as few items as possible,” says SDA moderator Mike Uyama. Uyama explains that runs are sometimes filtered further according to tech- niques used by the authors, such as “death abuse” (using frequent deaths to save time) and “save warping,” which takes advantage of some games’ policy of respawning at a predictable location and can serve as a time-saving transporter when dealing with a large map (see any Legend of Zelda run for an example). Regardless of the type of run, perfecting a speed pass through any game takes tons of perseverance and practice time. “The most impor- tant skill is dedication,” Votava says. “Playing a game at this level of skill requires hundreds, if not thousands, of practice runs. One has to be will- ing to spend several weeks/months on only one game, which is difficult to do without losing interest.” If you’re feeling up to the chal- lenge, have a look at Votava’s strat- egy in the sidebar and visit the SDA forums for tips on getting started. "You have to have a creative mind to be able to come up with routes, glitches, and shortcuts the pro- grammers did not intend," Stanski explains. “Most people don’t have the patience or skill to produce runs good enough to be up there with the great runs out there, just like it used to be that most people had no chance to ever touch arcade high scores.” But hey, if everyone did, nobody would pay to see a movie about it. $h > "Most people don't have the patience or skill to produce runs good enough to be up there with the great runs.” —Speed runner Joe Stanski TRY THIS AT HOME? Seasoned speed runner Tom Votava outlines the steps for success Pick a game “This can actually be difficult. It has to be something | have a lot of interest in at the moment, so | usually end up speed running a game after recently playing through it for fun.” Do the research “I look up the game оп every gaming resource | can find and read up on all known secrets, tricks, and shortcuts. | then spend as much time as it takes to try them out and see what works.” Plan your route “| now have a little ‘bag of tricks’ ready and have to figure out what combination of them will yield the fastest time. Deciding which items should and should not be collected can be a large part of this." Do the run *This comes down to repeti- tion. The run.will usually not go very well at all during the first few tries, but it comes together with time. For me, the key is to limit the number of attempts in a single day, as | find that | do progres- sively worse if | go for long stretches without a break.” Learn to adapt “In trying to execute the plan, it's likely that PII find a new trick that | didn't know about during the planning phase. This sometimes requires me to go back into planning mode for a while and make а revised route based on the new information.” Do it again “Once | successfully beat the game using my plan...l do it again! | find that the second and third times are significant improvements over the first. | can usually watch my video and calculate the amount of time spent on mistakes—if | feel that | can do better still, | try it again.” The Four Most Mind-blowing Runs See videos of these speed runs at speed- demosarchive.com. 4) Super Mario Bros. (NES) By Andrew Gardikis This is thought to be a perfect run through the game that everyone's played a million times. Somebody wanna try and break the four- minute barrier? 3) Beavis and Butthead (Genesis) By Adrian Feiertag ^ Еда We're just impressed that somebody had the patience and level of crap toler- ance to speed run this game. 2) Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Genesis) By Joe Stanski The best part about this run is watch- ing Sonic sidekick Tails trying—and failing—to keep up with Stanski through every single level. 1) Metroid Prime (GC) Ву Besmir Ѕһеді і EES s" 4 LM з ч This video made us want to give up gam- ing. Anyone who's ever tried to pull off one single chain of those annoying bomb jumps will weep watching Sheqi doing it repeatedly on command. Check out the sick targeting with Samus’ scanner and weapons, too. ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY * EGM.1UP.COM * 29 > РС LONDON Computer Gaming World So here's something you may not know! You see that machine on your desk? The one you use for e-mailing and chatting and looking at pictures of buxom wenches? Well, guess what? That machine, which those of us in the business like to call a *computer," also plays games! Really! No joke! And we don't just mean Solitaire and Minesweeper, either! Or maybe you already have five level 70 Shadow Priests and don't need our condescending attitude. Whether you're a hardcore PC gamer, a lapsed PC gamer, an in-the-closet PC gamer, or a yet-to-be-initiated virgin PC gamer, this column is where one humble, yet strikingly attractive, editor will interrupt your regularly scheduled console-gaming articles to shine a light on that big, wacky box and all of its glorious games for your edutainment pleasure. The one thing I’m not going to do, though, is defend the platform. Because it doesn't need defending. And because at this point in time, only nimrods get territorial and judgmental about gaming platforms. So don't be a nimrod. If you keep your mind open, you can find fun games to play on every platform. Heck, | bet even the Gizmondo had one or two games that didn't completely blow chunks. (Though, sadly, the Gizmondo-exclu- sive Mamma Can 1 Mow the Lawn, a game that endlessly intrigued me at the time—because, like, what kid would ever ask if he could mow the lawn?—was never released. No won- der the system failed.) Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that there's a time and place and gaming platform for everything. And certain types of games, like the real-time strategy titles discussed on these two pages, still function best (for now, at least) on the PC. OK, so maybe StarCraft Il won't be as epic as Mamma Can | Mow the Lawn. But, then again, what is? 1UP PC Editor-in-Chief Jeff Green will try to answer that troubling question that has tortured generations of philosophers in this column next month. If you know the answer, e-mail him at so he can take credit. 30 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY , EGM.1UP.COI Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II PC * THQ • 2009 Key strengths: "A lack of long-term goals drives me f***in' Ба{5***,” Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War !! Producer Mark Noseworthy says, shak- ing his head. How does a developer address the poor sense of persistence, inadequate reward systems, and the resulting shortage of attachment and accomplishment endemic to RTS games? Look to addictive RPGs to convince gamers that their time translates to material gain, however immaterial an unlockable cannon actually is. And so DOW2 abandons base-building, along with the need to assemble a new army from the ground up before each battle. You command the same five squads along with assorted Dreadnoughts and other tactical units—each with a leader that Noseworthy claims “has a name and face." In turn, campaigning from planet to planet opens up War Gear perks—chainswords, flamethrowers, warhammers, and personalized power armor. Potential weak points: StarCraft Il. DOW2 is almost another genre (i.e., real-time tactics), but Blizzard's titan will still siphon all of the attention. BattleForge PC • Electronic Arts * Holiday 2008 Key strengths: Combining traditional RTS combat with Magic: The Gathering-style cards may sound gimmicky. But BattleForge may solve the perennial RTS problem of “if you built the wrong stuff at the beginning, you’re screwed at the end.” When you play a card, you summon the unit or spell instantly, so you can immediately trump an enemy’s paper with your scis- sors—and hope they’re not hiding a rock up their sleeves. Potential weak points: EA plans on charging real money for virtual booster packs. The trick for developer Phenomic is to ensure players who don’t want to spring for boosters can hold their own—a death-defying balancing act of stats versus skill. StarCraft II PC • Blizzard • TBD Key strengths: Do we have to say this out loud? It's StarCraft Il, people. The sequel to the most popular RTS ever made. Ten years since its release, the original StarCraft still has millions of fans, thanks to perfectly balanced gameplay that most other RTSes still haven't figured out how to beat. Now the sequel is approaching at last, and it's looking every bit like the worthy successor, with a huge graphical facelift (of course) and, more impor- tantly, big, creative, exciting changes to all three races that will fundamentally alter the way you play while still feeling totally “StarCrafty.” The biggest PC game of the year—whichever year it comes out. Potential weak points: Well, it does have a lot to live up to. And while some folks—especially the überelite StarCraft players—may balk at all the changes, others may feel that there aren't enough changes. With no obvi- ous huge bullet points (like a new race) for players to get excited about, some may feel like, "We waited 10 years for this?" (Note, however, that underestimating Blizzard is always a loser's game.) High hopes ride on the campaign, too, which we still know next to nothing about—including whether Blizzard thought of co-op play. Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 PC (also coming: PS3/XB360) * Electronic Arts * Holiday 2008 Key strengths: A kitschy hodgepodge of glasnost, time travel, killer dolphins, and psychic schoolgirls, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 revels in its own absurdity. EALA's track record is sound (this is the developer that did Command & Conquer 3 and The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth), the game's campaign can be played cooperatively, and we like that it's heavily integrating naval warfare. Units have amphibious versions, and bases can be built at sea—or relocated there if the land war isn't going your way. Potential weak points: The Red Alert series is cut from old-school cloth, and from what we've seen, this third installment seems to innovate incrementally. Full- motion-video cut-scenes are key to “kitsch,” but what if the high camp wears out its welcome? Or, god forbid, what if it's not campy enough? 4% > PREVIEW: HANDS-ON =TAR WAR: The Force Unleashed Of hokey religions and ancient weapons IN THE STAR WARS FILMS, a сот- mon theme is certain characters failing to realize, not comprehending, or oth- erwise underestimating the so-called power of the mystical (turned scientif- ic—thanks, midi-chlorians) Force. But. other than some simple mind control and being able to jump really high, the most impressive display of the Force as portrayed in the films is either Emperor Palpatine sticking Luke in the deep fryer for 30 seconds or Yoda lift- ing a starfighter out of a swamp. Big deal. Never one to shy away from a Star Wars-related side project, George Lucas gave LucasArts the green light to explore a certain idea a little further in The Force Unleashed. The concept? "No, seriously: You're underestimating the power of the Force." Like Shadows of the Empire (N64) before it, The Force Unleashed is canonized as official, Lucas-approved Star Wars fiction. The traditional opening yellow crawl reveals that the events of the game occur in the gap between Episode !!! and Episode IV, bridging the events of the new and old trilogies. Darth Vader is getting adjust- ed to his new life as part-machine when he happens upon a young boy with great attunement to the Force. This yet-to-be-named prodigy (who's also appearing in both versions of Soulcalibur IV as a playable character) is taken as Vader's secret apprentice, who he hopes to use to overthrow the Emperor and resolve some lingering relationship issues. The game opens on the Wookiee homeworld of Kashyyyk, with a play- able Vader on a mission where he finds the young boy. This serves as a training ground for getting familiar with the Force powers and the styles of play you can choose. When confront- ed by an enemy, a variety of results can occur. You can use a lightsaber for up-close melee combat, blaster deflection, or to throw at enemies (it You can yank a ship off its mooring and send it careening through the hangar—and then do it a few more times for laughs. м Lightsabers can be custom- ized for color and abilities. Platforms: PS3/XB360 (also coming: Wii/PS2/PSP/DS) Publisher: LucasArts Developer: LucasArts Release Date: September 2008 ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY , EGM.1UP.COM , 33 returns like a boomerang). You can bust out Force chokeholds to immobi- lize individual foes or bowl over larger groups with a Force push (a move that can then be used to blow open large doors). If you're not feeling any of those methods, you can use teleki- nesis to grab objects and then throw them into explosive devices, off of bridges, or into airlocks (the concept will be familiar to anyone who played the overlooked Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy and Second Sight from gaming's last generation). The Force is seriously strong But these are mostly moves we've seen Vader, Yoda, Luke, and the Emperor pull off in the movies. The difference in the game is the scale: One of the apprentice's first missions finds him running through a cavern- ous TIE fighter hangar. The natural temptation is to try to use your grab power on one of the TIEs and launch it into an unsuspecting squad of stor- 34 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY , EGM.1UP.COM mtroopers. And, thankfully, that urge is rewarded by the ability to actually do it: You can yank a ship off its moor- ing and send it careening through the hangar—and then do it a few more times for laughs. The game is not stingy with this showy ability: You earn it early. You can level up each of the Force pow- ers while also learning new pas- Sive abilities that further enhance the apprentice's combat skills. The dreaded Force Lightning makes an appearance and can be modified to charge throwable objects as make- shift energy grenades, surge through multiple enemies as a chained attack, or serve as a powerful defensive shield. Abilities such as Fortitude and Saber Mastery increase your health and lightsaber damage, and on top of everything related to combat, a style- based combo system grants points depending on certain combinations of Force powers and melee attacks. The result is something we're see- ш Don't believe your eyes: This Greedo is not shooting first. ing more of in games: a linear push through a series of encounters that can be approached and resolved in an open manner. The player is encouraged to experiment with tacti- cal combinations and might naturally gravitate toward one or two preferred methods (the "grab and toss" is par- ticularly stimulating). The key in such a design is to change up the objectives and enemy variety so that those pre- ferred moves aren't used as crutch- es—because what fun would it be to just Force push your way through the entire game? From what's been shown so far, LucasArts seems to have a handle on this. Even the basic stormtrooper-level units are armed with various weapons, and when dif- ferent Wookiee soldiers and rancor monsters are thrown into the mix, a balanced approach is required. The developers also seem to have a grasp on the cinematic feel of the game, which is somewhat necessary given its official capacity as the bridge between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. The developers employed body and facial motion capturing to record actors' performances for the cut-scenes, the soundtrack features iginal music performed by the San Francisco Symphony recorded at Skywalker Ranch, and a decent James Earl Jones soundalike voices Vader. It's even movielike in its boss- battle presentation, with camera changes to more dramatic angles and a timed button-pressing event at the conclusion of the fight (which only occurs after the battle has been won, preventing unexpected deaths) that plays out choreographed finishing moves. Like most Star Wars works, The Force Unleashed mixes new loca- tions and characters with the familiar: the Wookiee tribes on Kashyyyk, wrecked Star Destroyers, a strange organic planet called Felucia II (which you'll later revisit in a different state), and though LucasArts wouldn't con- firm it, any story set in this time period that involves Vader must also involve the construction of the first Death Star—we fully expect some epic fights to occur there. In fact, it appears that we're being set up for many epic moments. The very first trailer for The Force Unleashed showed Vader's unnamed apprentice effortlessly bringing down a Star Destroyer with his hands and then stopping its tremendous crashing momentum at his feet. To allude to acts like that and not deliver them in the game would be incredibly disap- pointing. Not that we're expecting to be able to lock on to the Super Star Destroyer Executor with the right trig- ger and swing it around like a really, really expensive paper airplane (it's more likely that we'll see that scene play out in a button-pressing event), but for all of Palpatine's huffing and puffing about the dark side of the Force, it's time to put up or shut up. Or we'll go hang out on Dagobah with Yoda and that X-wing. № You'll have to adjust to enemies" advantages, like jetpacks. " COMBINED EFFORT m" The Force is all around us LucasArts’ multiplat- E i form approach for The rj Force Unleashed is -i intriguing. Given that each of the current viable platforms has its own strengths and peculiarities, each ver- sion of the game—Wii (shown above), PS3, XB360, PS2, PSP, and DS—mostly features different content while following the same plotline. The PS3 and 360 versions (on which this preview is based) are the same, even visu- ally, and serve as the core, high-def experience; the PS2 version includes optional "Jedi Trials," which are various tests of skill in the Jedi Academy on Coruscant; the DS version has a surprisingly effective combo system based on sliding the stylus across the touch screen in various patterns; the PSP version includes “historical missions” like the classic Vader-versus-Luke Cloud City showdown as well as a multiplayer Duel mode; and the Wii version includes a different Duel mode and has motion control for lightsabers and Force pushes. GM.1UP.COM , 35 2 > PLAYING POLITICS Show Business For years, you likely read about the old Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles and yearned to attend, play prerelease games, party with other gamers, and revel in all things interactive entertainment. | can tell you firsthand that despite the downsizing of E3, those opportunities remain and that you need not travel far—or spend a fortune—to enjoy them. The best bang for your buck may well be to wait for a concert called Video Games Live to come to your area. Run by industry veterans Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall, the concert celebrates the important role of music in games, blending a live-action show with a full orchestra, projected game imagery, and a pre- and postshow meet-and- greet. Tallarico plays host while Wall conducts the orchestra. Seeing the sea of DS Lites in an auditorium is worth the price of admission alone. Penny Arcade Expo (PAX), held the last weekend in August each year in Seattle, is now indisputably the largest gaming-focused consumer show. PAX creators Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik have remained true to their mission, growing the event in a controlled and measured way. The mood and passion of the attendees is contagious—and you'll find yourself smiling while exploring booths, exhib- its, concerts, and panel discussions all tailor-made for hardcore gamers. Additional shows include Comic- Con International in San Diego, Gen Con in Indianapolis, and DigitalLife in NYC. While not game-specific, these expos tend to attract leading publish- ers and gamers; if interested, you should definitely check out each of their respective websites to get a bet- ter feel for the mix of attending com- panies. The tone is very different from event to event, so I'd recommend as much research as possible—to match your budget with your hopes and expectations. For a listing of all game- related events, check out theeca.com and click on the “Games Shows & Conferences” subforum. Hal Halpin is founder of the Entertainment Consumers Association, a nonprofit organization dedicated to watchdogging gaming legislation. Join its cause at 3 36 • ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM Resistance 2 PS3 * Sony CEA * Fall 2008 With dedicated servers hosting 40-player games from data centers, the first Resistance brought large-scale online-shooter action to the console world. Jumping the player count up to 60 for the sequel sounds almost out of control—even developer Insomniac admits battles that size can get chaotic. They also claim to have some answers for that: huge maps—sev- eral times the size of what you've seen before—and a squad system that keeps the fighting controlled to more intimate firefights. Of course, every so often they plan to bring everyone together for a massive battle, too. After all, what's the point of having all those players if the war doesn't get messy once in a while? LittleBigPlanet PS3 • Sony CEA * Fall 2008 After the initial excitement over its poten- tial, LittleBigPlanet’s build-your-own- game-with-burlap-sack-puppets approach left many wondering if it might feel a bit too much like work. But any concerns on that front disappeared recently when we got an extended chance to fool around with the game. If anything, the challenge will be to stay on task once you start to build something. Not only are the DIY tools very easy to use, but they also spawn new ideas as you browse through them. If you bring a couple of other designers/players into the level, you'll likely wind up with levels far more fantasti- cal than you originally planned. Fable II XB360 * Microsoft • Fall 2008 Fable creator Peter Molyneux dreams big when designing games. At a recent press event, he explained that in Fable //, he wants to tell а story you remember—and he's intentionally borrowing his favorite bits from other tales to do that. But building a story also puts him in a bit of a predicament, because Fable Il is a “role-playing game set in a simulated world," as he puts it. As part of that, he wants players to feel free to affect his story. His solution: giving you the option to fool around during cut-scenes—to the point of even killing the characters doing the talking. How the story holds together through it all will be interesting to see. digitallife in New York City September 25 - 28, 2008 Jacob K. Javits Convention Center | New York, New York WC n рээ” — а digitallite the ultimate consumer technology, gaming & entertainment event learn it hear it try it play it rock it live it (BJ (Cv (6/6 (ly (&) September 25 - 28, 2008 | Jacob К. Javits Convention Center | New York, New York Exhibitors: do you want to reach 3,500 press & retailers and 50,000 passionate consumers? Contact DigitalLife at (866) 761-7303 or e-mail info@digitallife.com to reserve your space today! The Lord of the Rings: CONQUEST Middle-earth: Battlefront's new conquest By Alice Liang 38 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM Platform: Wii Publisher: Telltale Developer: Telltale Release Date: Summer 2008 Strong Bad bel- lows, freshly awakened from another night of Super Punch-Out!!