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RESIDENT И EVIL

Capcom reinvents the survival- horror

genre with co-op online gameplay

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ABOUT VALKYRIA CHRONICLES. “LET'S JUST GET IT OUT OE THE WAY: END OF STORY. IT WAS FANTASTIC...17 was EASILY -IGN, WINNER E3 BEST STRATEGY GAME ONE OE THE TOP

THREE TITLES AT THE SHOW” -RPGAMER.COM, E3 IMPRESSIONS

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As the heroic commander Welkin, lead your small platoon to defend your country against the Empire’s invading enemy forces. With Valkyria, a powerful ancient race in their ranks, the massive army must be defeated with elaborate strategic maneuvers and action-packed real-time combat.

Animated Blood ммуүМајкугіаСһго Mild Language Mild Suggestive Themes AVAILABLE NOW

Use of Tobacco

Violence SEGA is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. SEGA, the SEGA logo and Valkyria Chronicles are either registered trademarks or trademarks of SEGA Corporation. ESRB CONTENT RATING www.esrb.org| ©SEGA. All Rights Reserved. "PlayStation", "PLAYSTATION" and “PS” Family logo are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.

Real-time Battles Breathtaking Graphics Legendary Warfare

₪

PLAYSTATION. 2 WWW.sega.com

"APPRENTICE (4 SONGS) Ө Mountoin Song O Hello Mere O The Middl Ө Give It Away

'SOUD SONGS) Creme

Py em E Фиат On o Prayer

500 available tracks by year's end— Super-durable, wireless peripherals Over 80 brand neW Songs from rock's New features—Global Online*** World

the largest library of any game, ever.* including available full-size Fender” guitar biggest artists, plus rock out to all your Tour, daily and weekly Battle of the Bands, and bass, and deluxe lon” drum set.** previously downloaded tracks. Custom Set Lists, Drum Trainer, and тоге!.

ROCK BAND INSTRUMENTS COMPATIBLE WITH ROCK BAND 2 See the complete track list on

ui ji emes в EN ₪ ри RockBAND2.CoM МНАВМОМКХ 7 Fender

*Original Rock Band disc tracks upgrade requires online connection and key purchase. ** Items are sold separately. ***Online connection required. See pack back for details. © 2008 Harmonix Music Systems, Inc. АН Rights Reserved. Harmonix, Rock Band 2 and all related filles and logos are trademarks of Harmonix Music Systems, Inc., an MTV Networks company. Rock Band 2 developed by Harmonix Music Systems, Inc. MTV: Music Television, MTV Games

and all related titles and logos are trademarks of MTV Networks, a division of Viacom International Inc. EA and the EA logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. in the US and/or other countries. Microsoft, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE, and the Xbox logos are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies and are used under license from Microsoft. FENDER™, STRATOCASTER", PRECISION BASS™ and the distinctive headstock and body designs commonly found on the STRATOCASTER and PRECISION BASS guitars are trademarks of Fender Musical Instruments Corporation. All rights reserved. lon and lon Drum Rocker are registered trademarks of lon Audio LLC. The ratings icon is a registered trademark of the Entertainment Software Association. АН other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

All other trademarks, logos and copyrights are property of their respective owners.

“THE GREATEST ASSEMBLAGE OF MUSIC ФЕ рис

or OVER 500 SONGS TOTAL 77

ON DISC AND FOR DOWNLOAD BY HOLIDAY 200 s y

START A BAND, ROCK THE WORLD: E]

2 бәсе srs "omes". BEST MUSIC GAME BEST MUSIC/RHYTHM GAME

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Tragedy has brought you to a crossroads, and now you must choose.

The paths are many, their consequences severe. And the future of Albion is in your hands.

Who will you become?

FABLE I

Revenge or acceptance? Justice or retribution? But choose wisely.

Blood Language Sexual Content Use of Alcohol Violence

ESRB CONTENT RATING — www.esrb.org

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Issue 234» November 2008

34 Coming Soon

EGM EXTRAS ON

Want more? Hit up for bonus content. Also: Check out our podcasts at and message

boards at . 1 4 Cover Story: \

>СОМТЕМТ5

It's dangerous to до alone. Luckily, Capcom’s latest survival-horror epic is buddy-approved

m שו‎ ZIFF DAVIS MEDIA

ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY Н ZIFF DAVIS MEDIA GAME GROUP

Senior Editor Si

Senior Art Di

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Until now, you've had it easy. In other games, you were the best. But in © Tc ₪

this online fraternity of SOCOM warriors, you'll learn there's a force even | v "mu more powerful than you — there's TEAM. And to wage war as a team of = D ia i, SEALS,

SEALs is to know the spirit of SOCOM Confrontation: Alone | am Lethal. CONICRONTATTON

As ateam | Dominate. Start the confrontation at SOCOM.com 1 Coming October 2008

MATURE 17+

Blood Strong Language

ONLY ON

FLAS TATIONS Ci

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PLAYSTATION:Network

w.seal.navy mil. SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation ©2008 Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. The Trident Design is a trademark of the Department of the Navy айі used by permission. The U.S. Navy provided technical support, but does not officially endorse this product. “PlayStation,” "PLAYSTATION," and the "PS" Family logo are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. The PLAYSTATION Network Logo is à service mark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.

REVIEWS | 66 Reviews Intro + EDITORIAL

| Evil Genius

Q Q = zi

68 Wario Land: Shake It!

69 de Blob

69 Mercenaries 2: World in Flames

70 Mega Man 9

72 Silent Hill: " Homecoming

73 Fracture

Issue 234 е November 2008

74 Midnight Club: sph Los Angeles м Om 5 RESIDENT EVIL 5 PRODUCER 76. NBA Live 09 JUN TAKEUCHI IS МҮ HERO. He's 76 NBA 9 everything a videogame producer з nd should be: articulate, interesting, 78 FIFA 09 a funny, and relaxed. He's got such an 78 Infinite Undiscovery easygoing manner that my interview with him and the RE5 team managed 79 Воск Band 2 FE d “ to be informative, enlightening, and 80 Sonic Chronicles: entertaining. During this chat—and our The Dark Brotherhood subsequent hands-on time with RES’s online co-op play at Capcom HQ in 81 Away: Shuffle Dungeon Osaka, Japan—we uncovered a wealth 81 The Legend of Kage 2 E of information about this upcoming d survival-horror juggernaut set to drop 82 Castlevania: p in March. Turns out that the game’s Order of Ecclesia refined controls—now you can play

Resident Evil like Gears of War if you want—are just the beginning. We’ve also got further insights, like strategies on how to deal with gruesome waves of parasite-infested humans, whether the game's co-op angle really works, whether or not Street Fighter bad boy Akuma will make his way into the game as an unlockable character, and whether the development team’s finally discarded that clunky ol’ typewriter save mechanic. Of course, the buddy system is this issue’s overarching theme, so we're also profiling some of this year's anticipated co-op titles (Far ы r Cry 2, Resistance 2). But in case you’d Р. rather read more about zombies, we've also got exclusive peeks and info on The House of the Dead: Overkill as well as the cult-hit (in Japan) Onechanbara games, coming to Wii and Xbox 360 this fall. So, what’re you waiting for?

— James “Milkman” Mielke, y

Editor-in-Chief E

84 Kirby: Super Star Ultra

85 Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise

85 Star Ocean: First Departure

86 Spore 87 Download/Wrap-up

GAME OVER 90 Seanbaby’s Rest of the Crap

92 Retro 94 Blu-ray Bungalow 96 Next Month

3CONTENTS

97 Top 10

ZIFF DAVIS MEDIA GAME GROUP

Dist мейлін, Chiot Exec. OMcer м: 80 Um Re tate, ) reting : ato : Я а al оне : NETWORK

14 * ELECTRONIC GAMIN

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inappropriate for children. 4 1 LIVE

DVD-ROM Left 4 Dead logo, Source, and the Source logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Valve Corporation in the United States and

[SOFTWARE] other countries. All other trademarks are properties of their respective companies.

rating information.

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Game-des

1UP Family

This month, we meet 1UP

user Amarisse Sullivan Amari orn)

EGM: What's the longest gaming session you’ve had, and for what game? Amarisse Sullivan: A three-day marathon of Harvest Moon 64.

EGM: What's your favorite gaming console?

AS: Dreamcast and DS.

EGM: How do boys react when they discover you play games?

AS: In most cases, it's

not actually a “discovery”; it’s the other way around, really. It’s often in social gaming contexts that | meet them, so there’s hardly

any surprise. Girls playing videogames isn’t quite the novelty it once was. Sure, there always seem to be a handful of dudes who are happily amused, but they’re mostly just pleased to have another person to call on for Rock Band or a round of networked Double Dash!!

Trivial Issue

This month’s

EGM question:

Which Resident Evil was the first to feature multi- player online gameplay?

-mail the answer to VI@1UP.corn (subject head: Trivia: EGM #234) for а сһапсе to win something potentially awesome.

For writing this month’s LOTM, Jeff gets a copy of Animal Crossing: Wild World...or something equally cute from our archives.

16 + ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY > EGM. 1UP.COM

It just doesn’t get any more hardcore than this.

I'm writing in response to Nintendo winning the “Outstanding Achievement in Core-Audience Neglect” category in your E3 story [EGM #233].

Who's Nintendo's “core audience" right now? You mean the fanboys? The people who isolate one fragment of Nintendo's history, glorify it, and then "support" Nintendo by bitching about how [new stuff] doesn't compare to that fragment?

Even when they were struggling [compared to] Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo was still able to satisfy fanboys with Metroid Prime, Super Smash Bros., and several awesome Zelda titles. And they will continue to do so—mark my words. So, what are we bitching about? Didn't we already get a fanboy explosion with Super Smash Bros. Brawl? Don't we already have Fire Emblem, Super Mario Galaxy, No More Heroes, Zack & Wiki, Okami, and an $8 Super Mario RPG? Do we have enough time to play anything else this year?

How about instead of worrying about the future of Metroid, we show some much-needed love to Metroid Prime 3 and let Nintendo enjoy these years of plenty. We're still going to get awesome software from them, now and forever, so let's stop bitching and actually play what we have now.

—Jeff Lawhead

Valid points, Jeff, but it doesn't change the fact that Nintendo offered almost nothing in their press conference for anyone other than soccer moms and retirees.

After reading your article “Lolz in Translation" in EGM $232, | was surprised to find nothing about

Final Fantasy Legend II. | remember playing that game when | was 14 and coming across a person who really, really wanted bananas. | didn’t think

much of it until later in the game, when | was forced to stop some illegal banana trafficking.

Now, | like bananas as much as the next guy, but this was weird even for me. | later came to discover that these bananas were, in fact, opium in the original version. | guess that explains the syringe on the side of the boat.

—Don Plattner

Hey, now—let’s not underestimate the addictive power of bananas.

| love that Todd Zuniga reviewed both Madden NFL 09 and NCAA Football 09, two EA Sports- published football games. Having the same person review both games adds great context to the Scores. But NCAA earned Game of the Month (with Todd as the sole reviewer), while Madden did not (even though Todd gave Madden a higher score). This inconsistency points to one of the flaws in using multiple reviewers on some games and single reviewers on others. | totally understand why you moved to single-review coverage, but I think that having multiple reviews should be a prerequisite for earning Game (or Shame) of the Month. If a game is truly worthy (or unworthy) of our time, it should be worthy of the scrutiny of multiple opinions.

—Michael Lew

Ryan Scott, executive editor of reviews for the 1UP Network, responds: “You definitely bring

up a valid concern, Michael—and believe me, we've had similar conversations among ourselves. The transition to a mixture of single- and three-man reviews has made it pretty clear to us that the guidelines for our Game of the Month award could use some revi- sion, and you'll see some changes within the next issue or two, so keep your eyes peeled!"

Қ

HOPE RUNS DEEP

“ / ј www.gearsofwar.ecom 4 с 1 | MATURE Blood and Gore Intense Violence Э С enix ала Crimson Strong Language ШЇ Microsoft Om a TIS cm Cor

2008 Microsoft ESRB CONTENT RATING www.estb.org

up of Mampanies,

> OOPS!

In talking about replacements for E3 last month, we men- tioned Ziff Davis’ own DigitalLife confer- ence. Unfortunately, shortly after we

went to press, this year's conference was canceled due

to "poor economic conditions." Ziff Davis hopes to bring the event back in 2009.

ш We doubt Governor Palin would be pleased by the comparison to an angel-slaying witch.

Dog eat dog

| just read your interview with Tomonobu Itagaki in EGM #232,

and I’m appalled at Itagaki's ignorance. When told about [Devil May Cry creator] Hideki Kamiya’s comment about Ninja Gaiden being uninteresting, Itagaki retorted with only mockery and significantly biased anecdotal evidence.

He went on to recite the old saying “The weaker dog barks more.” | find it strange that in the very same issue, you mentioned that Kamiya “doesn’t do many interviews,” while Itagaki, on the other hand, has been both the defendant and plaintiff in high-profile legal cases and wears sunglasses all the time like some sort of icon.

lronically, Itagaki just released a pretty bad sequel to a game that’s been remade two times, and he’s responsible for what many hardcore gamers consider to be the weakest fighting-game franchise to come from Japan—while Kamiya’s games nearly always get high praise for their originality and interesting concepts.

Someone's barking a lot to defend his obviously stale bread, and | can tell you that it’s not Kamiya.

—Chance Huskey

Meee-yow! Maybe we should just lock Itagaki and Kamiya in a room and let them duel to the death.

Life imitates games

When | first heard of the recent conflict between Russia and Georgia, it seemed all too familiar. | finally realized that the reason for this familiarity was that | had already fought in this war... when | played the original Ghost Recon in 2001.

When | looked up the game's plot summary on Wikipedia, the similarities between the first Ghost Recon—set in 2008—and the recent conflict were startling: “During the first few missions

18 + ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM

of the game, the Ghosts battle South Ossetian rebel forces from the north of Georgia, who are harassing the legitimate government and its allies.... The Russian government complains to the United Nations...and eventually they send in their army to aid the South Ossetian rebels.”

This does seem to mirror what’s happened in the conflict so far, minus the operational involvement of U.S. forces. However, any U.S. response would have to be covert—thus, a unit like the Ghosts may well be in Georgia as | write this.

As the U.S. appears to have been blindsided by the invasion of their ally, maybe some in Congress should’ve spent a little less time crusading against videogames and little more time playing Ghost Recon.

—Robert Sroka

Let’s just hope Tom Clancy wasn’t as prescient about Rainbow Six: Vegas. Seeing the Strip all blown to hell would make us weep.

Delta Upsilon Mu Beta | was very upset when | heard about Pong Toss: Frat Party Games for WiiWare. As a member of a fraternity (“frat” is a derogatory word), | am faced with stereotypical accusations all the time. Does Nintendo know that there are nondrinking fraternities as well as fraternities set up only for community service? I'm not saying that all fraternities don't play [beer pong] (we're not angels by any means); however, we are no different than many other college students.

— Kevin Kodorsky

If you're concerned about public perception of fraternities, an almost universally derided WiiWare game is the least of your worries. Instead, you might want to have a word

with the producers of every college movie ever made.

Reading is fundamental Why aren't there more games based on books? Books would make game stories much more intelligent. I'm not talking about boring books like Huckleberry Finn (not to diss Mr. Twain), but more like some awesome Neil Gaiman or Michael Crichton book. The story is already done for you—just implement gameplay!

—Robert Ezzell

Hey, we've got plenty of games based on books (not to mention your Crichton oversight: hello, Jurassic Park games): Nancy Drew, Conan.... Oh, you meant good games?

Don't be a h8er l've recently seen the song list for Rock Revolution, and I’m а little bothered by it. How can Konami expect to be taken seriously in this genre when they have "Sk8ter Boi" on the setlist? | give Konami all the props in the world for creating a gaming concept that I'm totally addicted to, but if they are to separate themselves from the pack, they should've put more thought into the setlist.

— William Ramirez

Sure, Rock Rev will have some of those faux angsty tracks, but on the whole, we think the song list is pretty sweet. Honestly, “Cum on Feel the Noize"? Who doesn't love a little Quiet Riot?

Trouble is, with all the songs being covers (not to mention the insanely complex drum kit), song selection may be the least of the game’s issues.

Games imitate life? Did you guys notice that Senator John McCain’s VP pick, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, looks a lot like the lead character from Bayonetta?

—Robert Ezzell

Creepy. And we’re not talking about the resemblance.

Temper, temper In the past few years, Гуе smashed a number of PlayStation controllers, spent over $300 replacing 360 controllers, ruined a coffee table, and committed various other acts of rage—all from being mad at games. I'm now [trying to manage my temper] when it comes to playing online games, since that's when most of the carnage takes place. Still, | find myself throwing perfectly good TV remotes or other small objects, breaking them into а million pieces. What do you do to prevent such acts of aggression?

— Devon Pieper

Try reminding yourself that without your tantrums you could afford an entirely new game system. ќа.

ONTA

ан EGM@1UP.com

EGM Letters 101 2nd Street, 8th Floor San Francisco, CA 94105

Web: www.zdmcirc.com Phone: (800) 779-1174

Ше IZE АМ SOME PRODUCT.

ITSTWOTHINGS.COM 4, BoDvwasH “ж

و

= 1

New Tag Team Gameplay: A new way to play with high-impact double team

Create a Finisher:

An innovative user interface lets you design the most devastating finisher moves ever.

New Inferno Match: Опе of WWE's most hardcore match types lets you drag your opponentinto the flames.

lania: - Ко 1 оп mode features customized ines including the first-ever co-op tag team

е.

Mild Language Suggestive Themes Violence

moves and new bone-crunching tag team finishers.

ESRB CONTENT RATING _www.esth.org <>

In WWE, the only person you сап rely on, other than yourself, is your

partner. You have each other’s backs, and together, you can accomplish more than you ever could on your own.

© AIL WWE programming, talent names, images, likenesses, slogans, wrestling moves, trademarks, logos and copyrights are the exclusive property of World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. and its subsidiaries. All other trademarks, logos

© 2008 THQJJAKKS Pacific, LLC. Used under exclusive license by THQ/JAKKS Pacific, LLC. JAKKS Pacific and the JAKKS Pacific logo are trademarks of JAKKS Pacific, Inc. Developed by YUKE'S Co., Ltd. ҮШКЕ Co., Ltd. and its logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of YUKE'S Co., Ltd. GameSpy and the "Powered by GameSpy" design are trademarks of GameSpy Industries, Inc. All rights reserved. THQ and the THQ logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of THQ Inc. All Rights Reserved, © 2007 by GameStop’. All rights reserved. GameStop is a registered trademark of GameStop, Inc. "Power to the Players" is a trademark of Elbo Inc. All other trademarks, logos and copyrights are property of their respective owners. "PlayStation", "PLAYSTATION", "PS" Family logo and "PSP" аге registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. PSP® system — Memory Stick Duo™ may be required (sold separately). Microsoft, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE, and the Xbox logos are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies and are used under license from Microsoft. Wii and Nintendo DS are trademarks of Nintendo. © 2006 Nintendo

power to the

WIRELESS

MATURE 17+

Blood and Gore Intense Violence

PLAYSTATIONS

THE LAST STORY

| WE-MAY. EVER TELL

WILL CLOSE THE DISTANCE BETWEEN

PAST & PRESENT

IT WILL

| DESTROY THÉLINE'

BETWEEN

| FACT & FICTION,

And mark ~

THE END

= of all | MYTHOLOGY.

2PRESS START

, rumors, cosplay hotties, and other stuff

, Previews

News

28 · Downloads of crap

₪

am. f

34 . November's reign

Check out NEWS.1UP.com for up-to-the-minute videogame news.

ш Relive the insanity with our Penny Arcade Expo 2008 scrapbook: 1) Good tidings and fermented liquids flowed freely at 1UP's informal

PAX fan meet-and-greet. 2) This year top-quality cosplay thankfully overshadowed the eyesores. 3) PAX attendees patiently await the open- ing of the Expo Hall. 4) Old friends Bryan Intihar, Chris Johnston, Phil Theobald, and Greg Sewart enjoy the festivities. 5) Not pictured: Vader and the stormtroopers nailing Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” оп Rock Band 2's expert difficulty. 6) More friends of EGM: Shawnimals mastermind Shawn Smith and former Kojima Productions boy wonder Ryan Payton.

[PENNY ANTE

Who needs E3? The fan-focused Penny Arcade ae expands to bring gaming culture to the masses By Sh:

OVER LABOR DAY WEEKEND, NERDS RULED THE STREETS OF SEATTLE—near- ly 60,000 fans flocked to the Washington State convention center to geek out at the fifth-annual Penny Arcade Expo, a three-day celebration of gaming. As the brainchild

of webcomic superstars Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik (better known by their ani- mated monikers Gabe and Tycho), the event unabashedly embraces the culture of con- sole, PC, and unplugged gaming.

Although PAX 2008 ended the established tradition of doubling the previous year’s attendance record, the show continues to expand at an astonishing rate. The presence of 21,000 additional fans at the '08 shindig contributed to massive lines for the keynote address and panels, an overstuffed Expo Hall floor, and the constant threat of an airborne hygienic crisis. Luckily, the event’s organizers revealed a plan to alleviate the overcrowd- ing issue by making the show bicoastal: The inaugural PAX East Coast will be held in late March 2010 in Boston, MA.

Arriving in the wake of this summer's disappointingly downsized Electronic Entertainment Expo, Penny Arcade Expo suddenly seems more relevant than ever. While the event has rarely showcased unan- nounced titles, this year's PAX played host to some surprising debuts, including buzzwor- thy Wii shooter The Conduit and Colosseum, an online fighter from Microsoft's homebrew XNA initiative. Intrepid attendees willing to suffer the Expo Hall queues also got hands-

on time with many of the fall's hottest games,

including Fallout 3, Prince of Persia, Mirror's Edge, LittleBigPlanet, and Left 4 Dead.

For many, the rare chance to play unre- leased games would validate the event's $45 entry fee for a three-day pass (comparatively, last fall's competing E for All Expo in L.A. charged $110 for a four-day pass...and only 18,000 people showed up), but PAX offers far more than just demo kiosks. Attendees showed up en masse for a variety of gam- ing-related panels, including a stuffed-past- capacity keynote address by BioShock cre-

ator Ken Levine, a live taping of our own ТУР Yours podcast, and a candid chat with pro- fessed celebu-nerd Wil Wheaton. If you were looking for more interaction, PAX fostered Social gaming with massive LAN party rooms, various organized tournaments, and count- less beanbags lying in wait for impromptu Pokémon battles. And when everyone was all gamed out by nightfall, they could let loose at a Minibosses concert or unwind with clas- sic gaming flicks such as The Wizard.