-riddled dreams, "'cause you can't—no, you can't—handle my style!" HomestarRunner.com's gravelly voiced, lucha libre-masked, boxing- gloved wise guy hardly needs an intro- duction. Since 2001, he's starred in his very own episodic Flash cartoon, answering oddball audience questions about himself and the quirky world that he and his surreal neighbors inhabit. And now he brings his act to an episodic point-and-click adventure for Nintendo's WiiWare platform, cour- tesy of the wizards at Telltale—the people behind the popular Sam & Max PC (and soon to be Wii) adventure series. Yes, Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People (or, as Strong Bad refers to it, SBCG4AP) gives fans the opportunity to try their hand at the star's inimitable style. The game's innocuous story stays true to form: Upon discovering neigh- borhood goody-goody Homestar Runner prepping for an upcoming race (the tri-annual “Васе to the End of the Race"), Strong Bad vows to win. This silly plot really just provides a thin excuse to explore Free Country, U.S.A.—Strong Bad's bizarre, col- orful stomping grounds. The town exists nonlinearly; various events and branching conversations open up new areas, which players may freely place on Strong Bad's map however they see fit. The map acts as a quick-travel mechanism, zipping Strong Bad from his multistory house to the local con- cession stand to the pseudo-kingdom ЕНГГЬ By Ryan Scott of Strong Badia (populated—true to the cartoon—by a lone tire). Extracurricular activities fill out much of SBCG4AP; Strong Bad can besiege Free Country's goofy citizenry with prank calls, cheat for high scores on his home Videlectrix gaming con- sole, collect wacky outfits, or create his own crude comic strips via an in- game version of the Homestar site's cartoon-within-a-cartoon Teen Girl Squad feature. A scorecard tracks the objectives, and we're guessing some- thing special happens if you uncover everything. You can even snap photos of goodies and e-mail them to friends using Strong Bad's computer. Now, if only we could figure out how he types with those boxing gloves... Ж » The plot just provides a thin excuse to explore Free Country, U.S.A.-Strong Bad's bizarre stomping grounds. ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM • 39 As always, we've collected the best of the best videos for your viewing enjoy- ment over at GameVideos.com/EGM. > ONLINE СЕНЕ ! е x e сом eae Hudey Freedom of Choice gameplay clips | New footage from the Korean beta of this first-person shooter/MMO hybrid, heading to Xbox 360 and PC. KEWL: Our new show, RSVP ! A HEENA COSE Erik Wolpaw (Portal), Jonathan i It's you against the law in this modern-day tragedy for two players. Grab a friend or a Mak (Everyday Shooter), and Dylan i well-meaning stranger and then hop in a car and exclusively target the A.I. police offi- Cuthbert (PixelJunk series) chat about cers. How long will you last? It actually doesn't matter—because, much like Thelma and Louise, you aren't allowed to eject from your steel-and-fiberglass coffin. You get bonus points for finding a precipice to plummet from before the inevitable solidarity-laden explosion. While Liberty City lacks any vast canyons, the cliffs at Westdyke are sufficient- ly Ridley Scott-esque for this purpose. game development and Uwe Boll. OLZ: WWE Superstar Challenge 2008 - EGM's Michael Donahoe runs wild on " the stars of WWE before WrestleMania XXIV. Diva-to-Mom phone calls ensue. У LEMMINGS: THE NEXT GENERATION Unlike Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, GTA4 doesn’t provide you with jetpacks, para- ? 3 chutes, baggy pants, or anything else that could marginally break a fall. This doesn't stop plucky GTA fans from plummeting from the highest of in-game heights—like the L337: Gears of War 2 REL Rotterdam ыраны + по means REN it a you. aie organize analysis video a party consisting of a helicopter pilot and people with no regard for virtual life for your We dissect and explain developer adventures in self-destruction; no life is complete without hearing the chilling sound of a Epic’s first gameplay footage. How suicide countdown over a gaming headset. designer Cliff Bleszinski gets his hair i like that is still a mystery. 40 ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • + WE SIDE STABBING It's common for players to immediately run for the most carnage-inducing weaponry— but after a while, this becomes old hat. Rediscover the simple joys of knife violence by forming your own band of charmingly ethnic street toughs who wield blades and may or may not sing in harmony. While the knives might not have much of an effect in terms of massive destruction, you and your online teammates' reputations will soar as you become "those guys who just won't shut the f*** up!" And taking someone out with the weakest weapon in the game evokes a certain appeal unseen since the end- less slapfights of old in GoldenEye 007 (N64). Just imagine how fun this is when it's done in a swarm. =, =... › ENMITY ЕН MA Given GTA4's immense popularity, it's inevitable that you're going to run into some jerks—some even in their enchanting preteen years. And sometimes, brutal mob justice is the only way to deal with a problem; after all, the best way to get rid of Frankenstein's monster involves 15 bloodthirsty folks and an ever-shrinking escape route. If it seems unlikely that so many people would work together in such a chaotic world, trust us: Few things can get gamers to unite for a common good like an annoying jerk. > BUS JOUS All the fun of jousting without the haunting stench of a Renaissance faire! What more could fans of chivalry ask for? You'll find that bus jousting is much like jousting of the equine sort, except these horses weigh several tons and explode when they lose— which really would have made the Middle Ages a hell of a lot more entertaining, if you think about it. Another new feature of this contemporary take on the classic sport is that the loser can easily take out the winner in the game-ending explosion—most buses don’t have a prayer of escaping this blast unless they’re equipped with an onboard Keanu Reeves. ATHS GANE ODF LIVE 5 Lives: It's not hard to believe that girls like to play games, but it is a little perplexing 3 to think that a Playboy model enjoys {Бойс around with a joystick. But gorgeous clothes- deprived gamer (and Playboy's 2008 Cyber Girl of the Year) Jo Garcia really does like to play. So we threw five random questions at her to see how well she performs under pressure. Jo Garcia: l'm guessing Porky's. EGM: Correct. Lives remaining: УУУУУ JG: I'm going to have to say Hugh. EGM: Incorrect. It's Kratos. JG: 1 have to pick Hugh! | work for Playboy! Come on! EGM: We had to pick Kratos, because he's kinda the god of war and all. JG: Yeah, | can believe that. I’ve seen him; I’ve seen some of his pictures. Lives remaining: УУУУХ JG: It’s not Grand Theft Auto, is it? EGM: Incorrect. It's Dead or Alive. JG: See, I’m going to die—1 knew it! Lives remaining: УУУХ JG: It's not Rumble Roses, and it's not Boobs. It has to be A. EGM: Incorrect. It's actually Rumble Roses. Lives remaining: УУХ JG: | think Mario's hotter, actually. EGM: Correct. Lives remaining: уу Game Over: Obviously, someone doesn't study sexy games as much as we do. What gives, Jo—you don't like boobs or something? ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM » 41 at > APTERTHOUGHTS Boom - D We toss around some questions with the game’s producer Louis Castle has worked on everything from A Nightmare on Elm Street to Command & Conquer 3. Oh, and Donald's Alphabet Chase, which we promised not to bring up. WE WEREN'T SURE WHAT TO EXPECT from Steven Spielberg's Boom Blox when it was unveiled this past February. It may be the first of several EA collaborations in the works with the famed film direc- tor, but what does he know about videogames? Well, more than we thought—Boom Blox turned out to be an absolutely excellent Wii game, nabbing our Game of the Month hon- ors last issue. (And after seeing the new Indiana Jones flick, we're start- ing to think that maybe he should dedicate himself to games entirely.) We spoke to Louis Castle, vice president of creative development at EA Los Angeles and executive producer of Boom Blox, to find out whether we should've seen this com- ing—and to gripe about the game’s imperfections. The Boom Blox team is currently on “recovery time,” so unfortunately we had to resort to a less-than-ideal e-mail interview. Next time we have Castle cornered, we'll 42 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY * ЕВМЛОРСОМ be sure to pummel him with follow- up questions and get the real juice on head tracking... EGM: Jenga is an obvious influ- ence—but at what point in devel- opment did it go from “manipu- lating blocks” to throwing balls at them? How many of the main gameplay mechanics were cut down to arrive at the six or so that are in there? LC: Actually, Boom Blox was all about the throw for a long time. Steven just wanted to let people break things by knocking them down, so we made a bunch of By Nick Suttner games from there. The grab levels came later and were inspired by the dozens of classic games built on pulling blocks out of stacks without causing everything to crash down. EGM: Be honest, now—how much did Spielberg actually have to do with development? How hands-on was he, how often was he around, and what were his biggest contri- butions? Is he a diva? LC: It was his idea from the begin- ning. Seriously! Steven was deeply involved in creating Boom Blox from concept to ship. We met with him for hours at a time on a very regular = “1 don’t think Boom Blox is ‘kiddie’ any more than flying turtles or big, puffy ghosts are.” —Louis Castle, vice president of creative development at EA Los Angeles If you haven't done it yet, set off an explosion of blocks and then hit the pause button. Matrix-style awesome! ^ THE WIDE WORLD OF YOUBOOM One of the best and most overlooked features of Boom Blox is the ability to create your levels or edit any existing level by using a huge palette of unlockable pieces. We forged the filthy depths of YouTube to bring you a few of our favorites. Do a search for “Boom Blox created” to watch them in all of their moving glory. Complex Machine 1, posted by EFRUCHT This is really the cream of the crop of what can be accomplished, a minute-and-a-half long Rube Goldberg-esque chain reaction that must have taken hours to build. It takes full advantage of the powerful physics at work in the game behind the scenes and uses all of the main block types to accomplish a very impressive display. Sheep Destruction, posted by whatinthe1 It's rough around the edges, but this is another awesome chain reaction with plenty of explosions. The titular sheep destruction is easily the highlight, though: As hectic as everything is for a few seconds, it ends with a li'l old cartoon sheep getting knocked off his. perch by a rather large block. The genius is in the simplicity. Dong, posted by CameronBudde Really, what sort of a create-your-game game would this be without a random wang? Admittedly, this is a horrible example of custom dongery; if only you could see our hideous creations in Graffiti Kingdom or Senior Editor Scott Sharkey’s Penisaurus in Spore’s Creature creator. Truly, we are masters of all things immature. > PREVIEW FIRST Loo JELO TOR: Platforms: AFTER AN EXPLOSIVELY PS3/XB360 SUCCESSFUL HOLIDAY SEASON (also coming: fi h | Wii/ps2) for rhythm games, it seems only 7 three types of gamers remain: those Publisher: Activision WhO own Rock Band, those who Do Shen pe own Guitar Hero Ill, and those who Ri own both. So you'd be forgiven for feeling like you don't need any more plastic instruments clogging up your shelves. Though as lukewarm as we've been about the prospect of a fourth installment in the Guitar Hero franchise, we walked away from a recent press demonstration of World Tour feeling far more excited than we ever thought we'd be. Longtime Tony Hawk developer Neversoft did an excellent job of taking the GH reins from Harmonix (who went off to make Rock Band) with GH3, and World Tour is anything but a sophomore slump; it's a reinvigoration of the brand, an innovative music-creation and online-sharing tool, and a ballsy direct shot at the competition. If you've played Rock Band—yes, Rock Вапа--уои! have a good idea of what to expect. World Tour has gone multi-instrumental, with a badass set of drums and a microphone for vocals (alongside a new guitar). For better or for worse, the onscreen note-chart layout is identical to Rock Band's—a Release Date: Fall 2008 Guitar Hero: €— scrolling drum track in the middle of the screen, bass and guitar on either side, and the vocal track up top. The characters themselves, though slightly more realistic-looking, are still cartoonishly ugly and hypersexualized, a criticism of GH3 that unfortunately still hasn’t been addressed. For the meaty details about World Tour’s new content, check out the sidebars below. It’s an impressive feature list, but the real intrigue comes from the added instruments and the new means of creating music. Let’s start with the drums—because as much fun as Rock Band's drums are, and as much as they add to the experience, World Tour's setup is better. The hardware itself is a huge improvement: two adjustable silicon cymbals to hit (that have just enough floppiness in their construction to provide the "give" that makes them feel just right), three drums between them (also silicon for quieter feedback), and a foot pedal that matches up to a horizontal bar onscreen, just like—you guessed it—Rock Band. All of the pads are velocity-sensitive, so lightly rapping on a cymbal produces quieter splashes while whaling on it provides a satisfying crash (it’s all wireless and sturdy to boot). Though Neversoft hasn't fully figured it out yet, you'll be able to execute drum fills anywhere in a song, not just in predefined areas (you currently activate them by hitting both cymbals at once). If you tire of World Tour's cast of rock superfreaks, you can create your own characters to precise specifications with a crazy number of sliders and options. You can age them, mess with their bone structure, and even adjust the tips of their ears. Using most any color you can come up with and a powerful layered illustration tool, you can also create custom designs to be used as makeup, a tattoo, a drum р head—even an album cover for when you start sharing songs online. You can also create your own in-game instruments now, customizing a guitar or bass down to the strings, highways, and fret inlays, and busting out a hilariously massive drum kit for your drummer (or even a mic and mic stand). 44 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY , EGM.1UP.COM Though it may not sound exciting, World Tour's career structure has quite a few changes, and it improves on several of Rock Band's niggling faults. Firstly, you can Switch difficulties midcareer if things get too tough for you. Secondly, you can change instruments at any time between songs, so if something is too tough on bass, you can hop over to drums and give it a shot. Also, you now share Star Power in a pool anyone can use, though it's better to activate it together. Guitar Effe INSANE ї This is the basic interface you use to build your tunes. Simple but rocktacular. The new, not-yet-unveiled guitar holds a few secrets, though—and the developers used GH3 axes during the demo to avoid unwittingly spilling any details. We did see a few sections of a new type of note scroll by, which will apparently have something to do with some new functionality/input of the guitar; in other sections, you'll be able to simply tap the buttons and not worry about the strum bar. It seems likely that any new input methods would be in service of the new studio modes, where, for the first time in either rock ’n’ roll series, you'll be able to create actual songs—from scratchl—with your various instruments. We don't know enough about the technical side of music to understand—never mind communicate—all of the options we saw, but that alone should help give you an idea of the toolset's depth. Once in the virtual studio, you can lay down tunes in a four-track, choosing and customizing your scales and assigning different sound sets to both the drums and guitar (from the pedestrian crunchy or clean guitar to crazy 8-bit bleeps and potentially disturbing Speak and Spell sets). You can change the octave by tilting the guitar (neat!), assign different samples to the drums for hitting them either soft or hard, and add a melody track for vocalists to sing along with. We watched in awe as our Neversoft hosts played an impressively accurate rendition of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit"—simply because they knew how, not because they were following any predefined notation. If you really want to be ambitious, you can delve into the GH Mix mode, a sequencer that allows you to do note- by-note step recording on the actual note chart. And for those with no music knowledge and no desire to get into the thick of it, there's a pick-up- and-play drum-machine arpeggiator, where you're simply activating and deactivating different looping samples by pressing buttons and hitting pads. Combining “hip-hop” drums and "indie rock" guitar, our hosts casually turned out a minute or two of the most interesting music we've heard recently anywhere. Incredibly easy and cool. Once you create music in any of these modes, you can save your songs and share them online. You'll be able to search and filter the created songs by various criteria—genre, rating, etc.