We ran into several old industry pals at the expo, and everyone came away impressed. "PAX has evolved into the trade show that the industry wants and needs," says Ryan Payton, assistant producer of Metal Gear Solid 4. “And unlike ₪3, it doesn't require game enthusiasts to sneak, lie, or cheat their way into admission." And EGM alum Bryan Intihar, who's now Insomniac's commu- nity manager, says, "This was my first time attending [PAX], and | definitely got that good ol’ ₪3 vibe from it—PAX is just big enough to feel like a spectacle." ќа.

ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM • 25

Block Builder:

Lego’s currently making a killing piecing together blockbuster vid- eogame hits. Now some people are

. making, well, noth- ing re-creating classic games using a bunch of plastic bricks. Talented block builder Dan Kressin is leading the charge with his moving-pieces replica of the original Donkey Kong's first stage. We caught up with Kressin to pick apart his brain (don't worry— we snapped it back on).

Your complex Lego set doesn't look very kid-friendly. What's the rec- ommended completion age? Thirty- five and up?

Tell me exactly what part of Giant Ape + Falling Barrels + Jumping on Girders strikes you as not kid-friendly?

Why'd you settle on Donkey Kong? Were Crazy Kong or Congo Bongo not good enough for you?

Puh-lease. If you're gonna до retro, you have to go original. But then, | guess | lose points for calling him “Mario” rather than “Jumpman.”

So your YouTube video is pretty sweet, but we never found out what happened to our hero. Does Mario ever save Pauline, or does he just keep jumping in place every 10 sec- onds or so?

Of course Mario saves Pauline! But he soon leaves when the fruit of her affair with Donkey Kong shows up. It's all there in Donkey Kong Jr. Think about it! Better yet, don't.

We have to ask: Were any plas- tic gorillas/people hurt in the making

of this project?

Always remember to practice safe Lego. Wear shoes.

& רא ררה 35 3 $3335

т Only a true blockhead could build this.

26» ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY + EGM.1UP.COM

Platform: PlayStation 2

Likelihood it'll come here? Given its choice of platform and the legions of feisty, argumenta- tive shooter bastards on webforums, a budget PS2 release following the game's October launch in Japan seems distinctly possible.

FOREIGN OBJECT

THUNDER ORCE VI

Horizontally scrolling heaven

This name sorta rings a bell. If it does, then you’re an endangered species, and your game room would qualify for EPA protection in a just world. That's because Thunder Force (a series that had its heyday on the 16-bit Sega Genesis) represents not one but three great bygone eras in gaming—the era of the 2D shoot-em-up, the era when Sega was still a driving force in console hardware, and the era when games were rated directly on how damned hard it was to beat them. Console shooters didn't get any more mind-blowing than Thunder Force Ill, replete with massive explosions, huge bosses, and a tinny, synthesized heavy- metal soundtrack, and more than one gamer shed a tear (in a manly, hardcore fashion) when the series ended on the PlayStation in 1997. So why’s it coming back? “The thing I’m aiming for with [Thunder Force VI] is the restoration of the shoot-em-up—a genre dear to our hearts that’s all but disappeared

nowadays,” Sega Game Producer Tez Okada wrote on his blog. "I'm burning with the desire to make this moribund genre exciting again.” If anyone can do it, it’s Okada, the somewhat bent mind behind the crazy-hardcore GBA game Astro Boy: Omega Factor and the simply crazy Dreamcast sim Segagaga. His plan of action is to keep the basic formula (side-scrolling 20 shooter, 3D graphics, and a music score straight out of Metalocalypse) and hope that enough starry-eyed space pilots are left and are still paying attention. Can it happen? As long as someone out there remembers the glory days of blast processing, anything’s possible.

“ 0 A Ааа, Я = 3 »

BELIEVING IN YOURSELF IS STRONG. ACHIEVING WHAT YOU NEVER - BELIEVED POSSIBLE IS ARMY STRONG.

hen there's Army Stro from one Of over 150 career (50 receive money for college.

> мош SHOWING RT GAMEVIDEOS

GAME VIDEOS

We thought about using the marains of EGM as a flipbook to show our favorite videos, but then we remem bered the Internet. Check 'em out at GameVideos.com/EGM!

ZOMG: The 1UP Show

fall 2008 season

The 1UP Show is back, with coverage of Resistance 2, Bionic Commando, Mirror's Edge, and other big games.

Platform: PSP

Publisher: Capcom

Developer:

1337: Portal “Mirror’s Edge Alpha Stage” clip

EvilWeevil re-created a Mirror's Edge level in Portal. Jumping is for suckers; it’s all portals these days.

in Japan (routinely selling in the millions with every iteration on PSP), it’s more of a cult thing in the States, where hardcore fans trade

strategies via Internet message boards and wikis. The main thing holding the series back—as evidenced by the number of peo- ple playing the ostensibly local-play-only

KEWL: Soulcalibur IV character creation GameVideos’ Jason Bertrand made M. Bison, He-Man, and Arrested Development's Tobias Fünke іп 4

game online using XLink Kai broadband adapters—is the lack of online playability. Members of the game’s core Japanese demographic—junior-high boys—don't seem to mind having to physically meet up with three other like-minded monster hunt- ers, but finding fans Stateside isn’t so easy. Well, fans’ pleas will soon be answered;

LMAO: Broken Pixels

season alpha zero

EGM's Shane Bettenhausen and con- tributors Seanbaby and Crispin Boyer play the worst games ever.

28 • ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM 1ШРСОМ

> ONLINE = ОЕ?

MONSTER HUNTER ONLINE AT LAST

Capcom wises up and brings its biggest hands? held franchise online in North America... with а catch By James Ме

ke

Capcom plans to bring a localized version of the latest Japanese expansion, Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G, to North America in time for the holidays. This will be the first version of the series available as a down- load on the PlayStation Network (Capcom hasn't ruled out a packaged retail version). But in an interesting twist, Freedom 2nd G will indeed be playable online but only while using Sony’s recently revealed PS3-to-PSP infrastructure mode (this adds online play to any ad hoc title). You'll need to play with your PSP synced to your online-enabled PS3 via the remote-play functionality. Once you connect your PSP to a wireless hotspot, you can then access your PS3 as the online hub and start questing for loot.

Chatting with your buddies could prove to be difficult, though. While the Japan-only title Monster Hunter 2 Dos had keyboard support, the PSP obviously does not. But Capcom may be able to add voice chat or another work-around to help players communicate with each other. The online evolution of Hunter on PSP could also fore- shadow Capcom's plans for the Wii-bound Monster Hunter 3 Tri, due in 2009.

His list of demands is short and sweet.

The days of peaceful piñata gardens are over. The evil Professor Pester is back and he won't rest until hes got your piñatas and all the candy in ет. And with dozens of new piñata species and two brand-new environments to taKe care of, this garden is anything but relaxing.

xbox.com/vivapinata

VIVA

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> RUMOR MILL

Your monthly dose of gaming gossip

Resurrected Rumors:

Many moons ago, the Q prophesized the coming of a Japanese PSP renaissance. Now, following the announcements of Sony's Patapon 2 and LocoRoco 2 and Square Enix’s shocking revelation that Final Fantasy XIII and Parasite Eve titles are PSP-bound, the platform's definitely seeming healthier.

THE Q LIKES TO FANCY HIMSELF something of an О.С. (Original Gossiper). Other rumormon- gers have come and gone throughout the years, but Гуе been dishing up juicy nuggets of simu- lated truth since the days when Atari was freshly packing dirt on a landfill full of superfluous Е.Т. cartridges. The methods and technology required to land a scoop have changed (more Facebook sleuthing, less digging through John Romero’s trash), but my commitment to unleashing the unannounced has not.

Capcom takes it in stride

Bionic Commando: Rearmed, the recently released downloadable remake of the NES cult classic, became an overnight sales success on both PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade. Luckily, this has inspired Capcom to revisit some of the other dusty gems languishing in the old back catalog. They've certainly got oodles to choose from (c’mon, why not show Trojan, Black Tiger, and Forgotten Worlds some love?), but we're hearing that fan-favorite arcade slasher Strider will be the next recipient of a snazzy, Devil May Cry-esque makeover.

End, these Star Wars will not Remember back when Star Wars was still cool? If you're still bitter after shelling out $10 to wit- ness Jabba the Hutt's flatulent son erode the bitter dregs of your fandom in this summer's theatrical CG turkey The Clone Wars, you could probably use some positive Star Wars news. Turns out that LucasArts has licensed out its entire Factor 5-developed Rogue Squadron fran- chise to another publisher, and the whole series will ship on a single Wii disc: Rogue Squadron, Rogue Leader, and Rebel Strike will all receive new Wii-specific controls and enhanced visuals.

32 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM

Sadly, there's no sign of a Twi'lek rhythm-action striptease minigame utilizing the Balance Board.

Kojima's Western inspiration

Legendary Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima has repeatedly claimed that he will not be heading up the development of MGS5, say- ing that he'd rather leave that task to his young- er teammates while he helms an all-new project. Well, if our Q-spies' intel is legit, it sounds as if Kojima might be looking to dive headfirst into the competitive realm of first-person shooters (sorry, Zone of the Enders fans). Japanese devel- opers have traditionally had a tragic track record in the genre, but Kojima could very well be the pioneer who changes all of that. He was recently spotted meeting with some of the Western game development community's top FPS teams, including Infinity Ward (Call of Duty), Treyarch (Quantum of Solace), and Guerrilla Games (Killzone 2). Perhaps he's just getting advice...or maybe seeking a development partner. ќа

ea асар > O-TIFS

* Dood! Disgaea fans can look forward to a fast- tracked domestic release for NIS’ new Prinny side- scrolling platformer for PSP.

* Expect to see downloadable LittleBigPlanet doo- dads from non-Sony properties very soon, including characters from third-party games and Disney films.

* Digital distribution is the future of the medium, and the future is almost here: Expect every single PSP game that ships in 2009 to also appear as a download.