—and the most highly | rated songs will even autoplay in the i background while you browse. Yes, on the one hand, World Tour comes across as an unapologetic Rock Band impersonator (despite the fact that it’s been worked on for years, starting out life as the long-rumored Drum Villain). But it offers far more to do out of the box and a more customized experience for various levels of music enthusiasts: Creative folk can go nuts with the creation tools and populate the community with a stream of new content for everyone to enjoy. If Neversoft’s plans for downloadable content turn out to be near as excellent as Rock Band’s, World Tour just may have it all. That is, until the inevitable Rock Band 2 makes its debut, and the battle for rhythm-genre supremacy begins all over again. $h World Tour is anything but a sophomore slump; it’s a reinvigoration of the brand, an innovative music-creation and online-sharing tool, and a ballsy direct shot at the competition. World Tour will come with 90-plus songs out of the box, and all of them will be master tracks (no more shoddy covers). And though we saw quite a bit of the massive list, we're only allowed to tell you that Van Halen, the Eagles, Linkin Park, and Sublime will be in the game. This is frustrating because we saw some stuff that we've been waiting ever so long for. You'll also be playing in a handful of new venues, including a goth club, an aircraft carrier, and a state fair. As for what you'll be playing long after release...it's yet to be determined. Neversoft has big plans for downloadable content and all the ambition of weekly songs and full albums, but they've got nothing specific to announce quite yet. World Tour's career structure casts you as a musician for hire, and you'll browse bulletin boards for gigs, playing three to six songs at each stop. On the multiplayer side, you can hop online with three other people to play as a band—if you can't get the necessary bodies locally—and battle other four-man bands. You can even split up the eight players into any combination of local and online, so four different households with two rockers each can still form teams, or eight players can play from their own houses. ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY , EGM.1UP.COM * 45 Resurrected Rumors: A lot of my recent rumors are still slowly cooking (and boy, do they smell delicious), but here’s one tidbit that | recently got right: Confirmed in last month’s Gears of War 2 cover story, the game will feature 5-on-5 multiplayer matches, which | correctly called. Skate park full of scuttlebutt AH, IT FEELS GOOD TO BE RIGHT. After months (and months) of saying last year’s Game of the Year winner BioShock would eventually resurface on the PlayStation 3, the totally-not- false news finally washed up in last month’s issue. Remember, rumor- lovers, never doubt The Q. | never intentionally lie to you. OK, that’s not entirely true (see, | don’t lie!), but | do try to spread only the best scuttle- butt. Like this month’s crop.... Hawk Hero It's no surprise that megapublisher Activision loves sequels. A lot. Too much, in fact—just look at what the yearly retreads did to the Tony Hawk series. Apparently, things may be changing—my skater spy says Activision is building a new fancy plastic peripheral (think Guitar Hero) for the next Tony Hawk game. Weird, huh? Well, it gets. weirder—l also hear that longtime series developer Neversoft will not be making it. God of Soul At this point, no Soulcalibur IV char- acter reveal should really surprise anyone. But while you shouldn't be 46 + ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • ЕСМЛИРСОМ RUMOR MILL shocked by the rest of the secret characters waiting in the wings, you should be stoked for the one | just heard about. A mighty mole revealed to me that the star of a certain godly action game for the PS2 will be joining the ranks of the Soulcalibur IV crew. Guess we'll find out soon enough. Grand Theft Greaser If you're worried about Grand Theft Auto IV stealing away your time now, don't expect it to get better soon, thanks to the upcoming exclusive downloadable content hitting the 360. If time is of no concern to you, though, you'll want to hear this one: My Rockstar rumormonger tells > G-TIFZ те that the GTA4 DLC will star a biker character. This is just for epi- sode 1, too. Who knows what kind of character will debut for episode 2. A fisherman? Mime? One-legged American Gladiator contestant? Out of the Box The people at Microsoft are pros at making things that sell well. Now stuff that works well? Hah—that’s what warranties are for. Unless this doozy that my mole dug up is true: Apparently, Microsoft is going to allow third-party manufacturers to make Xbox 360-compatible hardware. That means Microsoft can let other companies (Samsung, Philips, etc.) deal with red rings. $h PlayStation Network. How does another version of Rez sound to you? e The music pros at Q Entertainment seem to be tuning up a new game for the tent to hit later this year. Example: a bizarrely awesome music visualizer. ec Speaking of the PlayStation Network, look for even more experimental con- is both pricey systems will be getting a hefty price cut this fall. ёр If you haven't bought a PS3 or Xbox 360 yet, good—keep on waiting. Word Tales of Vesperia XB360 • Namco Bandai Too Human | While the Wii sequel to Tales of XB360 , Microsoft Game Studios Symphonia looks great, wait till you lay your eyes on the first XB360 Tales outing, Tales of Vesperia. Gorgeous In the world of Too Human, cybernetically enhanced humans fight the very thing they’re scared to become—machines. With an intriguing mix of sci-fi themes and Norse mythology, the game cartoony art style aside, the hardware is equal parts flashy sword-and-gun combat and loot-gathering role-playing, allowing players i also affords this role-playing game to choose from different classes at the start and to customize weapons and skills as they battle i flashier battle effects, more onscreen through the game. i enemies, and downloadable content. Samda de Amigo Wii • Sega > MORE RLIGLUZT RELEASES Everyone’s favorite maraca-shaking, sombrero-wearing monkey is making the natural motion-controlled jump from Dreamcast to Wii. Bringing with him a crazy cast and color- ful fiesta venues, Amigo will have you shaking the Wii-mote and Nunchuk—high, middle, and low—in rhythm with over 40 tracks, including “Hot, Hot, Hot” and “La Bamba.” Madden NFL 09 Wii/PS3/XB360/PS2/XB/PSP/DS г EA Sports Madden turns 20 this season—the videogame, not the man (boom!)—and for its platinum anni- versary, the series is finally delivering online leagues with up to 32 teams, along with an over- hauled presentation, upgraded snow effects that you'll want to make angels in, and a new dif- i ficulty system (coined Madden IQ) that adapts to the way you play. Ёо aidates on this page are subject to change.) ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM , 47 48 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM Forget- e-Not Shining in the shadow of E3 WITH THE ELECTRONIC ENTERTAINMENT EXPO industry-trade- show onslaught of high-profile games right around the corner, it's easy to lose track of some of the lesser-hyped releases. But some of those quieter titles might very well prove just as interesting as the biggest names coming out of Los Angeles in July. We've chosen eight games that we think are worth keeping an eye on as the ЕЗ hype train picks up speed. Some are brand-new games, some are sequels to underappreciated predecessors, and some just look neat to us. They may end up being overshadowed by the show's biggest names, but each has the potential to shine in its own right. ITS 2 1 Ш T М Е Left 4 Dead XB360 • Valve/Electronic Arts e November 2008 What is it? It’s a survival-horror game. It’s a first-person shooter. It's built around the idea of cooperation but driven by seriously advanced A.I. And it's unpredictable. "Left 4 Dead is not a dreary take on the hopelessness of the zombie apocalypse," says writer and Project Manager Chet Faliszek. "It's a fast-paced, frantic game about work- ing together and being on a team." The basic premise pits a team of four humans against innumerable hordes of rabies-infected enemies. You could call them zombies, but that doesn't really get the idea across; these creatures thirst for blood and feel no pain, sure, but they also move at serious speed and come in a wide variety of sizes and abilities. But the real kicker is that the game will make its own decisions—different every time—about how many Infected to throw at you, where you'll find them, and how they'll behave. In a survival-horror game, a gradual feeling of confidence usually offsets the sense of fear as you learn the location and relative strengths of the different threats in the game. Left 4 Dead knocks that flimsy support structure right out from under you. Why would it be forgotten? It's hard to make a first- person shooter stand out from the pack these days, even if you are the developer responsible for the Half-Life series. If the game doesn't have a number at the end of its title (mid- dle doesn't count!), you can expect an uphill battle against the inertia of players firmly entrenched in the online com- munities of their FPSes of choice. Notice how none of the screens show the traditional behind-the-gun perspective? That's no accident; developer Valve wants you to think of this as more than “уе! another" FPS. Why should it be remembered? For the BFF factor. Our hands-on experience with the game has been almost universally positive so far, leading us to believe that the team-based aspect should work well with the survival- horror theme. We wouldn't mind seeing a mode where human players turn into Infected after being bitten, but Faliszek says that contradicts the goal of the game. "You're part of a team trying to overcome incredible numbers to escape to safety," he says. "Our focus is on strengthen- ing that bond between teammates. If you turned, it would become a competitive game. For the core game, we want it to be noncompetitive. Your friend who doesn't regularly play FPSes can play with you because you work together, not against each other." ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM • 49 Yakuza 2 PS2 , Sega * September 2008 What is it? Another gritty, hyperdetailed tour through the seedy underworld of organized crime on the mean streets of Japan. The first Yakuza followed the story of a reformed operative in the yakuza (often called “the Japanese Mafia") who gets drawn back into a life of crime after spending a decade behind bars. It delivered a smart story written by renowned Japanese crime author Seishu Hase and an almost absurdly accurate re-creation of Tokyo's Kabukicho district. Yakuza 2 draws protagonist Kazuma once again into the depths of gangland crime, this time sending him ranging through yakuza hotbed Osaka in addition to Tokyo. T о a а Ш E RE Du П zu a a Why would it be forgotten? Well, it’s a sequel to a game that sold fairly poorly in the U.S., and it's coming out exclu- sively for PS2. That's a tough one-two punch to dodge. But Sega doesn't appear to be concerned: "This is a dark, gritty, mature story that's told in a very action-packed, cin- ematic way," says Producer Kevin Frane, “апа that really transcends the matter of hardware." It also doesn't help that by the time it comes out here, nearly two years will have elapsed since its launch in Japan. As for why it's taken so long, Frane offers this explanation: “We thought it was worth the extra time to make sure the game that comes out is the game that fans have been waiting for." That's an answer that, though heartwarming, lacks enough detail to inspire confidence. Why should it be remembered? We understand why Western audiences may have found the original confusing; with little or no prior exposure to Japan's brands, culture, and storied history of organized crime, you could find yourself a stranger in a strange land. But if you avoided the game for those reasons, you missed out on a tightly script- ed, well-acted adventure that combined some of the best elements of Grand Theft Auto and Sega's own Shenmue. And we're expecting even better things this time around, especially with regard to the original's promising (but occa- sionally wonky) combat. “The combat system has been greatly expanded," Frane says. "It's much more stream- lined, geared toward fighting multiple opponents coming at you from different directions. And the “НЕАТ Actions' [pow- ered-up attacks and finishing moves] have been greatly expanded upon, with far more environmental triggers." And finally, for those true purists, the game will feature the original Japanese dialogue, with English subtitles. Which brings us back to the question: What, exactly, is taking so damn long? 50 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM Mercenaries 2: World in Flames PS3/XB360/PS2 • Electronic Arts • August 2008 What is it? A free-form jazz odyssey of destruction. As a soldier for hire, you'll plow through the cities and jungles of Venezuela, laying waste to...well, to anything that looks like it might blow up real good. Oh, you'll find a story in here about energy crises and global militarization, but with all the cutting-edge demolition available, we're not sure we care. Why would it be forgotten? Timing. In spite of receiving high marks pretty much across the board from reviewers, the first Mercenaries didn't make as big a splash as its designers would have liked, so developer Pandemic was hoping to get the sequel out early this year to catch some attention in the postholiday drought. But now that it's been delayed to late August, it's definitely encroaching into fall- madness territory. Why should it be remembered? Grand Theft Auto IV's multiplayer features have shown us how much of a blast it is to wreak large-scale havoc with a pal. Mercs 2 is taking things a step further by including the ability to play through the whole game in two-player co-op. “It’s an interesting challenge for us," says Lead Designer Scott Warner, *not only to go to the next-generation tech but also to take all our game-design philosophies and apply them to having a second person in the world with you at all times." I Brütal Legend PS3/XB360 • Sierra * Late 2008 What is it? A gritty, quirky, and occasionally goofy hom- age to all that is good and holy in the world of metal. It follows the story of roadie Eddie Riggs, who finds himself transported to a heavy-metal fantasy world in the wake of a bloody tuning accident. With the help of a cast of metal mentors, he must do battle against the forces of glam and emo in free-roaming brawler style, with a few light strategy elements thrown in for kicks. It's kind of like a Manowar song come to life. Why would it be forgotten? The works of Tim Schafer never seem to quite get the respect they deserve right off the bat. See Psychonauts and Grim Fandango (PC), which were almost universally praised by critics but took a surprisingly long time to catch the public's attention. And in this sequel-happy world, creating an all-new property doesn't help things. Why should it be remembered? The game seems to be pulling off a magnificent balancing act between tongue-in- cheek satire and earnest metal appreciation. On the one hand, Jack Black voices the main character. But it also has Lemmy Kilmister of Motórhead, Rob Halford of Judas Priest, and Ronnie James Dio providing voices as well. No matter—metal fans will dig it either way. ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY , EGM.1UP.COM » 51 OTS m, Е | Ё Е LON-3H-L35403 їл I Order Up! Wii * Zoo Games , Summer 2008 What is it? While Majesco's Cooking Mama titles have achieved great success with their simple Wii Remote food- preparation minigames, they're not exactly serious culinary simulators. Order Up! expands on the basic food-prep premise by offering multiple restaurants, a wide array of dishes ranging from simple diner staples to Top Chef-wor- thy haute cuisine, and the ability to cook multiple dishes at once while delegating smaller tasks to sous-chefs. -HOTZ 5 Е D Е Ш а Why would it be forgotten? Going ир against Mama's empire won't be easy: Will fans feel the need to pick up another cooking game? (Not to mention the value-priced Major League Eating hitting WiiWare this summer.) Why should it be remembered? Virtual gourmands seek- ing a deeper food sim will dig the more complex gameplay. With more realistic Wii-mote gesticulations, the ability to tailor spice levels to customers' tastes, and a true sense of progression through the demanding restaurant world, Order Up! masks a meaty game beneath a whimsical facade. It'll likely be remembered as the next step for Мата vets. “1 think Mama would very quickly find herself ‘in the weeds’ here,” says Creative Director Lee Cummings of developer GreenScreen. “Her seemingly OCD preoccupation with cooking one dish at a time in a frustratingly linear sequence would leave the kitchen full of dishes getting cold as she struggled to get the rest of an order completed.” I Rock Revolution Wii/PS3/XB360/DS • Konami • Fall 2008 What is it? Long overdue, for one thing. Konami's GuitarFreaks was unquestionably the major influence on Guitar Hero, and its interfacing with DrumMania set the stage for Rock Band. But Konami has never released these games in the West. Now the company's finally angling for a piece of the sweet musical pie. Why would it be forgotten? It's entirely possible that music-game fans don't have room in their hearts (or their living rooms) for yet another game requiring fancy, pricey, space-consuming peripherals. And while the song list released so far includes a few standouts (Skid Row's “Youth Gone Wild"? Hell yes!), it also appears to be pack- ing in plenty of retreads. Or perhaps we didn't hear about a new law that requires all new music games to feature the Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop," Wolfmother's *Joker & The Thief," and KISS' "Detroit Rock City." Why should it be remembered? Rock Revolution is look- ing like it'll turn out to be the most drum-centric of the music-game genre, with a controller sporting a staggering seven inputs (that's six pads plus the bass pedal). We're also digging what the designers are aiming to do with the Wii version: The idea is to do away with the need for spe- cial peripherals and instead allow players to rock out with just the Wii-mote and Nunchuk in true air-guitar (and air- drums) fashion. ж ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM • 53 Ra 54. ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM. 1UP.COM Се ГЕ oO. E- AX Fy, | 20 al JEFENSE Guerrilla Games explains that Killzone 2 was never delayed, was never meant to kill Halo, and will look every bit as good as that infamous trailer from 2005 By Shane Bettenhausen > T M oe Pee My S d. dm i 7 2 D д ELEGTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM » 55. Q о = т л Л 4 о a = KILLZONE WAS NEVER “JUST ANOTHER FIRST-PERSON SHOOT- ER.” By the time most people caught on to developer Guerrilla Games’ PlayStation 2-exclusive blast-a-thon, the gaming press had already saddled it with the audacious “Halo killer” label. While that comparison immedi- ately vaulted the title to the forefront of the sketchy PS2 shooter lineup, it created some sky-high expectations. “When we started out on Killzone, we were just a bunch of guys who got together and formed a game studio,” says Killzone 2 Technical Director Michiel van der Leeuw. “Working on something as phenomenally big and RONIC GAMING highly anticipated as Killzone was daunting, and we honestly felt a bit dwarfed by the experience.” Leaping from relative obscurity onto the front lines of the console war put Amsterdam-based Guerrilla and its game under a tremendous amount of scrutiny. “That Halo comparison gave us a hell of a lot of attention and caused a lot of hype, but Killzone's always been a very different beast than Halo,” says Guerrilla Managing Director Hermen Hulst. “So none of us really wanted to make that compari- son.” Unfortunately, both critics and players held Sony’s effort up against Bungie’s finest, and unsurprisingly found that it didn’t quite measure up. Technical hiccups, А.