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> FAMILY GUY

What normal people play

Bungie Community Manager (and former 1UP News Editor) Luke Smith and | are both pretty obsessed with game-sales data. We obsess about it the same way movie critics fuss about box-office numbers. It started back in the old 7UP Yours days, when our highlight would be our monthly show on the sales data from market- research group NPD. When we both moved on to other things, the obses- sion continued, but it morphed into a series of irregularly placed wagers. My assertion has been, and con- tinues to be, that observers of the hardcore end of the gaming scene often miss the point of what a hit сап be. Kids’ titles are dismissed as “baby games,” licensed properties are

р Ф fe) 5 > 6 Z = Q =) ко © ко: O ө) 6 52) 90) Ф E 9 O

Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars

Wii e Gamecock

At last, the perfect game for that special someone who yearns to play as a 3-inch-tall sentient fungus with its own culture and language—or prejudged as “crappy,” and anything for a Primus fan. Spore Wars features solid action-adventure gameplay, that doesn’t adhere to a preconceived an eerie Les Claypool soundtrack, and a visual style reminiscent of Tim

notion of what a game should be Schafer's cult classic Psychonauts. is derided. I’m a firm believer in the

importance of the “normal” gamer who just wants to be distracted for a

little while—it’s why Mario & Sonic at Skate It the Olympic Games has sold a hojiil- : Wii/DS • EA Games lion copies. j

It's this belief that lies at the heart i The Wii Balance Board-compatible of our wagers. We pick a nonhardcore Skate It picks up where the original game to watch and then bet a steak i : Skate left off, with your character’s dinner on whether it'll hit a million яй hometown of San Vanelona leveled by units. Previous wagers have included 7 an earthquake—familiar areas from Naruto: Rise of a Ninja on XB360, the first game are now devastated by which | bet would beat Assassin's . the disaster. Fortunately, the collapsed Creed to the 1 million mark (boy, was | buildings, enormous fissures, and wrong), but this year’s holiday season 23 random debris are all conveniently should be ripe with steaky goodness \ skateable. Skate It's solid controls and that won’t hurt my Amex. Balance Board option should be enough

So toss aside the surefire hits like " to get fans excited. Gears of War 2 or LittleBigPlanet; и 3 Scores of other games will make game reviewers cringe but sell by the boatload, including Boogie: SuperStar, Spore: Creatures, Ben 10: Alien Force, Ultimate Band, Zubo, and—at the > НОЌЕ НОМЕНЕЕЕ RELEASES heart of my next bet with Mr. Smith— ч Club Penguin: Elite Penguin Force, which | think has a shot at being one of the biggest selling games of the year. Care to wager on it?

= John Davison, former editorial director of the 10Р + Network, is the cofounder of = family gaming website What

They Play (www.whattheyplay.com) and a regular guest on the 1UP Yours podcast.

(All dates on this page are subject to change.)

34 • ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY > EGM.1UP.COM

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ADVENTURES IN FRIENDSHIP

SPECIAL FEATURE

Everything’s better with a friend—whether you're playing with a real-life bud ог a computer-controlled compadre, there's nothing like dishing out digital destruction with a pal. We ask some experts, including Cliff Bleszinski and Randy Pitchford, to weigh in on the virtues of gaming with buddies, and then showcase the hottest upcoming co-op fare.

> CONTENTS

38 Let’s Play Together 46 Resistance 2 52 The House of the Dead: Overkill > 40 Far Cry 2 50 Onechanbara 54 Resident Evil 5

ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM • 37

of videogam- ing, when the most impressive titles looked like Saturday-morning cartoons rendered in Lego and a TV weighed about as much as the average mod- ern American, it wasn’t uncommon for a game to allow two people to team up and shoot aliens together (yes, that's all anyone played back then, too). It was called co-op—as in coop- eration—and it was a beautiful thing. Gamers spent countless hours prac- ticing exotic curse words with a good friend over a torturous piece of gray plastic called Contra. Unfortunately, when games made the jump to 3D, co-op faded away.

Lately, however, as modern-day alien-shooting entertainments like Halo and Gears of War revived the age-old practice, co-op's crept back into our good graces. Many of this winter's most anticipated games—Fable 2, Resistance 2, Gears of War 2, Killzone 2, Left 4 Dead, and

38 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY « EGM.1UP.COM

LittleBigPlanet—are making co-op а central part of the experience. Why the comeback? Doug Lombardi, VP of marketing for Valve—whose upcom- ing shooter Left 4 Dead is built entirely around the idea of four players team- ing up against hordes of zombies— says that it’s an idea whose time has simply come. “We think it’s a natural next step for today’s gaming experi- ence,” says Lombardi. “Not only has it become more viable, technically, to create a next-generation co-op game, but it’s the No. 1 feature gamers are asking us and other developers to explore. As the old entertainment proverb goes, ‘Give the people what they want.”

Feeling connected

In many ways, the current co-op boom's just another step іп gaming's ongoing Internet-age transforma- tion. We're all zapped into each other’s living rooms on our fancy

online consoles these days, so why not play together? And for people of a certain age, keeping up your so- called social network is imperative. For Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford, whose first-person adven- ture Borderlands (due out in 2009) is built around four-player co-op, games themselves have become secondary to the social experience. "When | play Xbox, my experience usually isn't ‘Tonight, I'm going to play Halo,” says Pitchford. “Usually, my experience is, ‘Tonight, I'm going to play Xbox 360.’ | turn on my console, and | look at the dashboard to see who's online and what my friends are playing."

Of course, online gaming's been around for over a decade, but the kinds of games made popular in the early days of online play often dis- couraged socializing. Fable 2 Lead Designer Peter Molyneux sees today's co-op games as a reaction to the orig- inal online-gaming fad: deathmatch.

Why co-op returned from the dead—and where it's headed

Wi Clockwise from left: Borderlands, Gears of War 2, and Left 4 Dead.

“Deathmatch perfectly describes it,” says Molyneux. "When | went into those games, ! always felt like the bespectacled kid on the playground who was going to get picked on or bullied. You went into these arenas and got shot within two seconds, and you just felt stupid. That's changed now. People are realizing that if we play together, and we talk about it, it makes the whole experience greater." That's the idea behind co-op work in Fable 2, a role-playing game that places importance on decision mak- ing. Molyneux wants to facilitate con- versation and teamwork by allowing players to tackle the game together, online or in person. "You play through the story and experience it together, not unlike watching a film together," says Molyneux. “If | watch a great film alone, | get one experience. If | watch it with a friend, then | get a completely different experience. The film is no different, but the fact that | can talk to someone about it, laugh and hear them laugh—that's very powerful." Certainly, part of the popularity of co-op play is that most people don't want to spend their leisure time alone. Gaming can be a lonely pursuit, even online. "When you're playing a pure single-player game or a pure multi- player game, there's always been a certain detachment," says Lombardi. "In single-player games, the reasons are obvious. In multiplayer games, | believe the disconnect is that the stakes have never been placed upon the team's ability to really work as a unit." Left 4 Dead attempts to do this by throwing so many zombies at the team that they don't stand a chance

alone. "If you wander off on your own and play Rambo-style, you're going to die,” says Lombardi. “If you work as a team, you may very well survive—and do so in memorable fashion."

Two people, same game

Not all games are as inventive when

it comes to co-op. Much of the

time, even going back to the days of Contra, developers simply throw a second player into an enemy-packed version of the single-player game, nar- rative be damned. “It’s kind of like a cheap stepsister of the single-player game,” says Pitchford. “Sometimes, but usually not, there’s a rationaliza- tion for why the other human is in

the game, but it’s weak at best.” For 2006's Gears of War, the game's developers managed to work around the narrative issue by fleshing out a squad of teammates for the game’s lead, Marcus Fenix. The team aspect also allowed Gears to have moments that were tailor-made for co-op play. But what the game’s developers couldn’t do with the squad, according to Lead Designer Cliff Bleszinski, was allow players to control each member of the crew. “When you start adding four or more players, the complexity increases exponentially, and you begin losing track of the narrative,” says Bleszinski. “All of a sudden, some-

body triggers an event or a cut-scene, and you're still back 30 yards, fishing for ammo, without a clue of what's going on or why you're watching a cut-scene." For the sequel, instead of expanding co-op in the main game, Bleszinski and his team created an entirely separate feature called Horde Mode. A five-player game pitting the Gears crew against unending waves of aliens, Horde Mode's designed to play like an old-school arcade game: all action, no story, and high-score wins. It's an example of the many ways modern co-op games break with the lazy ways of the past.

Co-op of the future

Has co-op become a necessity, a feature that gamers will soon come to expect in anything they buy? Molyneux suspects as much. “Now that I’m playing Fable 2...| realize how important [co-op] is and how solitary games feel now when | don't have that option,” says Molyneux. "| think we could be looking at something where, if you reviewed a game five years from now that doesn't have co-op, it would be like a first-person shooter not having deathmatch. It just doesn’t compute.”

The developers contacted for this story were split, however, on the popularity of co-op with players. “Marketwise, the data we have tells us that it’s not played very much,” says Pitchford. He cites some publicly unavailable data for a “game that features co-op that you've prob- ably played, and only 8 percent of the customers ever tried it.” That game must not be Gears of War. “Approximately 44 percent of play- ers with Live connectivity played co-op Gears of War for at least one chapter,” says Bleszinski. “Over 3.5 million people played Gears of War in co-op.” He belies that co-op is now a must-have. “Co-op used to be a nice- but-not-necessary feature with triple-A games,” says Bleszinski. “These days, it’s essential.”

It sounds nice, but co-op as а stan- dard isn’t necessarily a good thing for all those involved. “That’s the nightmare for us as developers,” says Molyneux. “It’s just another thing we have to do, and whenever we have to do something, that’s when it tends to get not-so good." ќа

When І went into those games, | felt like the bespec- tacled kid on the playground.

—Lionhead's Peter Molyneux on playing deathmatch

>

ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM “ 39

БЕГДЕ ЕЕ Еа E

OMETIMES, STUDIOS START WITH.SPECIFIC ACTIONS in mind and then arrange their game worlds to accommodate them. Intending for us.to slink through a moving army, for instance, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare's developers designed the level АН Ghillied Up with a linearity that guaranteed we'd see and do what they wanted, when they decid- ed. The resulting reward was one of the most talked-about missions in Infinity Ward’s multimillion-sell- ing shooter. The risk was that some players would stray from the script and perish—to the point that they’d see an abstract puzzle in place of a black-ops assassination attempt on a breakaway ultranationalist.

At other times, studios start with a world—in Far Cry 2's case, 50

Platforms: square kilometers of tropical African PS3/XB360/PC savanna, where we play a mercenary Publisher: in the middle of a war—and extrapo- Ubisoft late game scenarios. This isn’t to Developer: say that they just construct Vice City Ubisoft Montreal (Grand Theft Auto) or Cyrodiil (The Release Date: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion) and hope October 2008 that fun happens. As concepts, these

FAR CRY 2

A friend in need By Shawn Elliott

40 • ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY > ЕСМ. ИРСОМ

tests its creation and tweaks certain . elements to encourage interesting |

| aggres bea Creative Director Clint Hocking and his team can’t count on controlled pacing to sustain intensity with the precision of Call of Duty—or even Halo 3, however unconstrained its jungle gym is in comparison to Modern Warfare's. “People about to play [Far Cry 2] have no idea what to expect," Hocking boasts of the game's enor- mity. “There’s no loading anywhere. We're not talking big levels; it's a world you never leave. It's not like Oblivion, where you spend half your time in a menu and half your time managing your inventory. You're always in the world.” By which he means that everything—even navigation—occurs in first-person perspective. If we want to beat feet, map and GPS system in hand, we're welcome to try. Together, scale and continuity create a lifelike illusion. You travel from one location to any other on foot, wheels, or wings. As you traverse streams, hills, trails, and sky, you see dry savanna grade into shrub land into jungle. Far Cry 2's creators embrace the

“Game over” didn’t die in arcades. It ended ир

on our TVs, in “realistic” titles that nevertheless remind us of Frogger when we fail. Since even maps appear in Far Cry 2 players’ onscreen hands—one of many attempts to maintain our total immersion—throwbacks to old “gimme more quarters” moments aren't ideal. So instead of dying, we collapse. We wake up when a war buddy arrives to hold off attackers as we pluck bullets from our bodies and set broken bones.

As we accept assignments and sometimes save lives, we develop a dozen or so such friendships with fellow mercs. If they die—either by our treachery or by our inability to protect them— that's it. They're gone for good, along with optional objectives associated with their stories (Creative Director Clint Hocking notes that they don’t die easily, though).

On occasion, allies also fight alongside for more than a few minutes. Hocking offers an example: “One faction hires you to assassinate an arms dealer who’s selling weapons from his barge. Your best buddy calls your cellphone and says, ‘Sure, we're going to kill this son of a b****, but | have a

> THE BUDDY SYSTEM _

SPECIAL FEATURE

E Yojimbo and Apocalypse Now influenced Far Cry 2's story.

better idea here. | have this 1,000-pound bomb that | recovered from a crashed chopper, but it needs a new fuse. Find a fuse and meet me on

the bridge by the barge. We'll blow up the bridge, which will collapse on the barge and make your boss happy. And since the bridge is a key piece of infrastructure for our opponents’ faction, we'll do double damage. But plenty of pissed-off people will want to kill us—we’ll have to fight side-by-side to hold them off until we can split up.”

fact that we influence pacing. Says Hocking: “Lead Level Designer Jonathan Morin worked hard to define how design would work with this setup. He came up with a model that he calls ‘planning and approach, combat, escape and evasion.’ At first, Рт far away from а camp and detect it on my map. In the planning- and-approach phase, | can observe and collect intelligence. We invite players to do so and, at the same time, try not to totally punish them

when they don't. The combat phase inherits its difficulty from the degree of success or failure in the planning- and-approach portion."

Escape's optional, he suggests: "Are you the guy who storms in, assassinates his target with a shot- gun, and then hops in the nearest truck and hightails it? Escape and evasion comes in when the target's henchmen get in cars and chase after you. [Morin] examined the dif- ferent ways that people approach >

ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY > EGM.1UP.COM • 1

Е А ЕР Ж כ‎

encounters and worked with his level designers to ensure that we support several styles of play.”

I tried Far Cry 2 in its current, unfinished state and agree; ambush and frontal assault alike are tactically viable, and foes did indeed pursue me under a full moon until | pulled over and put a rocket-propelled grenade through their front window. In the middle of a second getaway,

I slammed into a tree and fled my smoking land cruiser on foot; the gunmen on my heels then used the

crashed vehicle to give chase. Ideally, Far Cry 2's unscripted combat can compete with the super- charged, if staged, shootouts in gaming's Call of Dutys and Rainbow Sixes. "Once, when | was in the middle of a gunfight, a car came careening around a corner," Hocking says. "A f***ing buffalo jumped in front of it and caused it to crash. I said, ‘What the f***?’ It's insane. Then there were a couple of times when | was trying to infiltrate a camp and spooked some gazelles. The A.l.

A f***ing buffalo jumped in front of [a jeep] and caused it to crash. | said, “What the f***?” It’s insane.

— Ubisoft Montreal Creative Director Clint Hocking

42 + ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY e EGM.1UP.COM

ш Sometimes stray bullets start long-lived fires.

ћа!5 and started

Having heither Half-Life 2's ever- visible Citadel nor Halo's titular space station, Ubisoft Mofitreal's story seems to lack the sort of endgame destination that drives more linear shooters forward. Instead, we criss- cross the same terrain in our quest for diamonds and the life of a notori- ous arms dealer, frequently revisiting familiar bases where fresh bad guys replace the ones we bested on previ- ous passes. Insofar as Far Cry 2 is а sequence of skirmishes around these enemy encampments, the smarts or stupidity of its computer-controlled characters will determine the game’s greatness. At this time, they’re unpre- dictable and can absorb a great deal of damage before dying. When a first-person shooter's A.I. is tops, it’s >

LOOK OUT BELOW!

TWO MUSHROOM MEN ABERE T URRE ARE UNDERFOOT THIS FALL

שד

- OCTOBER FOR NINTENDO D$ "

AFTER A MYSTERIOUS COMET FALLS TO EARTH, STRANGE THINGS BEGIN TO HAPPEN IN THE UNDERGROWTH. MUSHROOMS COME TO LIFE AND TAKE SIDES- GOOD VS. EVIL. CHOOSE FROM THREE UNIQUE CLASSES AND PROTECT YOUR VILLAGE FROM THE MUSHROOMS THAT WOULD DESTROY

YOUR WAY OF LIFE.

` EVOLUTIONARY COURSE OF TH EARTH. PAX, OUR BOLETE HERO, MUST TAKE ON THIS JOURNEY BY HIMSELF. WHO WILL BE THE FIRST TO DISCOVER THE ORIGIN OF THE MUSHROOM RACE?’ WILL THIS KNOWLEDGE CHANGE THE COURSE OF EVOLUTION? WILL THE MUSHROOM WAR FINALLY END?

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{© 2006-2008 Red Fly Studio and Zen Studios Ltd. © 2008. АП Rights Reserved, Gamecock Media Group. Wil and Nintendo DS are trademarks of Nintendo. ©2006 Nintendo. All other trademarks and trade names are property of thelr respecte owners. АФАҒАРООЛЕФАЛФЕА.СОМЛФ

ЕТИ ЕЕЕ ШИ ЕЕЕ

> МАКЕ YOUR MARK

Far Cry 2 Creative Director Clint Hocking terraforms African countryside with a few Clicks. He shoves the sun across the sky and creates clouds. A wind blows and rain falls when he wills it. He then hops into his flash-fabricated, 512-meter-by- 512-meter world (the maximum size of user-made maps) and hang glides from a mountain peak to a rooftop. If you enjoyed spawning boxes and such in Halo 3's Forge tool, it stands to reason that you'll love the freedom of expression that Far Cry 2's multiplayer map editor affords PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 players. Procedural tools generate whole patches of jungle or plains. Conversely, players can become war-zone landscapers by planting individual boulders and trees. Most likely, unfair-but-fun maps will proliferate, as most of us aren't professionals and will experiment with gimmicks such as matchstick grasslands where high winds and hand grenades threaten to turn entire worlds into roaring infernos. Eventually, budding designers will emerge, maybe remaking Call of Duty maps in Far Cry 2's African setting before graduating to their own balanced creations.

| ₪ 3i

==

זז

sensible for foes to live long enough to demonstrate their intelligence (see Halo and F.E.A.R.); when it isn’t, hanging around tends to highlight that fact. It'll be interesting to see how they behave and how long they Stick around in the final version. While Far Cry 2 shares DNA with PC first-person shooters that run on superwide rails (such as Crysis and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.), its closest cousins come from the so-called *open- world" category. And so it runs the risk of inheriting defects unique to games of GTA's genus, like long, multilegged missions that end in accidental death and do-overs. It

TRONIC GAMING MO

also stands to clear the way for imi- tators by carving out a new niche in its combat videogame ecosystem. Hocking’s convinced this is a beauti- ful place to be.

“One thing always amazes me,” he says. “I'll save my game, swap weapons, and sleep in a safe house without windows. When | wake up and open the door, | see the world with fresh eyes and just say, ‘Holy f***, that's beautiful!’ I've called coworkers over to my desk, went back inside the safe house, shut the door, and then reopened it to show them the reveal. Just seeing the world is reward enough." ќа

1UP.COM

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Five things you need to Know about the co-op campaig

MOST GAMES ARE CONTENT with put- ting four players into the single-player story mode and calling that the co-op campaign. Not only is Insomniac going crazy by sup- porting eight players in Resistance 25 co- op mode, but it’s also making the campaign а completely separate experience. We recently chatted with Co-op Lead Designer Jake Biegel to get the five most important details of the buddy-heavy effort.

The two primary influences of - the co-op campaign are World of WarCraft (PC) and Team Fortress | 2. “People here play those games all the time,” Biegel says. “We believe that’s the future of multiplayer gaming—the class-

46 • ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY ЕОМ ТИ

Na s БЕ беа ш اک‎

based experience and emergent gameplay of eight people doing different things in

a certain environment." Biegel even uses a raid encounter in World of WarCraft as an analogy for an intense co-op firefight against a Chimera boss.

It’s a separate story campaign. = “Co-op’s very much intertwined with the fiction and lore of the primary single-player campaign,” Biegel says. “This is a parallel campaign that has a lot of reveals that supplement the fiction of the R2 campaign.” The basic concept is that you're part of the Spectres, which Biegel describes as “a covert-ops group that’s gone behind enemy lines to

n By Thierry Nguyen

retrieve Gray Tech [in order] to empower the

humans against the alien invasion.” You get

your mission orders from Blake, a character

from the single-player campaign who also

functions as your commanding officer in the

co-op mode.

A, Three separate classes offer different playstyles: Medic, Soldier, and Spec Ops. The <= Soldier's the damage sponge; he

absorbs a lot of abuse and has a shield

to mitigate the entire group’s damage.

Meanwhile, healing’s the Medic’s main job.

“We don’t have regenerating health, so you

must rely on the Medic to give health to the

group,” Biegel says. "It's a forced depen- >

Developer:

OCTOBER 21, 2008

\/\/ \ Б ( 6 | АМ | ›.( А MIDNIG

Mild Suggestive Themes 2 j Í E Mild Violence a PLAYSTATIONS %( XBOX зво." COMING TO THE PSP Strong Lyrics XBOX 360. *

(PLAYSTATION*PORTABLE) SYSTEM ®

© 2006-2008 Rockstar Games, Inc. Rockstar Games, the R, logo, Midnight Club, the Midnight Club Los Angeles logo and the Midnight Club LA. Remix logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. “PlayStation,” "PLAYSTATION," "PS" Family logo and "PSP" are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc: PSP® system ~ Memory Stick Duo™ may be required (sold separately). Microsoft Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE, and the Xbox logos are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies and are used under license from Microsoft. The ratings icon is a trademark of the Entertainment Software Association. All rights reserved.

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dency that promotes teamwork.” Finally, the Spec Ops class doles out ammunition, and he also deals damage to foes; Biegel describes him as “the glass cannon.”

You gain loot and experience in this campaign. Biegel elabo- rates: “Progression’s extremely important to us. Each class has a unique path of unlockables; there are armor pieces and weapon upgrades that are class specific, and you can add bonuses through Gray Tech that you get as drops from either Overseers or Primarchs. As you play co-op, you’re obtaining Gray Tech, and each class is evolving and gaining abilities to comple-

ment the class.” А

Gray Tech’s actually shared between your classes; you could theoretically max out your Medic and then use your leftover Gray, Tech for your other characters. A few exam-

ples of class progression: The Soldier has :

an energy shield, апа аз he levels up, the size and duration of his shield can increase. Likewise, the Medic's got a nifty energy weapon that can eventually chain-damage multiple enemies, similar to the "crossing the streams" idea from the Ghostbusters films. The Spec Ops can upgrade the alter- nate fire of his main weapon, the Electro- Orb, which results in a launchable turret that he can use to deliver even more dam-

While a group of eight Medics FT doesn’t do much in the damage department, they almost never die. 7

48» ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM. 1UP.COM

E As if the giganto phaser weren't enough, the potbelly has the soldiers experiencing a whole new type of fear.

age on top of his own primary weapon.

Biegel further stresses that “everything you do is on the same progression; you don’t miss out on any of your experience points. Every moment; in any class, you’re earning experience and gaining rewards toward that class.”

™) You can play the campaign

how you want to. Biegel says

you could roll into a mission with

eight Medics. While such a group doesn’t do much in the damage department, they almost never die. He also describes the eight Medics firing their energy beams for chain damage among 70 Hybrids as “a situ- ation of visual synergy and pandemonium.”