І. problems, and control issues clearly kept the shooter from supplanting Master Chief's esca- pade as the console-shooter king. Even so, the game would go on to sell over 2 million units worldwide, mak- ing it enough of a hit to inspire both a PSP spin-off (Killzone: Liberation) and a full-fledged PlayStation 3 sequel, due in February 2009. Once freed from the shackles of trying to breed a game that could somehow silence Halo, Guerrilla nar- rowed its focus on creating a PS3 Killzone that directly addressed the first game’s shortcomings. But back Previously on Killzone... So you've somehow missed the earlier two Killzone titles, and you're curious whether or not you'll be completely befuddled by Killzone 2's already-in-progress narrative. No worries—we're here to quickly get you up to speed on what came before the PS3 sequel. Killzone • PS2 • 2004 Set in a spacefaring "near future," the original game casts you as heroic Capt. Jan Templar, who, along with three other soldiers in the Interplanetary Strategic Alliance (ISA), must defend the colony world of Vekta against the encroaching Helghast army. Led by the cruel and ruthless Scolar Visari, the Helghast seek to undermine and destroy the ISA through a combination of pure military might and political duplicity. Although imposing and seemingly inhuman, the Helghast themselves are actually ex-humans that have evolved due to the harsh, toxic environment on the colony world of Helghan. Luckily, before the bad guys can take their misplaced aggression out on an entire planet, Templar and his crew keep them occupied until cavalry from Earth can arrive. Killzone: Liberation e PSP , 2006 This handheld follow-up continues the saga of planet Vekta, as Jan Templar and friends seek to com- pletely liberate it from Helghast control. Along the way, the bad guys lose one of their most feared leaders (the sadistic Gen. Armin Metrac), but they also gain a tacti- cal advantage by stealing a cadre of powerful ISA nuclear weapons. With a fragile peace restored to Vekta, the ISA council reveals plans to invade Helghan and arrest the menacing Visari. GM.1UP.COI AWOIS ыэлоо о in 2004, before any actual work on the game began, they decided to craft a CG-animated “visual target" clip for inspiration and promo purposes at the 2005 E3 trade show. "We wanted to have a very clear vision of what Killzone 2 should look like, and what [PS3] games in general should deliver in terms of intensity, detail, and move- ment," says van der Leeuw. "When you go back and look at that trailer, there's so much in there. We're still really keen on achieving that." Three years later, they're still trying to live that controversial teaser down (see Sidebar on pg. 63), but based on our hands-on experience with the game, it may actually come close to reaching their seemingly unattainable target. Major rezoning ahead Odds are that you won't hear veterans of the original Killzone bemoaning the myriad changes being made to its sequel. Several aspects of the first game simply didn't work, and Guerrilla has no qualms about rethinking fun- damental design choices. "Killzone was our first game, so of course you're going to find some mistakes and glitches," says Visual Designer Roland IJzermans. “We really had to figure out what people liked and didn't like about the first game and then fix what was broken." Their first order of business? Add a jump button. "| had no idea that everyone thought jump- ing was so precious!” IJzermans says. Another big design shift pares the number of playable characters down from four to only one, fresh-faced pro- tagonist Sev. "We wanted to have one stronger main character as opposed to having four separate heroes," says Game Director Mathijs de Jonge. “We feel that having one hero will lead to a. better experience." That doesn't mean that Sev's blast- ing through the Helghast home planet by his lonesome, though—in both of the levels we've seen, he always 1 Spotting friends and foes amid the fray just got easier Considering the “ив versus them" concept central at the heart of Killzone, it's imperative that you're able to quickly and clearly identify ISA and Helghast troops and equip- ment on the battlefield. Thankfully, the designers have made it easier to label someone a friend or foe in Killzone 2. "We were still experi- menting in the first game, but now we're much more focused on the differentiation between the ISA and the Helghast and their disparate structural styles," says Technical Director Michiel van der Leeuw. ISA technology doesn't look that far removed from modern U.S. military gear, as evidenced by a slightly ostentatious tank or an extra-shiny silver Desert Eagle. By comparison, the Helghast stuff looks downright diabolical, with lots of matte black metal and superfluous blades. And since the game is set on the Helghast planet, Guerrilla’s art team had plenty of dark gear to design. “We extrapo- lated their society from what we already knew—that they are a fas- cist, totalitarian regime,” says van der Leeuw. The coolest Helghast weapon we spied: The Arc Cannon, a huge beam that harnesses the power of Helghan’s apocalyptic thunderstorms. We hear there are more weather weapons, too. — Technical Director Michiel van der Leeuw defends his highly detailed gun models and reload animations, because “you stare at the gun for the whole game!” ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM • 59 _,. Guerrilla isn't ready to discuss online play, but the constant presence of “buddy A.I.” partners seems to make co-op play an absolute given. has at least one surprisingly effective A.l.-controlled squad member at his Side. You don't even have to worry about issuing commands to your bud- dies (even though it worked so well in Killzone: Liberation, Guerrilla thought it would be too clumsy in a first-person game), but you can revive them when wounded, help them over obstacles, and assist them in other context-sen- Sitive ways. Implementing a new cover system also makes Killzone 2 a far more user-friendly experience. Much like in Gears of War or Uncharted, a simple button press anchors you to your nearest available cover point. From there, you can either lean-and- 60 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY , EGM.1UP.COM peek to fire at your target or instantly pop up and zoom in for a quick head- shot. This new defensive dynamic radically changes up the game's pac- ing—it's now definitely less run-n-gun and more stop-and-pop. Killzone 2's effective new cover sys- tem doesn't just benefit you and your Interplanetary Strategic Alliance (ISA) pals, though. Helghast troops now routinely make snap tactical decisions on the battlefield, leaping behind a safer cover point if you start to pep- per their current hiding place with gunfire. The original Killzone wasn't exactly renowned for its clever enemy A.I., and the guys at Guerrilla hope to correct that here by giving its foes the ability to intelligently navigate maps by climbing over obstacles and a desire to relentlessly pursue you should you attempt to run like a coward. The addition of vehicles should also have a profound effect on the game's pacing, but our limited hands-on time felt a tad...inconclusive. We squared off in the climactic tank-on-tank melee shown in these screens, but the slow- moving controls and narrow battlefield made for a frustrating experience. Let's hope that Liberation's hovercraft and jetpack reappear here, possibly with Sixaxis motion control. So far, the only gestural implementation we spied was Killzone 2 debuts three fresh faces...and one old favorite Garza's a wisecracking smart- ass from a privileged family; his parents sent him to a military academy at a young age to straighten him out. While the ISA wasn't able to stamp out his rebellious streak, at least they shaped him into an expert sniper and skilled technician. Rico has served the ISA for 12 years, including a tour of duty with Templar defending Vekta (Killzone 1). However, during that conflict, he was captured by the Helghast and tricked into betraying his side. Despite a full pardon, he’s still coping with his past choices.... Born on the colony world Vekta, Tomas lost several close family members during the Helghast invasion. He's a hard-working, by-the-books leader who exudes quiet pro- fessionalism. Called “Sev” by his friends, he's your avatar through the entire single- player game. Hailing from humble, working- class beginnings, the cynical, pessimistic Natko spent many years toiling on the Terranium rigs before joining the ISA. He's the Alpha Squad's best hand-to-hand fighter and demolitions expert, relishing close combat. ons seized by the Helghast during the returning to help the ISA deal with the newfound nuclear threat. This sultry scientist worked on the weap- events of Killzone: Liberation. Now she's The elusive leader of the Helghast (that's not even him pictured, just some random baddie in his employ) prefers to stay out of the lime- light. His capture (and eventual public trial) remains your primary goal in Killzone 2. The hero from the previous two Killzone games earned a promotion and now helms the mas- sive ISA battle cruiser New Sun, tasked with invading Helghan and arresting Scolar Visari. He handpicks Sev to lead Alpha Squad. ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY , EGM.1UP.COM • 61 AXOLS uno 62 * ELECTI in a brief wheel-turning puzzle. Hulst promises "a lot more Sixaxis content where that came from." Sensory overload Honestly, we were somewhat sur- prised that Killzone 2 felt so acces- sible and engaging. We were less shocked to find ourselves gawking at the game's audiovisual splendor, however. While it's not quite up to the level of that ЕЗ trailer yet, this game looks choice. Even though you spend most of the game staring down a gun barrel, Guerrilla has put tremendous effort into creating characters that look, AMING MONTHLY , EGM.1UP.CC move, and act naturally. Motion-cap- tured animation lends obvious realism to both the cut-scenes and in-game content, and just as in Heavenly Sword, the same actor who's deliver- ing the lines is also running, jumping, and leaping while covered in ping- pong balls. “Being able to simulta- neously capture the dramatic line reading, actual lip sync, and physical mo-cap session makes a far more believable final performance," says Cinematic Lead Jonathan Kray. Once you look past the stellar ani- mation, much of the game's beauty lies in complex special effects that give everything a stylized edge. In the demo level we played, we constantly felt like we were in a colossal, unpre- dictable firefight—frequent airstrikes, grenades, and heavy-artillery assaults make for a chaotic battlefield. “There are tons of effects going on that you may not even notice," says van der Leeuw. "We try to get it to a point where you don't even see polygons.... You should be so immersed in the game, it should be so dense around you, that you forget it's only a game." The developers are quick to reveal the man—or, rather, the machine— behind the curtain, boasting about the benefits of deferred rendering techniques and how they've maxed Trailer Trashed Can the real Killzone 2 look as good as that infamous ЕЗ clip? s Now this just seems masochistic: Having just survived endless Halo comparisons with the first Killzone, Guerrilla wowed the crowds at 2005’s E3 gaming expo with a gorgeous CG “visual target” trailer for the planned PS3 follow-up. Why would they purposefully set such high expectations for their next project? “We put a lot of pressure on ourselves,” says Killzone 2 Visual Designer Roland IJzermans. “But we set such lofty ambitions because we're $0 ambitious ourselves." But were they trying to pass that rendered clip off as actual gameplay footage? According to them, never. “| think that something went wrong regarding that trailer and how it was communicated,” IJzermans explains. “Suddenly, everyone was all, ‘You had better match that, or else!’ but it’s never going to be a pixel-by-pixel match.” The level presented in the trailer won't even appear in the final game, although bits and pieces of it may show up in other areas. But everyone on the team seems assured that the final product can live up to their original vision. *That 2005 trailer communicated our goal; that's what we're making, what we're striving for, and what we're actually realizing," says Guerrilla Managing Director Hermen Hulst. "If we internally felt that we couldn't deliver on that promise, maybe that milestone from 2005 would have become a millstone, but en КУЗ, ges fete it's not, because we feel good about our 1. While tre и-ди visuals аган каше to bie chances to exceed those expectations." level, Guerrilla still hopes to attain that goal, — COVER STORY E ERIS C чалт L Since ай the screens here hail from one level, don't expect the entire game to look so...bleak. will highlight the "natural beauty" of Helghan. ELECTRONIC GA AXOLS ushoa 64 * ELECTRONIC out four-and-a-half of the six cores powering the PS3’s Cell chip, but they're also quick to give shout-outs to other Sony teams that have shared invaluable tools, tech, and info. “Sony basically has an international forum for sharing character technology, ani- mation tools, and graphic shaders,” says van der Leeuw. "We've taken a few tricks directly from the Resistance guys at Insomniac, and we've even been talking directly to the God of War guys in Santa Monica." Guerrilla obviously isn't afraid to ask for help, and they've already bolstered their 130-man team by enlisting various outside contractors and even “Бог- М.10РС rowing" several кеу members of Sony Europe's Studio Cambridge (Primal). That effort to delve deep into the PS3’s graphical well has paid off: During our hands-on demo, we spied one of gaming's most impressive visu- al showcases to date. Midlevel, you pause to destroy an enemy-infested building with a rail gun, aiming for explosive-rigged supports. When the structure finally collapses, the resulting effect is positively eerie—huge chunks of wall tumble down, followed by bil- lowing smoke clouds that realistically cascade, solemnly settling over the battlefield. Then, look up and you see leftover airborne debris glinting in the shafts of light streaming through the clouds. At this point, you're probably not hunting for seams in the polygons. Delay? What delay? Considering how smoothly Killzone 2 looks and plays at this point, we're stunned by Sony's recent announce- ment of a release-date shift from this fall to next February. Guerrilla is tak- ing the change in stride. “I wouldn't use the word ‘delay,’ because we sat down with marketing for various ter- ritories and determined when the best Slot to release it would be," Hulst says. "| believe that we could have shipped it this year, but If you take everything into consideration [for instance, this fall's release of brother-in-arms Resistance 2], it's a logical slot, and it gives us the opportunity to polish the living daylights out of the game." Hulst is quick to silence rumors blaming the release-date bump on his team's inability to code for the complex PS3 hardware. “Мо, | don’t place any of the perceived ‘delays’ on difficulties with the PS3 hardware... | don’t think that we’ve experienced any delays, and we’ve always said that we'd ship the game when it's ready, and we'll do that in February," says Hulst. "And if you were to ask me if we would have shipped the game earlier had we worked with different hardware, | don't think so." Considering how adamant Hulst and co. seem about their game's development schedule, we were bummed that no amount of prodding could get them to divulge details on its multiplayer action. "Multiplayer is just as important to us as single player, and it's going to be very, very strong," Hulst says. "The individual features of multiplayer will be revealed at a later time." The constant pres- ence of an А.І. partner leads us to expect co-op play throughout the campaign, and traditional deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag all seem like safe bets. But then again, the first Killzone's online play was notoriously plagued by cheaters and glitches (until it was patched), and Liberation didn't receive true "Infrastructure" online play until eight months after release. Ultimately, Killzone 2 deserves to be judged on its own merits, and Guerrilla hopes that gamers (and the gaming press) keep an open mind and move beyond the Halo-killer nonsense. "We've never singled out Halo as the one title to beat. We still don't," Hulst explains. "This year, it's been all about Call of Duty 4, but perhaps the next year it will be something else." ж EGM Extras: Want to go behind the scenes with Killzone 2? Point your browser to EGM.1UP. com for ELECTRONIC бАМ * island farms, don king, stars that sing, and the master of dismemberment METAL GEAR SOLID 4: GUNS OF THE PATRIOTS We Love Golf! Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon Battlefield: Bad Company Civilization Revolution Top Spin 3 SingStar Haze Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots 78 Supreme Commander 79 Spectral Force 3 79 Don King Presents: Prizefighter 80 Міпја Gaiden II 84 Ріпа! Fantasy М 86 Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness 86 Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee 2 88 Download Round-Up NINJA GAIDEN ЇЇ have always stood as one of EGM's defining characteristics. Sure, four-man reviews eventually became three-man reviews, and even that was a big deal at the time. This issue's big change: We're moving forward with—gasp!— one-man reviews. Don't panic; three- man reviews are still here for the big games, where we have the space to really do them justice. Previous console generations were simpler times, but that's become increasingly difficult over the years, thanks to the growing complexity of games—and instead of three people saying very little in 90 or so words each, we feel it benefits our readers more when one person says a lot in 350 words. Again: Don't panic. It's a big change, but it's a necessary one in order for us to keep bringing you the definitive, quality reviews that you rightfully expect from us. —Ryan Scott, Exec. Editor, Reviews 66 • ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM 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 grades. Platinum: all A+s; Gold: All A-s and better; Silver: Nothing lower than a B. Game of the Month goes to the highest-graded game with unanimously “Good” grades, and Shame of the Month is the reverse. Simple. PAGE Р” PAGE FAGE 7Ü "ui а за Civ Rev: Prizefighter: РЕМ: А Very, very No Fight classic, with heavy lifting Night, no sir touching THIS MONTH'S REVIEW CREU Dashing, debonair, will fight off killer robots/samurai/pirates for a nominal fee 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, аз experiences. Head over to ReviewCrew.1UP.com to meet all of the 1UP Network's expert reviewers. And check out 1UP.com for reviews of games we didn't have enough time or room for. James “МИКтап” Mielke Perplexed by Nick’s gripes with Ninja Gaiden II's camera, Milky ordered young Suttner to spend “quality” time with Kingdom Hearts and GunValkyrie before ever issuing a complaint about a game's camera again. Now Playing: Ninja Gaiden II Blog: milkman.1UP.com Greg Ford Greg Ford would like to share a message that was as true in his time as it is today. Be excellent, games. Be excellent. Also, regarding Crispin: Maybe. Now Playing: Burnout: Paradise, Metal Gear Solid 4, Grand Theft Auto IV, Assault Heroes 2, Assassin's Creed Blog: egmford.1UP.com Shane Bettenhausen This month, Shane jetted all over the globe to scope hot new titles. Unfortunately, somewhere between Vegas and Amsterdam, he lost all sense of time and space...though replaying MGS4 could also be to blame for that. Now Playing: Killzone 2, Street Fighter IV, MGS4 Blog: egmshane.1UP.com Ryan Scott As а result of previously good- timing-gone-bad, Ryan spent this issue's production cycle getting engaged and gambling away his life savings in Las Vegas...leaving poor Nick to do all the last-minute work. What a jerk! Now Playing: MGS4 Blog: gfwryan.1UP.com Andrew Pfister Andrew's on a power trip lately, saving the world in MGS4 with ‘one hand and bringing it to the brink of nuclear annihilation in Civilization with the other. As he writes this, the idea for Hideo Kojima's Civilization is born. Now Playing: Metal Gear Online, Civilization Revolution Blog: andrewpf.1UP.com Sam Kennedy Sam's been on a major golf kick recently, hitting the links whenever possible. No, he doesn't actually practice putting in the office—but he has been playing a bunch of We Love Golf! Too bad his handicap isn't as low in real life. Now Playing: We Love Golf! Blog: capnsmak.1UP.com Jennifer Tsao After reviewing Civilization Revolution this month, Jen's all about world domination. The latest salvo in her war of cultural influence? Crispin Boyer. бо forth and spread your writing far and wide, Crispin! The Aztecs won't know what hit 'em! Now Playing: Boom Blox Blog: egmjennifer.1UP.com Jeremy Parish Senior Edit Parish digs the Final Fantasy series, sure, but after reviewing about half a dozen Final Fantasy titles already this year he's starting to sympathize with Sephiroth just a teensy bit. Mmm, Aerith-kebobs. Now Playing: Snake's Revenge, Judgment Silversword Blog: jparish.1UP.com Nick Suttner Nick finally purchased his first HDTV this month. Well, not so much “purchased” as “traded his mortal soul to the devil." He gets to watch movies and play games like never before, and he simply has to have his personal resolution dialed down a notch. Now Playing: flOw, Rez HD Blog: rocksolidaudio.1UP.com Crispin Boyer The end. Or is it??? Now Playing: Jaws Unleashed, MGS4, Boom Blox Blog: egmcrispin.1UP.com Also on deck Jeff Green Matt Leone Sean Molloy Shawn Elliott Garnett Lee Alice Liang Anthony Gallegos David Ellis Eric Neigher Mike Nelson ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM , 67 d THE VERDICT SAM The Good: From the guys who brought you Mario Golf The Bad: You don't actually swing the Wii-mote like a club You Could Just: Play Wii Sports Golf THE VERDICT JEREMY В+ The Good: Beautiful Soundtrack, unrelent- ing challenge level The Bad: Only the hardcore need apply Kweh: Winner of the 2008 "Cute But Deadly" award 383.33y Well, we like it pretty well, at any rate... + ЗАМ: I'm not sure about the rest of you, but the one thing Га expect from any golf game on the Wii is that you'd, you know, be able to hit the ball by actually swinging the Wii Remote like a golf club. Well, that's definitely not the case here. Instead, We Love Golf! uses a variation on the system that developer Camelot created for the Hot Shots Golf and Mario Golf games. You do use the Wii-mote, but it's really not the golf experience many players will be looking for—it's more about slight, precise motions in conjunction with an onscreen meter, and less about real swings. It is, however, exactly the experience that fans of those other golf series will want—like Camelot's other aforementioned golf games, We Chocobo's ability: Flame Lancell! Chocobos gone wild + JEREMY: The roguelike genre is seriously blowing up these days. Shiren the Wanderer, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon, Chocobo’s Dungeon: Their tone, quality, and spe- cific gameplay mechanics may vary, but they all belong to a distinct niche that obeys very specific (and usually very unforgiving) rules. For instance, when you die, you lose everything... often including the shirt off your back. Chocobo’s Dungeon falls more on the challenging end of the spectrum than something like Pokémon, although it's not quite as brutal as Shiren. Death doesn't reset your noble chocobo's experience back to level 1, and you get to keep your equipped weapon and armor. Don't expect a cake- walk, though. Between this and Final 68 • ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM Love Golf! is supercute, lots of fun, and filled with plenty to do. It's also really accessible—one of the trademarks of Camelot's handi- work. While most of the fundamentals of golf are here, everything's pre- sented in a simple, fun manner that even the most inexperienced golfer can have fun with. So while you start off playing on your standard grass course, you quickly move on to beach resorts, desert ruins, and pirate- themed areas. Your characters, too, bubble with personality (and in addi- tion to being able to use your Miis, you can unlock a bevy of established Capcom stars like Jill Valentine and Chun-Li). Uppity music plays in the background, celebratory displays accompany good shots, and an excit- Wii Fantasy IV, July is apparently the month that Square Enix decided to kick your ass and make you like it. With such a hardcore game experi- ence, it stands to reason that the ele- ments that make or break it are fairly genre-specific; indeed, only roguelike aficionados are likely to fully appreci- ate this dungeon-diving adventure. Which isn't to say that newcom- ers won't enjoy it—on the contrary, Chocobo's Dungeon offers a forgiving learning curve to ease you into the adventure for a couple of hours before turning up the challenge level. The game features simple but lush graph- ics, a decent story, and an utterly gorgeous "best of Final Fantasy" soundtrack that will send shivers of nostalgia up any old-schooler's spine. FINAL FANTASY FABLES: CHOCOBO'S DUNGEON Ш Publisher: Square Enix № Developer: Square Enix № Players: 1 Ш ESRB: Everyone 10+ WE LOVE GOLF! W Publisher: Capcom № Developer: Camelot и Players: 1-4 Ш ESRB: Everyone 10+ able Wii-mote character loves to cheer you on. Where We Love Golf! also works well is in its variety of options. In addi- tion to your standard tournaments, the game includes training modes, char- acter matches, ring shots, near-pin shots, and more. Not to mention mul- tiplayer (including online play) when you tire of hitting the greens alone. It's enough to keep golfing fans entertained, and it's nice to see Camelot's golf system enhanced with motion controls. But like | mentioned earlier, players looking for a more true-to-life golf experience on Wii may want to go with something like Tiger Woods—or simply just play more of Wii Sports Golf, which comes packed in with the system. And therein lies the game's great- est strength: It makes a niche style accessible without dumbing it down to utter pointlessness (as the Pokémon iterations did). It excellently mixes all of the traditions of the Mystery Dungeon games—tough-but-fair dif- ficulty, tons of improvisational strategy and the need for effective item use, special restricted dungeons, equip- ment forging—while incorporating some brilliant new ideas, such as the job system that allows the chocobo hero to change and develop his class and make use of innate skills. As with all games of this nature, Chocobo's Dungeon will mainly appeal to genre fans...but it's good enough that any- one can enjoy it (well, anyone with a slight masochistic streak). PS3/XB360 и B-Company's boys undo bullet damage by shooting up an all-purpose anesthetic—which means you more or less end up doing drugs every time you reload. BATTLEFIELD: BAD COMPANY № Publisher: Electronic Arts B Developer: EA DICE № Players: 1-24 Ш ESRB: Teen THE VERDICT SHAWN The Good: Very good multiplayer The Bad: Inadequate A.l., dopey plot Treasure Trove: Unlockable equip- ment encourages repeat play Bring the house down + SHAWN: Gears of War's cover and concealment and BioShock’s Plasmid abilities are concepts around which developers designed whole games. Concepts, not gimmicks (as in, the game needs something extra to sell it). Neither of the features named above fit that bill. You can’t grouse about Plasmids apart from BioShock's other qualities, since both the first-person shooter's enemies and frozen or flood- ed environments thoroughly tie into the player's fire and electric powers. Battlefield: Bad Company's destructible buildings and terrain ought to amount to something of similar magnitude. The trouble with telling us that we can demolish everything is that we'll try to. Like other shooters to make similar claims, Bad Company has its limits, but while the game's world isn't absolutely breakable, it usually seems so...as long as you're using high explosives. Let me split hairs here: Grenades erase whole sections of houses; bullets, however, stop dead in the thinnest wood slat. But what Bad Company needs isn't a trip to a real-life firing range... If Bad Company's crackshot mercs reacted to their changing battlefield, the game could squash all charges of gimmickry. Again, this is the difference between items for the backs of boxes and game-defining features—the difference between an opponent who believably runs through holes blown through a farmhouse and one who needn't ever move because he knows both where you are and that he'll hit you with every bullet he fires. Unsurprising and incapable of being surprised, Bad Company's bad guys leech the fun from one firefight after another. The solution? Online opponents. When players hear inbound artillery, they know to get to a house's bottom floors before the roof is blasted off; henpecked by sharpshooting, they deforest a sniper's blind; cornered, they demolish a back wall and retreat. EA DICE dodges the trap it's laid for itself (.е., games devolving into grenade- launcher duels) by reducing splash damage. Unless it detonates in his face, a single explosive shell stands a greater chance of dazing an enemy than killing him outright—one smart move among the many (such as inspired map design) that make Bad Company a very good multiplayer game. жй ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM • 69 Galleon % 3 Moves ® Defend в Wait One Turn ® Civilopedia CIVILIZATION REVOLUTION @ Publisher: 2K Games Ш Developer: Firaxis № Players: 1-4 Ш ESRB: Everyone 10+ The world begins with you As a casual Civilization player on the PC (Mr. Jeff Green here would likely defeat me before | could even invent paper), | came into Revolution expecting a slightly scaled-back version of the turn-based empire-building game, adapted to a console controller. The abundance of information at the beginning of a Civ game can be daunting, but Revolution does a great job of appropriate hand-holding, with its array of cartoon advisers and "Civilopedia." Its control scheme is remarkably adapted to analog sticks: Selecting units is fast and easy, as is moving to new positions or issuing build orders. This is the core of the Civ experience, and Revolution gets it right. The more colorful and carica- This PC port has a great control setup Games can end quickly Lincoln and Gandhi were jerks 70 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY , EGM.1UP.COM tured look of the cities and characters is also better suited to a television than a PC monitor, and the music and sound effects—though intermittent and poorly balanced at times—are classic Civilization elements. But | still wasn’t sold on the cuts that Revolution chose to make for console newcomers. | still would have liked some more terrain options instead of predetermined continent layouts. The diplomacy mechanics took a minor hit, too, with the lack of defensive alliances among the war- mongering world leaders. But Revolution's greatest omission is testament to just how addictive the game is. It’s disappointing not having the option to play “опе more turn..." after a victory condition is achieved and continuing to build (or rebuild) your empire. Yes, | may have lost the Space race to Catherine the Great, but my battleship fleet is itching for a little payback. You want to keep playing it well past the completion of any objec- tives or reasonable bed time—that's Civilization's hallmark, and Revolution cultivates that same addiction. The sky is officially falling. Civilization has long been the poster child for PC Games That Could Never Be Ported, yet here we are with a Civ game that not only doesn't suck but also somehow manages—despite all of the cuts Andrew mentions, and even more that he doesn't—to completely capture the essence of what makes the PC game so great. The controls are indeed a dream, effectively putting to rest the notion that a strategy game can't work on a console. The more cartoony graph- ics and smaller scale may make hardcore PC guys think this has been “dumbed down," but, yeah, you wish. This game will still kick your ass on the highest difficulty levels. The smaller scale actually makes it harder, especially once the other civs rally against you. You could play other humans instead, but note that the game always requires five civs, so Advantage! ЁТ zu. i W LATEIN Guards Archer Army a >= Indian Legion Army 7 "A Defense 21 even if you just want to play 1-on-1 with a friend, the game will add three computer players automatically, which kind of sucks. But overall, even given the high expectations, this is a bril- liant port. + JENNIFER: Civ on PC scared me. The deep strategy, constant com- mands, difficult compromises, classi- cal music—everything about it always seemed so...intimidating. So, going into the (supposedly) dumbed-down Revolution, | was cautiously optimistic. “р Attack E From the Stone Age to the Space Age, Revolu- | tion is an impressive port of the iconic PC game. And though it took me a ton of experi- mentation through six campaigns (several of which ended in punishing defeat), | eventually discovered that yes, 1, too, could play Civilization! |, too, could feel joy as | watched my tanks rush in to capture Napoléon's capital. |, too, could rejoice as rival cities fell prey to my society's irresist- ible culture. |, too, could marvel at my civilization's evolution from bows and arrows to space stations. And |, too, could become addicted to this end- lessly replayable beast. That's not to say the game isn't still a bit intimidating. Listen to your advis- ers, take your time exploring the map, and play at the easy difficulty levels until you feel really comfortable. Next thing you know, you'll discover that you, too, can play Civilization! And that's a wonderful thing. 4% ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM • 71 ~ PACIFIC LIFE CIFIC LIF" "E. PA n THE VERDICT AVERAGE The Good: Reward- ing once you get the hang of the controls The Bad: Pretty ruth- less until you do The Original Top Spin: Still the best tennis game out there Tennis for the hardcore + RYAN: | suck at Top Spin 3...or, at least, that's what | assumed for hours after laying hands on the game. As an arcade tennis fan going back to the good old days of Virtua Tennis, | found 2K Sports’ latest Top Spin downright frustrating. If you're expecting a high- res re-skin layered atop the same familiar control scheme and physics, prepare for a rude awakening. Top Spin 3's controls are less about the windup and more about the release. It's a difficult nuance to articulate on paper, but it's a big one that'll have Top Spin vets screaming until they acclimate. You're basi- cally tasked with timing your button releases and shot targeting in concert with your character's animations; the button assignments for various shots Her name is Ri - o THE VERDICT JENNIFER В+ The Good: Watching old Duran Duran music videos The Bad: Watching old Blue Óyster Cult music videos Promised: 25 to 50 new songs monthly are (mostly) the same as before, and positioning is every bit as important as in any tennis sim...but until you get the new swing physics down, you'll be eating the CPU's shots—a /ot—on even the easiest difficulty settings. These changes ostensibly make Top Spin З more intuitive; maybe Гт just stuck in my ways, but | don't get it. A crash course in the Top Spin School tutorial mode (an absolute requirement if you want to fully understand and enjoy this game) quickly convinced me that the controls were too demand- ing and unforgiving—and the default "| suck at everything" avatar that you guide through the career mode makes even the early matches that much more relentless. In essence, Top Spin 3 works you twice as hard to perform Video didn't kill the karaoke star + JENNIFER: If you're reading this, it means you're probably not that judgmental of karaoke. So let's dis- pense with the disclaimers about how dumb you feel sitting alone, singing popular songs while your PlayStation Eye camera records you belting out Coldplay so you can share videos of your performance with thousands of other losers—er, fans. Because that's what SingStar on PS3 enables gamers to do...and it does it rather well. The 30 songs on the disc offer a nice, and mostly multigenerational, sampling of music—fine for a quick- and-dirty karaoke party. Serious play- ers will run through those ditties pretty quick, though, at which point they can download additional songs for $1.49 each. The SingStore interface is easy 72 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM to use, and songs will be added regu- larly, so you'll (hopefully) never want for variety. SingStar's overall presenta- tion is slick—lyrics scroll across the Screen, and you sing notes to fill in bars on the display. As with all kara- oke games, the performance assess- ment is a bit touchy. Normal difficulty means anyone with a decent ear will be a rock star on the first outing, but on hard or higher, you really need to hit the notes just right. While you're singing, the original music video plays in the background, a feature | enjoyed a lot more than | expected to. If you've got the PlayStation Eye camera, you can also choose to display your own performance onscreen. And it's with this added gameplay element that SingStar truly excels. Wii/PS3/XB360 TOP SPIN 3 № Publisher: 2K Sports Ш Developer: PAM Ш Players: 1-4 Ш ESRB: Everyone half as well, and that’s quite a jarring change from the alluring simplicity of its predecessors. It’s a bit of an awkward comparison, but | see shades of Ninja Gaiden here: It's unassailably gratifying when the mechanics finally click and you start Slicing and volleying your way to vic- tory, but at the same time, it's prohibi- tive to folks who don't want to spend hours in the school of hard knocks, pursuing what should be a relatively uncomplicated act of learning the game's basic rules and logic. Top Spin 3 eschews difficulty curves in favor of a difficulty mountain...and if you're serious about your tennis, it's going to (eventually) reward you. But if you're the pick-up-and-play type, just stick to Virtua Tennis 3. PlayStation 3 SINGSTAR W Publisher: Sony CEA М Developer: Sony CE London Bi Players: 1-8 Ш ESRB: Teen Hook up the Eye, and the game automatically records videos as you sing. Generation YouTube will enjoy uploading videos to the game's online community, where users share and rate each other's performances. The variety here is predictable: fun, ener- getic videos of multiplayer parties with people in costumes having an awe- some time; sad sacks singing alone in their bedrooms; a girl serenading her cat; and so on. The community pro- vides a fun, voyeuristic activity that’ll engage true performers—and amuse those looking for some cheap laughs. SingStar isn't revolutionary, but uploading silly videos and watching other people's creations adds a new dimension. It gives you what every karaoke star wants: an audience. PlayStation 3 HAZE Ш Publisher: Ubisoft № Developer: Free Radical Ш Players: 1-16 Ш ESRB: Mature THE VERDICT G. FORD The Good: The Nectar boost system, some interesting multiplayer modes The Bad: Pretty much everything else The Ugly: The embarrassing box art Just say no + <. FORD: In one of the few things it gets right, Haze has an appropriate title. It feels incomplete and unsub- stantial—maybe it should've been held off for more seasoning, since as is, it'll soon rise into the gaming mias- ma of forgotten shooters. It offers a bit of creativity and decent multiplayer, but otherwise, it simply underwhelms. Putting aside its ham-handed, puffy-chest story about neither side of a war being the right one, this bland first-person shooter has one big thing going for it: its Nectar power-up system. Nectar is a bio-enhancing medication, and its benefits include greater speed, strength, accuracy, and boosted awareness, meaning enemies handily show up highlighted onscreen. This juicing ability gives the typical FPS gameplay a twist. Instead of being a superhuman throughout, you have to regulate your power in bursts. Likewise, you eventually adopt another set of gameplay mechanics, including the abilities of playing dead and stealing weapons from enemies. It's creative, but it doesn't save Haze, as most everything else misses the mark. The visuals are particularly bad, the weapons have no heft to them, the vehicles control too wildly, and the А.