Biegel then points out an inverse situa-

tion—sending a team composed entirely of Spec Ops players into a mission. Sure, this team’ll take out enemies quite fast, but there’s also going to be a lot of downtime, as everyone will die...a lot. ќа.

>

VE MONSTER) r URN IT LOOSE.

Ж |

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ЕЕ А ₪33 בככנטר‎

— 71-67: шт | | ل‎ BIKINI ZOMBIE 2 А SLAYERS

zombies collide

FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, D3Publisher is bringing its Onechanbara series—which began life as part of its Japan- only budget-priced Simple 20 franchise—to North America. With it comes its unique blend of gratuitous cheesecake and blood-spraying pyrotechnics that would make Quentin Tarantino proud.

Bikini Zombie Slayers, devel- oped by Tamsoft (the guys behind Toshinden), pits half- sisters Aya and Saki against a never-ending legion of shuffling zombies. With “realistic” sword- swinging Wii-mote motion con-

| trols, gamers will be slicing up МММ “АМ f \ d : the undead with the precision of

ONECHANBARA: ~. BIKINI SAMURAI SQUAD

And now you can play dress-up, too By ЈатевМеке -

Platform: Xbox 360

Y Publisher: е D3Publisher

Developer: Tamsoft -

% Release Datei 012009 ,

WHILE THE WII VERSION OF ONECHANBARA may hav: à

ing control scheme, the Xbox 360 iteration (titled Onechanbara: Voi

in Japan) features sharper graphics and is no slouch in the features department. While both games offer co-op play, Bikini Samurai Squad also adds 40 quests and character customization courtesy of its "dress up” mode, which lets you tailor a character's outfits, accessories, hair

styles, hair color, and more. You can then name these coordinated out- fits and save them for use in-game. Bikini Samurai Squad also features

Z^ JOKES CANCEL motorcycle combat and unlockable characters.

50 е ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM. TURCOM’

ALSO AVAILABLE ON PS3 ALSO AVAILABLE ON X360 ALSO AVAILABLE ON PS3

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CRAZ-4218 Advertising Supplement. All prices good 10/1/08-11/5/08 unless otherwise marked. Prices and dates subject to change without notice. Information in this advertisement may contain typographical errors or inaccuracies. Game Crazy reserves the right to correct any errors, inaccuracies or omissions. Limited quantities available, while supplies last. We reserve the right to limit purchase to normal retail quantities. Title selection may vary by location. GAME CRAZY, HOLLYWOOD VIDEO, and their respective logos and slogans are trademarks of Hollywood Entertainment Corporation. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. All trade-ins must be in good working order with all accessories. Trade offers and trade pricing not valid towards cash trades. Cash trades not available in all stores. See store for details. Customers responsible for applicable taxes. See stores for details. Offers listed in this ad are not valid in combination with any other offers. © 2008 Hollywood Entertainment Corporation. All rights reserved. * $30 trade-in values are with promotional trade boost offer. Regular trade-in values on these titles are $25. Call your store for details and title availability.

A behind-the-scenes look at Sega’s new co-op lightgun gorefest By James Mielke

It’s been six years since the last proper chapter in the House of the Dead series (which has always been best with a bud), . and while there’ve been a few related games in the interim,

Publisher: Sega

pe >

The House of the Dead: Overkill for Wii. To get details on the first House of the Dead developed outside of Sega, we

Developer:

| Games 2 Release Date:

February 2009

CATCHING UP WITH THE DEAD

Overkill isn’t actually the fourth game

in the series, as The House of the Dead 4 hit arcades in 2005. That game's peculiar, though, because it's not actually a sequel to HOTD3—it takes place between the events of 2 and 3. Confused yet? Meanwhile, HOTD EX, the upcoming arcade cel- shaded blaster, doesn’t have any bearing on the "storyline"—it's

] just a Point Blank-style collec- tion of lightgun minigames.

EGM Extras: Read the full interview with Overkill's producer at EGM.1UP.com.

52 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY > EGM. 1UP.COM

spoke with Producer Neil McEwan of Headstrong Games.

EGM: How did you guys end up landing this project?

Мей McEwan: It was ап inevitable meeting of minds, really. We were interested in doing a shooter for the Wii, and Sega was looking at the kind of stuff that would do the Wii justice if treated the right way. It was. an easy decision to come to; it all slotted together nicely.

EGM: What classic, signature elements of the series do you plan to retain, and what new elements are you bringing to the game?

NM: In terms of the look and style of the game, riffing off exploitation and shock- gore cinema is a new spin on the series and adds a huge amount to the game. In terms of raw feat there are plenty of touches and tweaks making to the format to make it totally сеат the Wii. The most obvious is what we've termed internally as “Wii-view,” which makes the camera view swing around an ext а 40 degrees or so when you move the crosshairs to the edge of the screen. This helps you get a better shot on attackers and spot hidden pick-ups and opportunities. It really keeps the player on their toes and gives you а bit more interactivity than is normal for a lightgun- style game.

EGM: We noticed a Grindhouse theme in the trailer. Is that just for promotional purposes, or will we see Rose McGowan pop up somewhere in the middle for a sexy zombie fight?

NM: We're being influenced by those shock-horror flicks from the '70s and '60s— just like Death Proof and Planet Terror did in film recently. There's just such a fantastic style to it. We do have our own hot momma who you'll meet in the [game]; she plays

a pivotal role. It's not Rose McGowan, though—although Га love to work with her if she’s reading this....

САЛ: Will there be an homage to previ- ous games in the series, and will any

of the classic characters return? We thought we saw original protagonist Agent G in the trailer—care to elaborate?

NM: Тһе story’s set as a prequel to the original series. We meet Agent G as he arrives fresh from the AMS academy

and teams up with a local detective, Washington, to investigate mysterious goings-on in Bayou City, a small town in the Deep South. We thought it’d be cool to go right back to the beginning and see how G became the professional AMS agent we all know and love.

EGM: Lightgun games are traditionally pretty short and offer minimal replay value. How do you plan to extend Overkill’s life?

NM: Overkill is being developed exclusively

for Wii. It’s not being ported from an arcade game, so we'll have a distinctly different structure. It'll be much longer than previ-

ous games in the series, although we don’t

know exactly how long at this stage. We'll

be talking about additional game modes and unlockables in the future, but there'll be plen- > ty of replay value, should you need it. жф

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54 • ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM

Daylight. It’s a rare commodity іп the world of

, a series typically entrenched in the

unrelenting bleakness of underground sewers, hidden laboratories, bubbling swamps, and, more recently, medieval castles. But in this, Resident Evil's fifth incarnation, daylight takes a leading role in help- ОТСОС Gaines premiere survival-horror series, Souleeeneenine пе rejuvenated zombie-blaster

out of the darkness and into the light

WHILE SHINJI MIKAMI, creator of the Resident Evil series and the driving force behind Resident Evil 4, has since Trove Ofte Otter projects outside

of Capcom, the creative nucleus

of the Resident Evil 5 team—Kota Suzuki (sound composer), Yoshiaki Hirabayashi (art director, cinematics), Yasuhiro Anpo (director), Jun Takeuchi (producer), and Masachika Kawata (coproducer)—seem to have things well in hand. In the latest episode וס‎ 5

SWapped ОПЕРЕ єрес!а! agent | Evil О.С. Chris Redfield, except this time he's accompanied by the lovely Sheva Alomar (a fellow BSAA—that's Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance—member). If every major installment of the RE series featured one principal innovation, then RES features two. Daylight, as we've established, is the first major shift

in this chapter of RE lore. It's fair to think that survival-horror's a lot more frightening in the dark, but with a large portion of RES taking place outdoors

and in the searing African sun, there's almost nowhere to hide...and that brings its own brand of terror. After all, it’s hardly any more comforting to see the rabid, dozen-strong zombie mob than to merely hear them coming in the darkness. You might also think that having a partner with you the whole time—the second major innovation—might lessen the fear, but it's actually more stressful to see that buddy disappear underneath a swarm of plague-infected villagers.

To get our hands on НЕ5"5 co- op multiplayer action, we flew to Capcom's Osaka, Japan-based headquarters and hit the ground running, putting both Chris and Sheva through their paces across two full levels of hot pseudo-zombie-blasting, בסו‎ in desti enemies you encounter throughout the game—and you'll encounter plenty of them—aren't technically zombies. The term "zombies" generally refers to— depending on your source material—reanimated corpses that have gained a simulacrum of life

thanks to an internal, burning hunger for tesh (possibly Chemically induced), The פוא סוה‎ е А О ו‎ о) their rotting 08005 המומ‎ bodies usual М өзе ו מ‎ sluggish סרח‎ 08330000 with

the undead we 595669 Resident Evil's SSS ee Тһе creepy “Los 390037 ho EG RE4's backwoodS рава, though, were a dilfferentibreed altogether—hungegssinteeteg ו‎ parasitic, mind ШОШО 69201505 known as Las 0000 ו‎ Ө the рагісиа анас аро exploding 000000 NOT DOES

a variety асока primarily from the neck or head). In RES, a more powerful strain of Las Plagas has somehow found its way to Africa (presumably somewhere along the East African coastline, where Swahili—spoken in-game by the majority of the antagonists—is the lingua franca), and it's here that Chris and Sheva find themselves toe-to- toe with swarms of the deadliest RE enemies yet. >

>A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE

It's been nearly six years since Resident Evil Zero last troubled us (on GameCube) and, surprisingly enough, almost four since the release of the franchise's reboot, Resident Evil 4. Resident Evil Zero is significant because it was the first chapter in the 12-year- old series that featured simultaneous two-character controls, be it on one controller (a precursor to Resident Evil 5's simultaneous two-player co-op), and Resident Evil 4 is significant because it made people care about the series again. While the intervening years between RE: Zero and RE4's respective entries were hardly dormant, they were filled with titles that failed to live up to the series’ legacy. With Resident Evil: Outbreak (and Outbreak: File #2, both on PS2), Capcom took an early stab at cooperative, multiplayer online gameplay, but the games suffered from myriad problems, the biggest of which was finding an audience that wanted to play as a janitor or a nurse while beating back zombies with a broom. Resident Evil: Dead Aim (PS2), on the other hand, was an unfortunate and wholly unnecessary attempt to keep the series visible by offering up a disposable first-person, lightgun-style shooter that did little to enhance RE’s reputation.

What the series needed was a genuine reinvention—not dabblings in other genres with a slapped-on Resident Evil skin—and that's exactly what Resident Evil 4 provided. Recalling the popular Leon Kennedy (from Resident Evil 2) for a second tour of duty, RE4 featured significant game length compared to past episodes, an updated and improved camera perspective (bringing the camera closer in over the shoulder à la Splinter Cell), and—perhaps most importantly—was once again directed by series creator Shinji Mikami. The results were breathtaking, with an invigorated Resident Evil 4 and its creepy "Las Plagas" plotline racking up countless accolades by year's end. It was a brilliant turnaround for a groundbreaking series that was admittedly losing its luster, and because of its success (on Wii, PS2, GameCube, and PC), the biggest and most obvious question on everyone's mind

since then was simply "What’s next?”

Takeuchi's keen to remind us that RES is, first and foremost, a horror game, not a first-person shooter. This isn't about running and gunning à la Gears of War; it's about the horror-tinged exploration you've come to expect from the series. As Such, certain tenets of RE's legacy remain intact, while certain unwieldy mechanics have finally been retired. First of all, you still can't fire while running, but you can strafe in the game's optional Gears of War-style control scheme (called D-Type), added to appeal to Western gamers. Of course, the original A-Type "tank- style" controls from RE4 remain (with slight modifications). Players will pick their preference at the game's outset, but either way, there's still an element of fear gained from planting your feet and remaining steady to draw a bead on an enemy.

Packs of wild dogs also return, this time with a little less zombie and a little more Las Plagas. We were usually running away or trying to time our trigger finger with these canines’ jump trajectories, so we can't say for

sure, but they seemed less like the previous games' Doberman pinschers and more like rabid black Labrador retrievers. One thing that hasn't stood the test of time are the typewriter ribbons needed to save your progress. Takeuchi explains: “Actually, | really like typewriters; they’re really typical of the Resident Evil series. But this time, the save system will be a combination of checkpoints and chapters. As

you go through the game, you'll hit checkpoints, and if you die, you'll go back to the checkpoints. At the end of the chapters, you'll be able to properly save the game. Unfortunately, we weren't able to fit typewriters into

the chapters."

Together forever

But back to RES's biggest addition: co-op play. Whether you're playing solo or online with another person, Sheva—who Chris meets within the first 30 minutes of the game—is always at Redfield's side. Unlike Resident Evil 2, RES isn't a split-yet- interwoven story where two parallel perspectives occasionally cross

56 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM.1UP.COM

paths. Instead, Chris and Sheva are an inseparable pair who depend on each other through thick and thin. The first stage we tried, called Assembly Place, finds Chris and Sheva bearing witness to a macabre beheading from within the temporary safety of a Small building adjacent to the executioner's: podium. As the hooded axman brings his blade down upon his protesting victim's neck (this game's definitely. headed toward a Mature rating), a megaphone-toting orator spots our heroes from his higher vantage point and directs the braying crowd toward our soon-to-be-surrounded friends. As with RE4, though, the real action begins from within a house, in which many useful furnishings—like bookshelves—are conveniently positioned to act as barricades once pushed in front of an open window or door. Of course, these are temporary measures at best—even the sturdiest bookshelf eventually shatters. But this buys you enough time to scramble around and open drawers, bust apart barrels and crates, or break open cabinet doors in search of healing

herbs, ammo, and money Running Chris through the dilapidated building with a human- controlled Sheva following closely behind, we took turns catching creeps in our crossfire as they started to filter their way in through the windows and doors. Obviously, the difficulty's not quite nailed down just yet, as evidenced by the many baddies who survived our multiple point-blank headshots. This might've been partly due to the relatively low stopping power of our default handguns, though—a few shotguns and sniper rifles later, we were blowing up heads like ripe melons. As in RE4, the closer an enemy gets, the more vulnerable he is for a quick-time event. An onscreen prompt signals this by displaying a blinking “X” button, in which the quickest reflexes trigger an uppercut or clothesline from Chris or a roundhouse kick or flipkick from Sheva. While it’s entertaining enough to pull off these moves individually, it's doubly intense to pull one off in the context of saving your partner.

The first (and most obvious) way is

to blow enemies away using your gun—this method's more or less risk- free, since there's no friendly fire. A headshot's the most effective strategy, but even blasts to enemy ribs, knees, or arms can buy your buddy some much-needed time. You can also get in close and look for the quick-time prompt, in which you'll then perform some physically punishing (for the enemy) move that’ll liberate your partner. Sometimes—and it takes real coordination to do this—a double quick-time event will pop up. Pull this off, and you'll uncork a supermove that smashes enemies backward.

The most satisfying option truly highlights the potential of RE5's co-op system. In certain areas, Chris and Sheva must separate (see the “You Take the High Road” sidebar on pg. 61), and while you may not be able to physically explore together—one protagonist will typically have helped the other reach an otherwise inaccessible area—you сап usually see your partner. In the Shanty Town level; we used Chris to help Sheva

jump across from one building to ғ another, leaving Chris behind in his padlocked three-story structure while Sheva looked for a way to open it up from the other side. As she was busy working her way down the stairs across from Chris, a surge of Las Plagas-infected killers erupted.from all sides. In our first attempt, we used Chris and his sniper rifle fromeacross the gap to try and thin out the enemies surrounding Sheva; who also tried to take them down with her gun. But this war of attrition wasn't going to last long, since we both found ourselves out of ammo quite quickly. As you'll no doubt discover, if either character dies during a level (as indicated by М the familiar “You Are Dead” dripping down the screen), you’ve gotta restart " from the last checkpoint. | Our revamped strategy played out Ж like this: Assist either Sheva or Chris. Ғғ . across the gap between buildings, run down the’stairs until you've triggered the flood of zombie wannabes, and then whoever's acting as undead bait runs past the phalanx of explosive >

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barrels scattered around the level.

While the exploding-barrel schtick might seem clichéd at this point, trust us when we say it’s extremely satisfying to bring the mob to a sizzling, smoking halt with an expertly timed explosion—with Chris or Sheva running barely ahead of the pack.

So amid all of the clamor and chaos, how do you keep track of your teammate? That's where RE5's streamlined functionality comes into play. While the majority of the default control scheme remains unchanged from RE4's intuitive configuration, a few key adjustments help you keep your eye on your partner—the most important of which is the "locate partner" button. When pressed, a targeting reticule appears on your partner while the camera locks on and pivots toward him or her. If you find yourself in a spot of trouble, the "team-action/call partner" button causes the center circle of your teammate's HUD to flash red while the word "Help!" appears. Of course, it's up to them to actually come to your aid, but the signal's clear. Another useful addition is the overhead-map

ва)

button, which is especially useful if you're disoriented or racing down an alley. In RE4, you'd have to pause the game in order to bring up navigational options, but RE5's map occupies a relatively minor spot in the upper-right corner of the screen as a transparent overlay, making it a quick-and-easy reference—even in the worst of times. Extra effort's also been made to ensure the new item-trading function flows as fluidly as possible. While it's never ideal to exchange sundries midbattle if you don't have to, pressing the appropriate button triggers an item-trading interface, which allows Chris and Sheva to freely exchange items—including everything from ammo and grenades to healing sprays and weapons. This should help alleviate situations where one player's busy scooping up everything in sight while the other guy’s scavenging to find ammo for his pistol. Of course, if your ally’s near death or seriously wounded, you can use healing items on them as well as yourself. It’s actually kinda hilarious to see Chris bounce back from the brink of death thanks to a liberal dose of Sheva-

supplied healing spray—it almost looks like you're spraying green deodorant on your partner.

Black Hawk down

RES features plenty of serious stuff, though, from the beheadings of the Assembly Place level to the plot twist that sends Chris and Sheva off to save their friend and fellow BSAA member Kirk, whose helicopter’s shot down during the beginning of the Shanty Town stage. What helps RE5 resonate so effectively is that the game’s events vaguely mirror the horrific real- world terrorist attacks of the last few years, which are still fresh enough

in our memories to be unsettling. Of course, the game’s not all based on realism, as you'll encounter plenty of over-the-top craziness, too. Seemingly indestructible burlap sack-wearing, chain saw-wielding maniacs who аге much harder to take down than their counterparts in RE4 appear at the worst possible moments, and hooded, ax-swinging behemoths stalk you at every turn. Fortunately, the enemies suffer from friendly fire, which makes it sweet when you position some >

ША helping hand is always welcome in times like this.

е - 2 - . -

E Sheva takes her name from the Hindu god of destruction, Shiva.

I'm going оп ahead. E 6 We'll «meet up there. Good тека

ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTH “3 ‘(GM.1UP.COM 5o

NEVER ALONE

Resident Evil 5 was designed with Chris Redfield as the main character, and when you're playing “solo,” you always control him. Likewise, the host of an online-ready game always

plays as Chris. Setup aside, Sheva Alomar accompanies һ Redfield the entire time, controlled either cooperatively by another player online or by a surprisingly savvy computer- controlled A.I. The game features a flexible jump-in, jump-out functionality that allows a player to join at any time, and if and when that player has to leave before you finish the mission, the CPU A.I. automatically resumes control of Sheva. This is a very important feature, as both characters must complete the level's objectives alive in order to progress.

When pressed on what the development team would do if they saw a tendency for rogue players to join online games with the specific intent of sabotaging someone's progress, RES Producer Jun Takeuchi told us, "If it turns out that there

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сап just eject them from the game.”

of the mob in between you and an executioner—and then watch with satisfied glee as the big guy's ax dismembers and pummels a dozen dudes as he tries to reach you. While critics leveled few complaints at RE4, one common observation was that the game was actually a bit too long, a fact even the dev team admits. “Certainly, we've had to play through Resident Evil 4 a lot of times ourselves, and we feel it’s a very long game. And that’s one of the tough parts about it, that it takes so long to play through,” RES Director Yasuhiro Anpo says. “Resident Evil 5 will probably end up being a little shorter than Resident Evil 4. We've looked at some parts of RE4 that weren’t so exciting, and we’re going to add parts that are more exciting and have more impact.” Of course, most fans just wanna know which longtime series favorites are returning—and while we're at it, just what the hell did mysterious double-crossing hottie Ada Wong do with that Las Plagas sample she absconded with at the end of RE4? Takeuchi won't tip his hand, but he does say that we'll *probably not see too many other characters from previous Resident

60 • ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM. 1UP.COM

are players playing the game like that, ме"! have systems where, you know, these players either don’t come in, or you

\ |

Evil games.” Despite the mostly all- new cast, though, we do know that Chris will bump into old foe Albert Wesker. The chances of an Ada Wong sighting are also pretty decent if the current, advanced form of the Las Plagas virus making its way through Africa has anything to do with her. But what of the newly revealed character, Excella? The team’s keeping the plot under tight guard—and with good reason. Besides, half the thrill of any Resident Evil is enjoying the twists and turns on the road to discovering the mastermind behind the latest viral infection—and finding out who's. playing who іп the end.

With 2008 quickly coming to a close, it won't be too long before the new year's upon us—and RES should hit Xbox 360 and PS3 sometime around March. While patience is a virtue, we'd give up virtue in a second if it meant we could pump Las Plagas-infected enemies full of lead right now. But information helps soothe the soul, and if what you've already read hasn't sated your ВЕ5 needs, then turn the page to see a few more things Takeuchi has to say about this upcoming survival-horror epic. $h

£ Еј

YOU TAKE THE HIGH ROAD...

In each level, you'll find instances where а specific area can be accessed, but only with the help of your partner. By pressing the “team-action” button, Chris will, for example, crouch with his hands cupped, indicating that

the person playing Sheva should also press this button. This results in Chris hoisting Sheva up over a wall or ledge or giving her the added boost necessary to cross a great divide (as shown below). Naturally, whoever did the

за

helping is also the one left behind. That person ۰ must then find another way around—though,

on occasion, the person who got the lift in the

first place ends up face-to-face with a dozen

Las Plagas-infected foes.

— m

COVER STORY

₪ Watch out for the axman. Or blow him up. Whatever.

3AMING MONTHLY > EGM.1UP.COM • 61

Recognize these puppies? 265) Thought so. They're baackk!

mr

|

APRIL FOOLS’ JOKES? Shoryuken fireballs?

A bromance in the making? What the hell is Jun Takeuchi talking about? Fun stuff, as a matter of fact. And in this excerpt from our lengthy interview with the Resident Evil 5 producer, he spills the beans on a number of topics that have been bugging us for years.