І. is decidedly amateur. Four-player online co-op helps (and you can jump in a game at will), since playing a game with others trumps suffering alone...but it doesn't change the lousy campaign. Multiplayer offers the standard deathmatch and team deathmatch, but the choice of sides п Mr. Red Head here isn't the only one wondering what went wrong. livens them up: The troopers have Nectar at their disposal; rebels get to play dead, among other moves. Team Assault mode offers different layered objectives depending on which of the six maps you play and team you're on. On the swamp map, for example, the rebels need to burn down Nectar plants while Mantel troopers need to protect them. Most entertain for a few go-rounds, but by no means will this be a multimonth addiction. And how come it doesn't even have as many multiplayer options as last-gen's TimeSplitters: Future Perfect (by the same developer, mind you), a superior shooter in almost every respect? With maybe a weekend's worth of tepid entertainment here, kicking this humdrum habit won't be hard. #% ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM , 73 bd GAME OF THE MONTH METAL GEAR SOLID 4: GUNS OF THE PATRIOTS Publisher: Konami BB Developer: Kojima Productions № Players: 1-16 Ш ESRB: Mature Almost as fresh as the original Cut-scene- heavy second act Shockingly, MGS4 explains the entire series’ plot Solid Snake’s farewell tour | didn't really “get” Metal Gear’s stealth concepts back when | played the original NES game, but I’ve grown to love the series’ emphasis on avoidance over conflict. | love its goofy G./. Joe narrative, too—an odd marriage of fanatical military realism and preposterous superhero soldiers. They’re strange bedfellows, allowing you to contemplate the philosophical ramifications of nuclear proliferation while battling a gunslinging Illuminati- like triple-agent possessed by the main character’s cloned brother’s severed hand. But this schizophrenia is part of the series’ charm, and in that sense, Metal Gear Solid 4 is the series’ ultimate expression. It’s obsessively detailed, ham-handedly dramatic, intensely bizarre...and never has the УГВОМС GAMING MONTHLY , EGM.1UP.COM divide between these disparate ele- ments felt so jarring. It comes so close to working, too. MGS4's first half is perfection, finally eliminating the series' tendency toward forcing gamers to watch as much as they play. Cut-scenes are frequent but generally brief and interesting. Better yet, hero Solid Snake's support staff isn't constantly bugging him via Codec (the Metal Gear equivalent of Dick Tracy's two-way wrist communicator); now calls are infrequent, with essential information relayed mainly through cut-scenes and in-game voiceover. As for the parts you play? Truly brilliant. MGS4 initially places Snake in an unidentified Middle Eastern war zone, a far cry from the forests and bases of previous games. Solitude is replaced by chaos—violence directed not at Snake, but instead exchanged between rival military factions. Amid this mayhem, players enjoy a fantastic amount of freedom to pursue their objectives: Lie low and avoid detec- tion, or team up with insurgents to fight off privatized military forces. Find nonlethal solutions, or make use of the in-game currency (a series first) to stockpile a ludicrous amount of deadly ordnance. Wear a disguise to hide in plain sight, or stick to your high-tech stealth camo to sneak about in more traditional ways. It's truly Metal Gear as a modern experience, a combina- tion of the series' trademark stealth with openness reminiscent, in some ways, of Assassin's Creed. Add a new streamlined combat interface, and you have what is unquestionably the series' best action. The problem, unfortunately, is that the game slips back into old habits during the homestretch. My review sessions were spread across a couple of days at Konami's offices, and the second day left me wondering if someone switched discs overnigh: After several hours of open, dynamic combat, MGS4 reverts to tired, sit- and-listen storytelling. It's an odd inversion for the franchise: When the first MGS took the world by storm, its cut-scenes were revolutionary while the gameplay consisted of clunky 3D action grafted onto an awkward control scheme. Here, the action feels fresh, but the narrative feels dated. MGS4’s second half consists of practi- cally nothing but cut-scenes padded by brief action sequences—and while series devotees will hang on every plot revelation and shocking twist as the epic storyline draws to its grand and satisfying finale, “interaction” begins to seem like an afterthought. The remain- ing shooting and sneaking segments are still solid, but the game never revisits the organic flexibility of those opening hours. In short, MGS4 is hamstrung by its own legacy, by a massive story with a lot of ground to cover. But the drive for closure affects the action, too; take the game’s bosses, whose names are meant to echo MGSS's Cobra Unit and MGS1’s Fox Hound (Raging Raven, for instance, evokes both The Fury and Vulcan Raven). None of the encounters with these cyborg women are as engrossing as their namesakes, relying instead on familiar gimmicks. Worse yet: The final battle throws out all of MGS4's phenomenal gameplay advances for an awful minigame that pales next to the perfection of MGS3’s climactic showdown—all in the name of parallelism. | get it: Metal Gear’s always been self-referential, often to the point of self-parody. Yet while | appreciate MGS4’s symbolism and fan service, | wish the series could end with the same sense of wonder and newness that made MGS1 so mind-blowing a decade ago. Instead, this final chapter is a work of uneven brilliance whose forward-thinking design is hampered by its role as the conclusive chapter of a massive and convoluted saga. It's a great game (no question), with an intri- cate story and some brilliant stealth action backed up by tremendous production values. But, freed of conti- nuity’s constraints, it could have been ELECTRON GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM • 75 more than merely great. Solid Snake always complains about the burden of his legacy— who knew, all along, that he simply spoke for his creator? It was disheartening, but maybe not entirely surprising, to find that MGS4's significant game ideas dried up well before the fiction wrapped. The game is front-loaded with change, with Snake's accelerated physical decay, his alliance with rebel forces, and plenty of globe-trotting during the game's first three acts. Yet the story's rising action—and eventual parade of conclusions—give it a defi- nite action-movie vibe. Part one is so heavy on action that it tempts you away from the mantra of "silent intrusion." With the incentive of Drebin points (the aforementioned in-game currency) and the arsenal of INTHLY * EGM.1UP.COM gear Snake has at his disposal, the penalty for going in loud is essentially erased. Those dedicated to the cause can still find pleasure in stealth, but when the rebel guerillas launch coun- terattacks, it’s hard to resist joining their battle cry. Both methods work equally well, because the new over- the-shoulder camera and Snake’s Solid Eye system—a multiuse eye patch with various gameplay-helping filters—gives you a clearer picture of the battlefield, whether you're looking for a target to kill or a place to hide. But, like Snake, the gameplay starts to fade away as the end draws near, when it comes time to stop asking questions and start providing 20 years’ worth of answers, and MGS4's pace is forced to accommodate them. As is customary, this is in the form of lengthy cut-scenes, and that's why MGS4 feels like a game in the first half and a film in the second. The finale doesn't lack epic moments—but take away the standard (and, for the first time, unnecessary) bizarre boss team and the nostalgia-draped handful of set-piece encounters and you're left with emotionally charged, interactive cinema, which dominates the climax. Yet the end should please fans regardless of how MGS4 gets there. Nearly every question receives an explanation, a few surprises are left in store, and as long as you con- sider the game's sci-fi “war theater of the absurd” context, it— amazingly enough—ends up making sense. It’s not meant to be taken too seriously (especially with series creator Hideo Kojima’s indulgent tendency to ramble and inject heavy-handed preaching or self-referential jokes at inappropriate times), but to maintain this kind of nar- rative order amid so much ridiculous chaos is an impressive feat. It's true—MGS4 is more movie than game. Add up the cut- Scenes, Codec calls, mission briefings, and history lessons and you basically have a full TV season here. It feels very much like a soap opera, too: Will they? Won't they? Who will die?! You're just along for the ride, jumping in to play when the game deems fit. While the writers could have cut some story fat—or perhaps done a better job separating it from the impor- tant scenes—l'm impressed by how well the narrative holds up regardless of how much you know about previous games in the series. | came into it as someone who knew most of the char- acters but not the smaller details of the Online Still Offline We mentioned it last month, but the situation with Metal Gear Online (the multiplayer portion of Metal Gear Solid 4 that's included on the disc) hasn't changed. The beta period is long over, and during our visit to Konami during which we reviewed the game, they weren't able to show us anything beyond what we already knew. What we do know is that MGO is a methodical, unique experience unlike most of the first- or third- person online games you may be accustomed to. Communication is absolutely vital, and understanding how your different item and weapon loadouts work in conjunction with the level terrain and mode objec- tives makes MGO a more cerebral experience. Translation: It's worth experimenting with...but, ultimately, it's not for everybody. series’ history, and | was able to follow almost all of what happened. And it’s great fun to watch; the attention to detail in the cut-scenes, from the voice acting to the combat choreography, is pretty ridiculous even for Metal Gear. My biggest questions heading into the game concerned Kojima Productions’ claims that this would be a more user-friendly MGS. I’ve always preferred Splinter Cell’s control schemes, so I’m very happy to see the user-controllable camera and over- the-shoulder aiming systems working properly in tandem here. Combine that with a camouflage system where your suit automatically transforms when you hug a wall, and the ability to shoot while on your back if an enemy knocks you down, and the game doesn’t feel nearly as rigid as previous games in the series. You can find a few legacy quirks if you look for them—grabbing someone from behind still feels clumsy, and certain animations, like crawling, still feel stiff (which makes me wonder why the designers hid items under tables, forcing you to lie on your belly, then crawl forward a few inches, then back out, and then stand up, breaking the flow of the game)—but MGS4 abso- lutely feels like a game that takes care of the player, which is not something | would've said about MGS3. In some ways, MGS4 is the Resident Evil 4 of the series: It removes some EGM Extras: of the franchise’s notable complexities Need a hand and comes up with another cut-scene- with taking out Liquid Ocelot and heavy story centered on a virus. But most importantly, it feels like an over- haul without losing the fun details and epic feel that have always made the series work. ri company? Head to EGM.1UP.com for a full mission briefing from our Metal Gear Solid 4 SuperGuide. ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM • 77 ХБох 360 ‚ 359 Wi Cybranian oceanfront property values НИ an all-time low. SUPREME COMMANDER Bi Publisher: Aspyr Ш Developer: Hellbent/Gas Powered Games Ш Players: 1-4 Ш ESRB: Everyone 10+ THE VERDICT MIKE N. С AVERAGE The Good: Massive scale, complex strat- egy elements The Bad: Limited unit info, glitches Jeremy Soule: Once again, amazing work on the soundtrack Brilliant strategy, unstable port + MIKE М: Supreme Commander may be one of the deepest real-time strat- egy games to show up on consoles, but it's far from the best—it could've used a few more months of tweaks before requiring real-time-strategy fans to shell out the full admission price. As good as the tactical and strategy elements are, frequent lock- ups, glitches, and a limited amount of crucial onscreen information hamper the overall package. While SupCom tries to deliver a classic RTS experience (gather, build, attack) on a massive scale, it's not always up to the task. Even with my review copy installed on the 360's hard drive, the game froze regularly, forcing me to restart missions. When | chose to save my game more often— 78 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM fearing future mission restarts—l encountered additional lockups. These issues make the lost poten- tial more apparent when the game is running smoothly. As with other RTS games, SupCom's single-player mis- Sions introduce players to their units" functions, and the solid tutorial sys- tem makes the tactical management (involving hundreds of units) feel like a breeze during the lengthy campaign. With each of the 18 missions taking hours to complete, you'll be a near- master at each of the three races when you take your game online; the smooth multiplayer provides a great avenue to test your homegrown strat- egies. Zooming between the ground- level battlefield view and sky-high tac- tical perspective works well with the right analog stick, but not everything's зо reliable. For instance, chaotic audio in tacti- cal view drove me to mute my TV, and the lack of statistical detail for each unit results in a poor user interface. This info is in the manual, and these facts were displayed in the PC ver- sion—why not here? And frankly, the reliance on the D-pad for build queues and unit functions feels backward— not evolutionary—when compared to the 360's superior Universe at War. SupCom enters a growing console- RTS market, with UAW as the genre's measuring stick. And while these games can work sans mouse, until the user-interface and technical issues are addressed here, SupCom can't stand toe-to-toe with the competition. rir ХБох 360 SPECTRAL FORCE 3 E Publisher: Atlus № Developer: Idea Factory и Players: 1 № ESRB: Teen Solid strategy stuff sans slickness + ERIC: It took Idea Factory two years to get Spectral Force 3 port- ed over from Japan, but looking at the dated visuals, you’d think those were doggie years. For all of Atlus’ hype about the game's “full HD support,” SF3 looks no better than your average PS2 title. Still, if you don’t mind the watered-down aesthetic, SF3 offers a solid strategy-role-playing-game experience—albeit one that’s very Japanese. Every role-playing cliché from the Land of the Rising Sun makes an appearance here, from brooding, emo'd-out characters to animated cut-scenes that trigger when you perform a special move. Gameplay is similar to other Idea Factory titles: You set up your dudes on a grid, move them around, and whack the sashimi out of whatever comes into range. While everything's strictly turn-based, all attacks are chosen and executed with a single button press, cut- ting down on menu slogging and keeping the combat moving at a fairly breezy clip. An interesting twist: The closer to death your characters are, the more powerful they get—which makes for plenty of “miraculous comebacks” and encourages risky tactics. This, in turn, leads to plenty of thrilling, against-all-odds battles. But when you're not giving your sword a guided tour of the bad guys' intestines, things move quite slowly, usually via series after series of anime talking heads. From these, you'll learn that Neverland, the world where SF3 takes place, is in the midst of a war among all 10 of its major powers. To the game's considerable credit, your party isn't forced to side with any one of these factions; they can freely choose whom to fight for and what missions to accept. With each country fitting somewhere on the continuum of beatific to really-not-very-nice (each also offering you differing party members), and with the 100-plus diverse mission types, SF3 features signifi- cantly more replayability than most tactical games. Another unexpected "strength" is SF3’s unique approach to voice-talent casting; the developers obviously employed some Sort of wide-open casting call for the janitorial staff. Kudos to Idea Factory for giving these needy souls a chance to display their acting skills on the national stage—and further kudos to Vizio for giving my television a “mute” button! THE VERDICT ERIC The Good: Your choices affect the course of the storyline The Bad: Friends may think you're playing a PS2 game The Voice Actors: Are back working the fryer at Carl's Jr. Xbox 360 DON KING PRESENTS: PRIZEFIGHTER Ii Publisher: 2K Sports Ш Developer: Venom Wi Players: 1-2 Ш ESRB: Teen This one looks a bit punchy + DAVID: When a boxing game features (infamous promoter Don King as the pitchman, it's hard not to take notice. But if you're looking for the second coming of Fight Night here—or even a viable alternative—you've gotta continue the search elsewhere. Prizefighter commits two boxing-game cardinal sins: It has incon- sistent, spotty hit detection and unpredictable animations. As you mash buttons to throw punches (unlike Fight Night's analog control), bouts more closely resemble a Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robot slapfest than an actual boxing match. Boxers react to phantom punches, arms and gloves often pass through opponents, and it's not surpris- ing to see a knockdown from a punch to the shoulder. Visually, the game doesn't compare favorably to the competition, either—the character models would look right at home in a last-gen boxing title, a far cry from trading blows with Fight Night's comparatively gor- geous pugilists. Career mode is one aspect of the game that actually works, though. It's set against the backdrop of a fictional documentary about your fighter's rise from obscurity, featuring real-world box- ers, promoters, and actors. You can manually work out in the gym before each fight, but the rhythm-based training minigames are so ridiculously difficult that you're better off autotraining. Boxing can be a seedy business, and Prizefighter doesn't shy away from this. Occasionally, you'll be thrown extra challenges to overcome to win a fight. In one match, my opponent put an uniden- tified liquid on his gloves; every time he hit me, my vision went blur- ry. You've also got to watch out for injuries—in one match, | couldn't punch my adversary with my left hand because l'd broken two of my fingers. Inexplicably, the game never explained that punching with this hand hurt my fighter; only after getting pounded for several rounds did | notice the handicap. You'll also experience several flashback sequences taking on the role of past real-life boxers; it's interesting, but except for the sepia tone, there's little difference. With a little more time spent in development polishing the techni- cal problems, Prizefighter could've been an enjoyable experience. As it is, you'd have to take quite a few blows to the head to have much fun with this one. THE VERDICT DAVID The Good: Well-made documentary narrative The Bad: About as attractive as a punch-drunk boxer Ridiculous: Getting KO'd from a smack to the shoulder ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM • 79 Хрох 360 № Ryu is a man of style—Silver Surfer crotch, Wolverine claws, and solid gold ski boots. Heavy. NINJA GAIDEN II Bi Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios Ш Developer: Team Ninja Ш Players: 1 Ш ESRB: Mature THE VERDICTS The Good: Intense, enjoyable combat The Bad: Craptastic camera, inconsistent difficulty World of Wax: Why is everything still so shiny and smooth? Bow to master Came + NICK: Ninja Gaiden's guts were never this satisfying, and for those who thrive on such things, | won't deter you from diving in. The combat is as rhythmic and precise as ever, visually reinvigorated with fountains of blood and endless amputations. For the rest of us, though, it's never been more evident that Ninja Gaiden is a purebred fighting series shoehorned into an action-adventure presentation. NG2 isn't an evolution of the game we've played for four years under vari- ous guises—it’s simply a more violent but otherwise predictable sequel. Team Ninja again chose to focus squarely on the combat. Though a partially regenerating health bar helps keep things slightly less punishing most of the time, it is again very nec- essary to play smart and make the most of the fantastically deep fighting system. NG2’s battles indulge a satis- fying intimacy; vicious enemies don't stand around waiting for their turn to attack—they dive right in and over- whelm you when they get the chance. If only any other area of the game received such loving attention. It may be a game about combat, but it has more than its fair share of simple platforming and exploring. Both of those elements are done horribly, as hero Ryu Hayabusa is regularly at odds with his surroundings. Invisible walls around every area maintain an awkward couple of feet between Ryu and any physical interaction with the backgrounds, which—while generally pretty—feel artificially desolate until the bad guys appear out of nowhere. The awful camera compounds those problems. It drags along behind you like a wounded dog and wanders off on its own when you need it most. For every satisfying battle you blood- ily emerge from, you'll be walloped across the face with an obtuse design decision elsewhere. NG2 is still a difficult game (even on the easiest setting), but it too often straddles the line between "rewarding challenge" and “аппоуапсе.” Its puzzles occupy a familiar corner of time-wasting, with minimal (but still unnecessary) backtracking to, say, open a door you couldn't open 30 seconds ago. Boss- es are horribly inconsistent in their dif- ficulty—some go down with a minute of slashing or a couple of shots from ITHLY * EGM.1UP.COM • 81 E Weapon choice can make a big difference. These tonfa are good for humans...not so good for bugs. the right type of Ninpo magic, while others require stupidly specific timing and full cooperation from the belliger- ent camera. It's dismaying that these elements are simply brushed aside under the assumption that the combat can sup- port the weight of the entire experi- ence. When things click—like on the perfectly paced Airship level—it most certainly does, but it's an otherwise inconsistent package with almost as many frustrations as satisfactions. This is a game built squarely for Ninja Gaiden fans, who will play it on the toughest difficulties and upload their best playthrough videos online. For those competitive purposes, it excels; for less-devoted action-adventure fans, it's more of a violent curios- ity than something to get fully—and financially—invested in. 82 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM + SHANE: When Tecmo's Ninja Gaiden erupted on to the original Xbox four years ago, it completely galvanized the staid "character action" genre with its intensely demanding gameplay and staggeringly beauti- ful visuals. That watershed title lazily coasted through multiple rereleases (Black, Sigma), but now, a true new- gen sequel arrives in an attempt to unseat Capcom's Devil May Cry 4 as lord of the stylish swordplay pantheon. Unfortunately, don't expect the familiar-feeling NG2 to have as power- ful an impact as its predecessor. As Nick said, combat remains the game's strongest suit, as you're again forced to play both offensively and defen- Sively in order to handle common, everyday enemies. Nothing's more embarrassing than being taken out by a faceless ninja thug (or even worse... a sword-wielding dog), so you'll need to master blocking, counterattacking, and crafty weapon selection in order to survive on any difficulty setting. But again, that's hardly revolutionary for this series—although veterans will spy. a few choice additions to the fighting formula (such as Ryu's grisly dismem- berment moves and obnoxious sui- cide-bombing foes), this game plays remarkably similar to the last one. If DMC4 lets you switch between weapons and combat styles while you slice baddies in real time, why does NG2 still pause the onscreen action? While the gameplay still clearly ranks among the best in the business, other aspects are beginning to feel dated. Prepare to expend plenty of energy fighting with the haphazard, manu- ally controlled camera. Likewise, the game's clumsily handled narrative feels anything but modern, from its baffling pre-mission briefings to its ham-fisted, embarrassing cut-scenes. More and more, it's apparent that Team Ninja's concept of cool involves marching out a parade of massively endowed doll-like women and rubber- suited monstrosities that Rita Repulsa might have sent against the Power Rangers. But even if these tacky trappings make NG2 feel like a guilty pleasure, its refined gameplay war- rants a purchase for gamers craving a challenge. + DAVID: The lack of true real-time weapon switching is disappointing, and the unruly camera can indeed be a chore to babysit, but the combat still overshadows most other offerings in the genre. And for fans of dismem- berment, NG2 provides an outlet for Ryu Hayabusa and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls Whether it’s a nod to Indiana Jones or Halo 3, Ninja Gaiden II’s hidden skulls are just one of many seemingly sly references to other games out there. And as much as Team Ninja head Tomonobu Itagaki likes to publicly rag on other action-adventure games—Heavenly Sword and Devil May Cry 4, to name two—the description of NG2’s Rod of Trials item has us thinking that he may have a soft spot for at least some of the competition after all: “According to legend, this treasure was once possessed by the god of war himself.” Happy accident or homage? satiating their virtual bloodlust with a ramped-up violence quotient. Despite the addition of execution moves and a recharging life gauge, the series’ renowned (and reviled) difficulty is left mostly unchanged. If you’re not constantly blocking and dodging, you will be taken out by Random Evil Ninja No. 5. Players willing to take up the challenge and learn the intricacies of the combat, however, will be rewarded as they search for the perfect solution for dispatching enemies as efficiently as possible. Those looking for expansive expo- sition.can look elsewhere, though. The razor-thin plot about monsters unleashed on mankind serves only as an excuse for Ryu to embark on a world tour to extinguish evil. Taking a page from DMC4, many of the previously vanquished bosses reap- еее 4 » х $ E The boss Fiends look cool enough in battle, but hearing them talk is comedy gold. Not the good kind. № If your foe is missing a limb and still standing, hit the Y button to finish him off. Obliteration indeed. pear later in the game in a series of rematches, which does little but artificially extend the story. If only the game could keep up with the stun- ning backdrops and massive mobs of enemies tossed your way. On one occasion in particular, | found myself suddenly thrust into an unwanted bullet-time mode for several minutes while the game chugged to catch up with the onscreen action. | also endured occasional stops in the action (sometimes midfight!) as the game loaded up new areas. NG2 feels like an opportunity squandered. The game offers the same frustrating and ultimately satisfy- ing experience to those willing to learn its deep and complex fighting system, but several technical and design prob- lems keep it from continuing the evo- lution that its predecessor began. 4% EGM Extras: Even ninja masters can use a little help with some bosses. Hit up our Ninja Gaiden Il SuperGuide at ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM • 83 THE VERDICT 4 MY The Good: Classic RPG, more polished than the РЕЙ remake The Bad: 3D style feels pokier than the 2D original, ultimately superfluous Farewell, My Easytype: Hope you like your RPGs challenging! Ш Meet the new bosses—not the same as the old bosses. FINAL FANTASY Bi Publisher: Square Enix Ш Developer: Matrix Ш Players: 1 Ш ESRB: Everyone 10+ Play it again, Cecil...and again...and again... + JEREMY: How many times does one game need to be remade? The DS version of Final Fantasy IV marks Square Enix's fourth revisiting of the classic Super NES role-playing game in seven years' time. At some point, you'd think that the word “overkill” might occur to someone over there. Still, | can't bring myself to come down too hard on this effort, because (like the DS remake of Final Fantasy Ш) it’s a total, comprehensive, modern revamp featuring wholly new graphics, extra story, new game mechanics, an improved English localization—and even voice acting. This is no lazy port; on the contrary, it appears to have been designed with the realization that its target audience has already played some version of 84 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY , EGM.1UP.COM FFIV to death. With that in mind, the difficulty's ratcheted up to levels bor- dering on insanity, and tried-and-true tactics you've always used against bosses rarely work as expected. | actually found random encounters to be the most daunting aspect of the game— expect to die a lot once you enter a new dungeon. It's a nice challenge for old-timers, although sometimes the difficulty comes as a side effect of the sluggishness caused by the move to 3D. At least it's nice- looking 3D, even if its cartoony style doesn't really suit the story's melo- drama. "Adult" Rydia looks like some poor, tarted-up 8-year-old "beauty queen," and good luck taking villain Rubicante seriously when his regal, menacing voice comes from what looks like a red blob of cotton candy. Disappointingly, the postgame bonus content from GBA port FFIV Advance has been tossed aside in favor of “Augments”—unique new permanent character skills that open up some interesting strategies. They're nice, but | prefer the GBA approach of bringing back lost characters and allowing full party customization. Plus, getting the most from the Augment System requires stupid, counterintui- tive decisions. In other words, they're a sales pitch for the strategy guide, which just reinforces the cynical nature of this release. It's improved— perhaps even definitive—but comes much too soon after the last version. Only the game's most die-hard fans won't resent this double dip. #% Log on and take a brief survey at: датегвуоїсеЛир.сот | Password: egmsub “Yes, you're correct in thinking that will leave the abovementioned Mr. Bettenhausen jacket-less. No, we, his co-workers, are not entirely comfortable with the prospect of working shoulder-to-shoulder, as it were, with Mr. Bettenhausen, and only a thin cotton shirt standing between us and him. Given the increased likelihood of inadvertently mixing body fluids, this frightens us because while Mr. Bettenhausen appears to be in fine health, and our medical coverage here is rock solid, let's face it, the next Ebola virus, mutated by a steady diet of energy drinks and Street Fighter IV, is probably gestating at this very minute in his sebaceous glands. Don't let this in any way detract from the allure of winning the actual jacket. Really. The island is getting more and more lively. DS HARVEST MOON: ISLAND OF HAPPINESS Ш Publisher: Natsume № Developer: Marvelous Bi Players: 1 Ш ESRB: Everyone Plow, sow, water, pick... Ф ALICE: Unlike the Harvest Moon series’ surprising fantasy spin- off, Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon, Island of Happiness Sticks to the old farming-simulation formula: Starting with nothing but fertile land, you go through the daily chores that growing pro- duce and raising livestock entail, improving your estate until you someday marry one of the townsfolk. Since the series’ Super NES debut 11 years ago, each iteration has offered slight variations— adding animals here, new bachelor(ette)s there, or the occasional extra farming tool—but the same methodical-yet-addictive game- play always remains. So it goes here, with a few changes that only the most dedicated series enthusiasts are likely to notice (who you can marry, what pets you can keep, whether you need to water the grass for it to grow, etc.). In this way, Island of Happiness unapologetically serves up the same daily tasks: plowing fields, sowing vegetable seeds, watering crops, tending livestock, shipping produce, and wooing honeys. Toiling through the seasons as a farmer may not be your idea of a pleasant life, but the game does its best to put some fun into what amounts to repetitive chores. (And with its bubbly art style that's more akin to Magical Melody on GameCube, Island of Happiness is certainly easy to stare at for long farming sessions— especially if you love cuddly animals.) The Animal Crossing-like touch-screen controls (drag the stylus in the direction you want to move and pick up items by tapping the screen) are hard to get used to in their slightly imprecise implemen- tation here—but they're definitely a step up from Harvest Moon DS* awkward setup, even though selecting and using tools is clumsy. Upgrading your house and farm costs quite a bit of money, which takes considerable time to earn early in the game, but opening up and populating the different sections of the island as your farm's exports rejuvenate the local economy makes spending your hard- earned cash rewarding. The paper-thin storyline (you're shipwrecked on a remote island and decide to put down roots there) may be an inconsequential excuse for you to repeat the same core game of the past 11 years, but some small lessons learned along the way THE VERDICT manage to shine through. ALICE E The Good: Same ol’ Harvest Moon! The Bad: Same ol' Harvest Moon... Eligible Ladies: Cuter than the boys 86 • ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY , EGM.1UP.COM HOT SHOTS GOLF: OPEN TEE 2 B Publisher: Sony CEA Ш Developer: Clap Hanz E Players: 1-16 № ESRB: Everyone Still putting along + CRISPIN: Proof that even the most relaxing games will burn you out eventually, Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee 2 delivers the same laid- back, cinch-to-suss-out clubbing mechanics that made the original so fun on the first PlayStation 10 years ago. And when | say "the same," | mean the same. At least recent PlayStation 3 series entry Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds changed up the swing system. To anyone who's come to grips with a Hot Shots game, much of Open Tee 2 will seem as moldy as grandpa's golf bag. Players who got used to the swing of things in past games will feel like savants here, snapping off perfect shots at every hole and then jabbing the X button to skip the time-wasting ball-landing sequence. | got into this rhythm of swing, skip, swing, skip as | rose through the ranks, to the point where | wondered, "Wait, am | even having fun anymore?" It became less of a relaxing game and more like busywork, just burning through the courses as fast as possible to keep my hands occupied during the commute. That's not to say that Open Tee 2 isn't a country club worth join- ing—as long as you meet certain membership requirements. First, if you've never played a Hot Shots game before, it's a no-brainer buy. The series' serene courses and emphasis on hand-eye mojo make for fun Sunday afternoons. If you're a Hot Shots dabbler who loves accessorizing the quirky fat-headed golfers, Open Tee 2 ups the ante with goodies you collect by winning tourneys or scouring courses; experimenting with random clothing combos sometimes generates ability bonuses—skills such as mightier swings or finer spin control. And if you're a Hot Shots hot shot ready to pit your decade of honed swinging against others, Open Tee 2's new 16-player online tourney offers easy-to-access competition that's also breezy: Participants tee off simultaneously, so you're not forced to twiddle your putter while competitors take their turns. The surreal canned- phrase conversation system (sample bon mot: “The grass is covered with zits!") will keep you entertained even when you're stuck waiting for the unskippable countdown-to-game timer in the lobbies. Meet a few of the above conditions, and Open Tee 2 is for you. Otherwise, paltry additions like a nifty hole-in-one minigame aren't worth the club THE VERDICT dues for grizzled swingers. CRISPIN The Good: Online tournaments, hole-in-one minigame The Bad: Not much new otherwise What We Really Want: Hot Shots minigolf! IT’S MIDNIGHT. COME OUT & PLAY. e SOUTHWEST.COM e open late many 24 hours Trademarks and copyrights are p у of their tive owners. All rights reserved. 8 Major Gaming Championships LLC. PENNY ARCADE ADVENTURES: EPISODE ONE Ш Publisher: Hothead № ESRB: Mature The humor in this six-to-seven-hour role- playing game relies more on the characters than the topical game-industry satire that made Penny Arcade popular. It's funny, but the surprise is just how good the game part is. Inspired, no doubt, by Final Fantasy's combat system and the GBA and DS Mario & Luigi series, PA:ET's energetic battles challenge and engage more than many of today's RPG epics. zach 17. Defense 13 ‘древа 16 22223 Speed 13 аск 27 Defense B. Speedo LOSTWINDS @ Publisher: Frontier Ш ESRB: Everyone With a story that borrows heavily from Okami and easy side-scrolling gameplay, LostWinds isn't earth-shattering—but it's well worth the $10. You help young Toku and his pal, a wind spirit named Enril, save the world by navigating them through a lovingly rendered 3D plat- form environment, using the Wii Remote to manip- ulate the wind, complete special moves, and solve puzzles. It's a great start for the WiiWare line. 88 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY , EGM.1UP.COM ROOGOO Ш Publisher: SouthPeak Ш ESRB: Everyone Inspired by a simple children's game—navi- gating geometric shapes through match- ing holes—Roogoo throws in enemies and obstacles at a sometimes absurd speed. Don't let the cutesy graphics and adorable story confuse you into thinking this one's for the kids; Roogoo pushes spatial-reasoning skills and reflexes to the limit, and it should satiate gam- ers looking for a serious puzzle challenge. ECHOCHROME Ш Publisher: Sony CEA № ESRB: Everyone Echochrome's perceptually challenging take on puzzle games is equally suited for 3D— and somewhat restricted by it. Changing camera angles to reveal dimensionally obscured passageways will give your spatial Skills a healthy workout, but the game needs to be more consistent with its own rules of what con- stitutes a valid path. An unnecessary timer adds undue pressure to an otherwise clever game. 1 16 17 18 19 20 THE SALES CHART Amazon.com's Top 20 for May Мате Wii Fit BERC gem The Wii Balance Board А ) may not be required, but $ 4... why play it any other way? Skiing is a fun alternative to Nintendo telling you that Mario Kart Wii with Wii Wheel you're fat. Grand Theft Auto IV Grand Theft Auto IV Guitar Hero Ш: Legends of Rock Bundle We Ski Guitar Hero Ш: Legends of Rock Wireless Bundle Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party Bundle Guitar Hero Ш: Legends of Rock Wireless Bundle Boom Blox Did you know that Boom Blox was originally designed to track your head? (See Afterthoughts оп pg. 42.) We were looking forward to wearing the necessary gear. Super Smash Bros. Brawl Guitar Hero Ш: Legends of Rock Wireless Bundle Rock Band: Special Edition Gran Turismo 5: Prologue Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare— Game of the Year Edition 42m, COD4's GOTY edition may 38 come with the map pack, but Activision doesn't care; they already made over 10 million ! bucks from early downloads. Super Mario Galaxy Crosswords DS Assassin's Creed New Super Mario Bros. NSMB is the best-selling 21 single-version DS game. ? : Even without a Diamond ог Pearl edition, it's managed Я to sell over 13 million copies! ^ So where's the sequel? Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day! Platform Wii Wii XB360 PS3 Wii PS2 PS2 PS3 XB360 DS PS3 DS DS ЕСМ Scores В+ B- B В+ C+ C А+ А+ А А+ А+ А А А- B+ A (on 1UP.com) A А- В+ Not Reviewed A A- Be А+ А А- А A- A- Not Reviewed A (on 1UP.com) B+ C+ B+ Not Reviewed A A+ A+ B- (on 1UP.com) B- C+ C- A+ A B+ B+ B- C+ DREAMERS WANTED S m 2 ЕЧ т т a 2 o © = 5 = я т 3 > 2 = > = s E Y = 5 E > = > 5 3 a m s m 8 5 z v m 2 Е m E 3 2 Е = т 2 Е © = ыг z т p а У E = Y е > = m Ө т E Ei m 5 3 = т E 5 Y E] т 8 S Е B = о > 5 e а Y Са = 5 = = E 5 Ei = 8 а Ei 2 m E 5 = = 2 5 SCHOOL OF 800.226.7625 : 3300 University Boulevard • Winter Park, FL 32792 ONE OF THE TOP FIVE GAME-DEGREE PROGRAMS, IN THE WORLD — Electronic Gaming Monthly, {| Real World Education © 2006 Full Sail Inc. All rights reserved. (arie Otek * press continue for forgotten crap, hobbit feet, and summertime seeking In the future, Seanbaby will break the boundaries of jackassery by being the first human being to travel at the speed of fart. | nominate a very special game as a Forgotten Gem of the Future. As an added bonus joke, none of these are gems and all are, in fact, quite bad. However, a Forgotten Gem is a game so insignificant that you may have to reread several of these sentences to remember what I’m talking about. If that's the case, use this one as your point of reference: This Forgotten Gem is Jackass for the Nintendo DS. Sometimes, when you refer to a year, you might make cultural refer- ences. For instance, "It was the year 1984. America was dancing to the sounds of Michael Jackson's head on fire, and no one seemed to know where the beef was!" A Forgotten Gem will never be used in this con- text. Even if every event of 2008 is banned from human knowledge, no future TV special will ever say, "Armed 90 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY * EGM.1UP.COM »” > £EemnHEmE*'z REST OF THE CRAP Jackass for the Nintendo DS Wiping away the turds of the past with Jackass in their DSes, the people of 2008 slept comfortably on their perfectly customized Select Comfort Sleep Number Beds.” | also should’ve mentioned that this chilling example was taken from an alternate future where Select Comfort wins World War Ш and erases all history unrelated to their mattresses except for Jackass: The Game. This universe stars Jake Busey and Stacy Keach. Back to our universe: Since the only rule for the selection process is that the future must, in no way, recall that this game exists, | require first- hand knowledge of all future events. There’s obviously only one way to do this: Capture a Timecop and make him tell you. But this is impossible for two reasons. One, knowledge of the future creates a paradox, which is a fancy way of saying “exploding.” And two, Timecop would just do the splits when you tried to grab him. That leaves us with what | call the Final Option—an unspeakable combination of guesswork and me. Luckily, if I’m wrong, and Jackass is the key to the future, we'll never know because sci- ence is building robots at a rate that by 200X, the only thing humans will know...is fear. To further complicate things, this article will be written in the year 2048, the Chinese year of the Why is there not a digital re-creation of inserting a toy car into a human colon? Laser Cock, and placed in a reverse time capsule to the Old West, where it has waited in a mystical golden idol until now. The future remembers Jackass As a proud resident of 2048, I'm astonished by many things. Things like children being rendered into feeding paste and piped into Taco Bell materializers and things like the zesty Zorbwestern flavor of children paste. (Time note: “zorb” is a direction invented in the year 2018.) More nota- ble, though, is the omission of Jackass for the Nintendo DS from discussion among videogame academia. At the risk of breaking Future Commandment Robodeath, | will correct this error with the following report. Let Jackassery begin At the beginning in Jackass, the player designs his or its own character. (Time note: Women are illegal in 2048.) And although the ability to label one's digital avatar was already quite common, this is not allowed here. The game instead refers to you randomly. During this researcher's study, | was given the name Mr. Stallion, after a sperm-filled ride monster popular during the era. Several hairstyles and clothing combinations could be selected, as this was before all cloth- ing was replaced by silver jumpsuits. Single-player mode How did humankind of the past neglect to remember such a unique game? You begin play as an intern for а show about youths attempting to injure themselves and others. It's simi- lar to last fall’s CBS hit Kill Everyone in the House but with a far less focused goal. As an intern named Mr. Stallion, your first duty is to break enough of your bones to reach a point total. You do this by launching yourself into the air and landing improperly, actions not to be re-created under nonvirtual circumstances. To further explain, this game takes place before the stupid were used to farm brain eggs. In fact, during this era they were allowed to use tools and even made into presi- dents, so it was necessary to warn audiences not to mimic fictional or dangerous actions, as stupids may be allowed to see it. This makes Jackass a grim game indeed, as it was this exact aspect of the stupid that was eventually used against them. But that's a report for another time. Multiplayer mode Although the game includes a mul- tiplayer mode, it was rarely used. Instead, in the spirit of the subject matter, the unofficial multiplayer mode was handing the game to a friend until boredom overtook them and then filming yourself rubbing poop on their head as they slept. Further gameplay discussion Controlling your character was a cat- egorical failure, making the game's goal—falling into things clumsily—a near certainty. The empty 3D environ- ment allowed for only tiny variations of visual stimuli, meaning an average mind could take in the entire experi- PAGE PAGE Seek and Top 10: Enjoy: Fun Stupidest in the sun game swag ence in less than 30 Lord-Torgozz- Controls-All!s. Or, as they were called then, seconds. This was efficiency unmatched even after game chips were put on quick-dissolve sup- positories. Jackass' longevity relied on the player's interest in raising the attributes of Skill, Bone Breaking, Agility, and Balance. And while there were mental disorders at the time that would allow pleasure to be taken from this, they were uncommon and usually accompanied by webbed hands that made button manipulation impossible. How did time lose DS Jackass? One must ask why the more notable Jackass stunts were not included in the DS version. Why is there not a digital re-creation of inserting a toy car into a human colon? Even given the technology of the time, this could easily be simulated. Or perhaps the stunt where Johnny Knoxville pretends to kill a baby to frighten passersby? That's an activity so revered that we still honor it today by killing actual babies. Although many argue this is an unrelated horror of future society, this researcher still believes he has a point: Jackass is about gasping near Someone eating pee. To repaint an inferior skateboarding game and forc- ibly insert references to the Jackass cast is nothing but Paris Hilton bleed- ing on you. (Time note: After the sexu- ally transmitted disease DoubleHerpes was discovered, "Paris Hilton bleeding on you" became the worst vulgarity available in 2048.) 48 ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM » 91 эмо зннэ + OLD-SCHOOL EGM 10 Years Ago... 2 8 Pages of. } All-New Screen ^. ‘Shots and Into! On the cover: Tomb Raider 3 With two highly successful games out and a movie on the way, Lara Croft was a big deal, so we went to Raider developer Core to get an intimate look at her third outing. We showed off the new effects (colored lighting!) and asked readers which actress was best suited to play the Lara in the film. Your top pick? Sandra Bullock, with a whopping 28 percent of the vote. | РС» 1980 > RETROMAUTS PRESENTS The Story of Story The divergent (and Li шаш evolution of gaming narrative Metal Gear Solid 4 brings the 20-years-running Metal Gear saga to a close through hours of expertly produced cut-scenes. But director Hideo Kojima's Hollywood-esque approach is hardly the only way to tell a story—gaming narrative has evolved in different directions over the years. Arcade • 1981 This classic King Kong tale offered what were likely the first cinema sequences in gam- ing: DK wordlessly absconding with Mario's lady love and, later, plummeting to his igno- minious demise. Arcade * 1972 Pong had no story to speak of besides its instructions: "Avoid missing ball for high score." Simple. Direct. Timeless. As a text-based game, most of Zork's script was given over to defining envi- ronmental details that graphics would normally depict. Amid explanations of JLTIMA I РС • 1985 AT ПИ а a Thing of the Month: Game Boy Camera We loved Nintendo's new peripheral 50 much that we made a separate award for it: Thing of the Month. Everyone agreed that taking pictures of friends and then adding silly graph- ics was a blast. Former EGM editor- in-chief John Davison gushed, “I think it's the best toy | have come across in a long time." ОРС Raiders of the Revolutionary Arcades Arcade? That's “location-based enter- tainment" to you, mister. Our intrepid editors traveled all over the United States and reported on burgeoning superarcades, such as DisneyQuest and Sega's GameWorks. caves and dams, though, players could piece together the sordid history of the Great Underground Empire. PC • 1987 Adding a visual element to the basic “wander and explore" concept of Zork, Maniac Mansion was among the first great graphical adventure games. With no need to describe the game world, the creators were freed to build a branching story packed with quirky characters and engrossing throwaway details, like microwavable hamsters. Macintosh • 1993 opulated the world. 92 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY * EGM.1UP.COM jomewhere between a graphical idventure and a "Doom clone," layers learned as much about athway's story from its gameplay levelopments as from its extensive onversations with the ghosts that Quest: Jn With a story pro- vided almost entirely through sparse dia- logue, Ultima IV posed a moral challenge for players—a simple but thought-provoking tale. 3 PC • 1998 Drawing heav- ly upon its pen- and-paper roots, BioWare's Dungeons & Dragons-based ole-playing game featured copious narrative...and plenty of player control over he game's outcome through both action and dialogue. Arcade • 1983 Barely meeting the minimum requirements to qualify as a videogame, Dragon's Lair was basically a series of full- motion videos (FMVs) strung together with a sort of con- JI HT TRAP Sega CD * 1992 The most famous of the flood of FMV-based games that marked the beginning of the CD-ROM era, Night Trap was, happily, an evolutionary dead end—cheaply made live video bound by poorly designed gameplay. troller-based guessing game. But damn, did it look cool. A ЗАТОЕН NES * 1989 Tecmo's NES platformer took in-game story to a new level with anime-fla- vored cut-scenes between every stage. The animation was rudimentary at best, and the dialogue was corny, yet the net effect was total awesomeness. PlayStation * 1998 Taking Ninja Gaiden's cut- scenes to their ultimate end, the modern Metal Gear i games wear their creator's desire to direct movies on their sleeve—but they work. Maybe because the exqui- sitely crafted story sequenc- es bookend excellent action. PlayStation г 1997 Square tossed together every trick in the book: FMV, nonverbal cut-scenes, and tons of expository dialogue. in between. It was a ground- breaking effort—if only the story had made sense! Super NES • 1994 After a bit of introductory exposition, Super Metroid told its tale through a mute, sprite-based puppet show— and managed to create one of gaming's most memorable climaxes in the process. Xbox 360 • 2007 As chatty as predecessor Baldur's Gate but with the slick, smart cinematic style of Final Fantasy VII, Mass Effect combines the best of both Eastern and Western RPG- narrative design. HALF-LIF PC • 1998 Combining the in-game narrative of adventures like Pathways with the seamless cut-scenes of Super Metroid, Half-Life offered an interest- ing take on narrative: a fully immer- sive adventure in which every second of the story was seen through the main character's eyes. XB360/PC • 2007 BioShock employs most all of its predecessors' tricks—a plot that plays out in sight of the player's immersive per- spective, interactive in-game events, and additional story details hidden in recorded audio diaries—to create a compelling tale in a fascinat- ing world. $ ID GameCube * 2002 The computer terminals that litter the surface of Tallon IV combined with brief cinematic interludes gave Metroid Prime's exploratory shooting action impressively detailed story depth...for those who cared to find it. Е То check out more retro jibber-jabber, set your browser to bonusstage.1UP.com to watch 1UP's video podcast. ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM • 93 эмо эннэ > SEER AND ENJOY Summertime Blues Sweating out the sucky games IAL Th Washed up in the picture below, you'll find 20 references to crappy games not cool enough for the summer heat—some easy to find, some designed to leave your mind stuck in the sand. So slather up your noggin with suntan lotion and hope your brain doesn't get burned. How it works: Peruse the image to discover hints that represent specific videogame titles. For example, the picture above of pals Ratchet and Clank pinging each other is, yep, Ping Pals. Now go find the rest! EGM Extras: Think you found all the games? Head over to to get the solution. ыг 94 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY * EGM.1UP.COM Hao 2HB85 2 EaH'z TOF ТЕН Weirdest Swag Yo ho ho and a bottle of ugh Ву Mailing bizarre crap may not get journalists to like your videogame any better, but it does at least leave us with huge piles of weird junk on our desks for people to puzzle over. Below are the top 10 pieces of swag we've received and the games (both console and PO) they're “promoting.” Pirates of the Burning Sea (PC): Yo-yo, Ho Hos, bottle of rum Our first thought upon open- ing this chest was something like, "What the hell does a yo-yo have to do with pirates?" Upon noticing the rest of the package's contents, it became apparent that a pun cannot actually kill you, but it can cause a stroke. Stranglehold (PS3/XB360): Big, scary guns Closer inspection reveals that these Berettas are actually a pair of cigarette Toners. You have to look pretty close, though, which makes us wonder if Stranglehold’s mak- ers were trying to get us shot by confused cops who patrol near our designated smoking area. Uprising: Join or Die (PC): Hourglass full of lubricant It's hard to imagine many non- AO-rated games that would warrant mailing us an hourglass full of Astroglide. Supposedly, it could be shattered in case of sexual emergency, but mostly it's just the world's grossest way of keeping time. Ted Nugent Wild Hunting Adventure (PC): Dry meat We'd never disparage the quality of Ted Nugent's weird beef jerky (because he owns a lot of guns, after all), but it's great. fun to lie to people about what this stuff is made of after they've eaten it. Really, if you eat anything mailed to you by Ted Nugent, you deserve whatever happens. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (PS2): Snake meat? After the adventure with Ted Nugent's biltong, nobody in the office seemed particularly keen on actually tasting whatever was in this mystery can. Mailing it to a reader as a, uh, "prize" led to the revelation that it was, in fact, clam chowder. Probably. Every fantasy-themed & game ever: Lots of swords NC Somehow, none of these blades ever came with a Cheetos-stained sweatshirt and clip-on ponytail. Fun fact: If you gath- er together enough dull fantasy swords in one place, it will magically restore your The Lord of the Rings Online (PC): Two dozen Hobbit feet Feel free to mail suggestions for what to actually do with these faux-fur-covered foot- ies—well, other than forcing interns to wear them while jumping up and down on a bed in slow motion. Unfortunately, human resources virginity. And if you swing them around in has informed us that this would be an unac- i front of a camera, you'll manage to keep ceptable abuse of employee rights. P that badge for life. Condemned: Criminal Origins (XB360): Bloody lead pipe One Christmas season, we received a dozen heavy white boxes tied with pretty red bows. Visions of all sorts of delicious holiday goodies flashed through our minds. Bloody lead pipes were not among them... although these pipes apparently passed through someone else's mind. Gamecock: Gun full of tequila If you like guns, and you like booze, what could possibly be better than a gun filled with booze? Considering that this stuff tastes more or less like a cat's butt, pretty much anything. You think we'd stop putting things that came in the mail in our mouths by now. $ Voyage Century (PC): Big f***ing gold boat We swear that someone stole this thing out of our grandmother's bathroom. Or at least we would've thought so if everyone else in the office didn't get one as well, which would imply that an awful lot of grandmothers with downright terrible taste in interior decoration got robbed overnight. 96 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY * EGM.1UP.COM > НЕХТ HONTH Bayonetta September Issue (#232) e On sale August 5 > PREVIEWS 12:12:2444517-1 2 B Midnight Club: Los Angeles (PS3/XB360) E Skate 2 (PS3/XB360) > REVIEWS KILLER FEET You're gonna wanna kick off your shoes for this one—next month, we're loading up a huge blow- out on PlatinumGames' flashy upcoming action title Bayonetta. Not only does the premise sound like a sure shot (a sexy, angel-slaying witch who sports firearms on her feet), but this PS3/XB360 game's being helmed by Hideki Kamiya, the mash-happy creator of the Devil May Cry series. So if you fancy stylish, over-the-top thrills, set your sights on the September issue. Once the smoke clears from our Bayonetta reveal, we'll be staying in the Far East for a look at some of Japan's most prominent developers. In a follow-up to 1UP.com's "A Day in the Life" series, we'll be catching up with Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi to hear what life's been like since he left Square Enix. We'll also have a chat with maverick composer/designer Kenji Eno (D series) to find out why he's finally returned to gaming after a protracted hiatus (his last release, D2, dropped in 20001). And in case those two interviews aren't juicy enough, we'll be grilling for- mer Team Ninja head Tomonobu Itagaki to get all the dirty deets on why he left publisher Tecmo. Hell's Highway (PS3/XB360) Too much chitchat, you say? Shut up, we say! Just kiddin’. But if you still wanna fight, come Ш Mercenaries 2: back next month to see how we grade top-heavy fighter Soulcalibur IV. i World in Flames (PS3/XB360) Bi Soulcalibur IV (PS3/XB360) № Madden NFL 09 (Wii/PS3/XB360) W Brothers in Arms: (All planned editorial content is subject to change.) у ADVERTISER INDEX 2k Games Microsoft Sony Computer Entertainment of America wwwW.2kgames.com ............. 7,17 www.microsoft.com......... sees 13 ммму.5сеа.сот................... 4-5 Game Crazy Office for Nat'l Drug Control Policy www.gamecrazy.com. ............... 9 www.whatsyourantidrug.com........ 23 subscription service questions, address changes, or to on ser, CO 80322:5721 lease include your тайга 50522-3131. Maling ists: We sometimes make lists o our customers available 0 mai шинэ materials. Wu iting Ве rights ude aps reserved herein, o at o is pul ebsites, { 503-3560. For article REPRINTS ара E-PRINT, contact ste products and the characters contained therein are owned by the GST Registration number is 140496720 RT. Publications Mall Agreement No. 4000922 ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM • 97 OVER GAME > HSU z- CHAM ІН: onochrome Your Wagon TONIGHT, THE TANAKA ЯН 3 WW PLAYERS BRING VOU | 1 — THE HARROWING TALE HIGHLIGHTS FROM THEIR OF A MONICIPAL ZONING MUSICAL PRODUCTION / 1 COMISSION GONE. OF “KILLZONE” TOO FAR! Ч THE PLASERS ARE M50 TANAKA, CLASSICALLY TRAINED, CLASSICALLY EXPELLED ALUMNUS OF THE ОЧА OPERA GUILD IN AKRON ACT ONE: IN WHICH A VEKTA ROUTH SETS OUT TO DO HS PART AGAINST THE HELGHAST INVASION CHAN TANAKA, ACCLAIMED LYRICIST AND GHOSTWRITER OF “SAUL GOLDBERG’S. STREAMLINED RHYMING DICTIONARY” ORANGE, SHMORANGE, BALL, SHMALL BUT PAW, THAT'S WHAT | WANNA, FIGHT FOR! FOR OUR DIRT! FOR OUR ROCKS ! FOR OUR SPRAWLING, RUSTY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEXES, AND EVERY BLESSED BROWNSH- GRAY INCH OF VEKTA CULTURE. ! SPARKLING IN THE * SAFE TRULY, IT IS A JEWEL - FIRMAMENT ! 4 Чоо KNOW THE W Vet A-GONNA. х By DIRT HARVEST’S SON UP WITH ABOUT TO THEAS A COME IN! RESISTANCE, Ч м. FORCES! WITHOUT OUR CONSTANT EFFORTS, THE PLANET WOULD ВЕ CONSUMED WITH RAMPANT GREENERY ! FLOWERS ! ANARC\ \ WONDER IF THESE GUYS ACT THREE: KNOW THE GLOWING, ORANGE THE BATTLE EVES DON'T REALLY HELP RAGES ON THEIR CAMOUFLAGE? 98 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM. 1UP.COM TREES! мө! CHECK TOUT! ; “KILLZONE: THE MUSICAL” IF 900 SQUINT, П REALLY DOES FEATURES THE SONGS: LOOK LIKE THE Е> '05 TRALER! “MY TOWN 15 BROWN” “TRAILER PRERENDAGIO IN 6” “WHAT, THE HELGHAST 2” “BETTY ORANGE EYES” AND MANY MORE! AND | CAN PRETEND VM SHOOTING JAWAS ! -TICKETS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL SCALPER- SUPPORT THE ARTS ! 2609 NEW GAMEPLAY MECHANICS ONLINE MULTIPLAYER COMPETITIONS OLYMPIC GAMES MODE Perfect your speed, timing, power and Face off against up to seven friends in single and multi-event Set your team's daily event and training schedule, targeting to claim your medal. challenges and prove yourself on the global leaderboards. customize your avatar, and go for Gold. JULY 2008 EVERYONE E %) XBOX 360 ГЭ Games for Windows Visit www.esrb.org 2 : for rating information Published by В PLAYSTA TIO 3 www.olym ESRB CONTENT RATING www.esrh.org x TM USOC 36U$ 220506. Copyright © 2008 International Olympic Committee (“10C”). All rights reserved. SEGA and the SEGA ор either registered trademarks or trademarks ol SEGA Corporation. All rights reserved. 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