STREET FIGHTER’S AKUMA IN RESIDENT EVIL, AT LONG LAST?

Long before the Internet started spoiling everything, EGM pulled off some pretty wicked April Fools’ jokes. One was Sheng Long as a playable character in Street Fighter ІІ, and Akuma as an unlockable character in Resident Evil 2 was another. With that in mind, have you guys ever thought about adding Akuma to Resident Evil 5 as an unlockable character? That'd be awesome.

That might be a good idea. Maybe we can do a [classic RE minigame] Mercenaries-style game where you can play as Akuma—that's actually a pretty good idea. Maybe we can make something out of that.

Not to push this too much further, but just imagine how much of a stress relief it’d be after you’ve struggled so hard to beat the game and finish its challenges. And you want to get revenge on the game, so you go back and fire up Akuma and, boosh!

[Laughs] That's a pretty interesting idea. One thing that we'd have to be careful [of] is that when we get an idea like that, we go all out—we take it really seriously. So maybe the ESRB rating would actually go up, and you wouldn't be able to buy it anymore if you put in something like that. But, certainly, being able to breeze through the game: after you've cleared it is certainly fun. [Laughs]

REDFIELD AND KENNEDY: THE RESIDENT EVIL DREAM TEAM?

It's interesting that you never actually see Chris Redfield and Leon Kennedy together in the same game; they're always off doing their own thing. So it seems like if you ever got Chris and Leon together, it'd be the ultimate Resident Evil. Do you ever foresee a time when their paths collide?

We're always thinking of different ways to take the story forward. And | think you're right; | think Resident Evil fans would really love it if there were a game where Chris and Leon met up once. But on the other hand, it'd also be pretty dramatic if the series ended without them ever meeting at all.

That'd be so tragi

[Laughs] That, by itself, is dramatic—two people who you want to meet never actually meet up. Maybe one idea would be that they would be driving different cars, but the cars would pass by each other, like two star-crossed lovers.

TAKEUCHI’S RESIDENT EVIL TOP FIVE

What are your five favorite things about Resident Evil?

No. 5 is when | was doing Resident Evil 2, and [Hideki] Kamiya was the director. He said, “You can design all of the guns.” So | feel that the combination of guns in Resident Evil 2 was the best in the series,

Right.

No. 4 is Resident Evil 2’s unlockable character, Tofu. Actually, we created that character to check the collision detection as we were going through the game; we’d spent a couple of years using that character. By the time we'd finished, though, Tofu had become very important to us, so | said, "We'll leave him in there for other people to play."

0'55"77

No. 3 is the [full-motion-video] introduction to Resident Evil 1—how this foreign guy with his hair dyed blond was playing Wesker. That was pretty memorable, and everybody was like, "What the hell game is this?"

No. 2 is in Resident Evil 2, the kiss scene between Leon and Ada in the stage where they... well, it wasn't just a game anymore; it had become a drama.

But my No. 1 favorite thing about Resident Evil is Shinji Mikami. It's thanks to his hard work that the series is here and [was] allowed to continue.

EGM Extras: For the full interview with Takeuchi and the RES development team (and to check out hours of videos), head to . There you'll find the full reveal behind the game's hot co-op action.

G GAMING момтні/ EE EON ӨЗ

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"REVIEWS

Evolution for all, piñatas get small, hedgehog heeds the call, and some sports

Change is afoot! This month marks EGM's very first PC review—and it’s none other than the hotly anticipated Spore from developer Maxis (also responsible for a little game called The Sims—maybe you’ve heard of it). It’s a baby step, yes...but you can look forward to reviews of essential PC games in future issues. Huzzah! —Ryan Scott Executive Editor, Reviews

68 Wario Land: Shake It!

69 de Blob

69 Mercenaries 2: World in Flames

70 Mega Man 9

72 Silent Hill: Homecoming

73 Fracture

74 = Midnight Club: Los Angeles

76 NBA Live 09

76 МВА 9

78 FIFA 09

78 Infinite Undiscovery

79 Rock Band 2

80 Sonic Chronicles: The Dark

Brotherhood

81 Away: Shuffle Dungeon

81 The Legend of Kage 2

82 Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia

84 Kirby: Super Star Ultra

85 Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise

85 Star Ocean: First Departure

86 Spore

87 Download/Wrap-up

66 + ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM. 1UP.COM

RONICLES: DARK HERHOOD

1UP NETWORK

ABOUT OUR REVIEWS We believe that games are more than the sum of their parts, so we tackle them subjectively, as experiences.

You can always find our reviews (or lead reviews, in the case of three-man reviews) оп 1UP.com, as well as reviews we didn't have room for in print.

GRADES/AWARDS A+ to A- EXCELLENT B+ to B- GOOD C+ to C- AVERAGE D+ to D- BAD

F TERRIBLE The following awards are based on these grades: Platinum: All A«s Gold: All A-s and up Silver: All Bs and up Game of the Month: Highest-rated game with all “Good” scores Shame of the Month: rated game with

THIS MONTH'S REVIEW CREW

Check out all editor blogs and bios at ReviewCrew. 1 UP.com

James *Milkman" Mielke

Milkman's recent trip to Osaka for this month's cover story also prepared him to take on the. thugs in Sega's Yakuza sequel. Now Playing: Yakuza 2

Greg Ford

Plans of conquering Mega Man 9 has Ford reminiscing about modernized-classics-done-right achievements from the past. Now Playing: Castle Crashers

Shane Bettenhausen Modern-day Shane traveled back in time 24 years to inform his younger self that Legend of Kage isn't pronounced "cage." Now Playing: LittleBigPlanet

Giancarlo Varanini Giancarlo's been wondering if Wilford Brimley secretly plays Viva Piñata when he's not busy with other things.

Now Playing: Viva Piriata: TIP

Ryan Scott

Executive Editor, Reviews As the flood of holiday game: grows stronger, Ryan squares off against unruly reviewers while juggling crazy deadlines. Now Playing: Lego Batman

| Nick Suttner

Playing levels made by others is so passé—Nick prefers to indulge his megalomaniacal tendencies in LBP.

Now Playing: LittleBigPlanet

Anthony Gallegos

Playing through the new Silent Hill made Anthony suspicious. of everyone— especially pushy cameramen.

Now Playing: Call of Duty 4

Jeremy Parish

jite Jeremy wants them to stop making new videogames so he can finally catch up on his backlog. C’mon, recession! Now Playing: His assignments

Also on deck...

Thierry Andrew Pfister “Scooter” Nguyen Y , Рос

vi Robert Ashley, Ray Barnholt, David Ellis,

Michael Donahoe Andrew Fitch, Justin

Senior Haywald, Eric Neigher, Todd Zuniga

ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY * EGM.1UP.COM • 67

E Just because it’s part of the game's name doesn't mean shaking your Wii-mote's all that fun.

₪ Publisher: Nintendo ₪ Developer: Good-Feel ₪ Players: 1 ₪ ESRB: Everyone

Ew A throwback that doesn’t give back

JEREMY AVERAGE

RAY

A-

EXCELLENT

AVERAGE

The Good: Classic Wario playability, sumptuous artwork The Bad: Lackluster levels, tired design Seriously: Even pret- tier than Odin Sphere

+ JEREMY: Playing 2D platformer Wario Land: Shake It! gives you a little insight into how Darwin must have felt when he stumbled upon the Galapagos Islands. It’s a creation that seems to have evolved in isola- tion from the death of hand-drawn art and the rise of rough polygons. This is what games might be if only gamers as a whole valued visual style over bland verisimilitude: Every pixel is gorgeously illustrated, with richness and detail that define it as the ultimate evolution of the noble bitmap. Unfortunately, beneath that strik- ing detail, Shake It! plays exactly like Wario Land 4 (GBA). You work your way to the end of most levels, then backtrack to the beginning against a clock. Yet its stages are unimaginative

68» ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM.1UP.COM

next to its predecessor's, its music tepid and dull. Even the cleverly inte- grated motion controls can't disguise the dated staleness of the mechanics beneath its sophisticated surface. In the end, its beauty is but a glorious coat of paint atop a tired design—a real letdown. But, damn, does that coat of paint look nice.

+ RAY: Seems I’m the only one shook up by Shake It!: For starters, | liked the music—some of it's grating, but the catchier tracks balance it out.

1 can also forgive the game's strict adherence to Wario Land 4—that was one of the best Game Boy Advance games, after all, and *more of the same" with higher detail isn't a bad thing. The game's almost over when

WARIO LAND: SHAKE IT!

the level designs get more clever and fun, but this is a treasure hunt well worth joining.

+С. FORD: Be it the music or the beautifully stylized graphics, yep, Shake It! does well by its charm. But outside of that, not much impresses. Jeremy nails the point about the uninspired levels, yet I'd argue that most of the motion controls feel more tacked on than well integrated. For vehicles, the controls usually work fine. For actions like swinging on a bar or pounding the ground, they had me pining for simple button commands. So we're left with the highs (some

of the boss showdowns) and lows (generic enemies, short length) of an average platformer. sk

NICK

colorful fun

The Bad: Too-similar levels, unnecessary motion controls I.N.K.T.: Interstellar Nazis Kill Towns?

SCOOTER B

соор

The Good: Endlessly satisfying destruction The Bad: Gimped co-op, lacks polish Jeep with a Jump Button: Unofficial Smuggler's Run 3!

DE BLOB

₪ Publisher: THQ ₪ Developer: Blue Tongue ₪ Players: 1-4 ₪ ESRB: Everyone

Paint the town red. And blue, and yellow, and green, and...

+ NICK: If de Blob were slightly more charming and slightly less repetitive, this review would write itself. “The Wii has its Katamari Damacy,” Га declare, and you'd nod understandingly, walk to the nearest gaming retailer, and purchase it posthaste. But that's just an easy point of comparison for Blob's ball-rolling, level-exploring frame- work—it's still a very fun game in its own right, and despite not taking par- ticular advantage of the Wii platform, it makes for one of the most relaxing, enjoyable titles on the system.

The narrative serves as a fine impe- tus for Blob's colorful gameplay: The dictatorial І.М.К.Т. Corporation has taken over the chromatic urban sprawl of the Raydians, sucking out all of the color and generally making things mis-

erable (the Nazi-spoofing cut-scenes are a little bizarre, but the aesthetic’s silly enough to work). As an unex- plained, jungle-dwelling anthropo- morphic paintball, the titular de Blob shows up to save the day by restoring color to the dreary environments and persecuted citizens—accomplished by smashing into paint-stealing robots and then rolling over buildings, trees, and everything else in sight. Exploration is a nifty mix of puzzle and platformer, with the constant need to mix the right paint colors and swab the right objects to accomplish objectives. It’s simple stuff, but it’s surprisingly satisfying and packed with extra objectives for those who want the most out of their Blobbing. Though for some asinine reason, you

PS3/XB360

C’mon, baby, light our fire

+ NICK: The original Mercenaries smartly relied on one of life’s few constants: Blowing things up is fun. Mercs 2 doesn’t do much to evolve that formula, but this is a case where that's all right—this series does ореп- world destruction best, and despite a plague of idiotic А.І. drones and some other nagging annoyances, this sequel is almost everything it needs to be. The main appeal of Mercs 2’s Venezuelan expanse is that, with enough firepower, every object within it can be destroyed. From individual trees to entire oil rigs, nothing’s safe from your destructive impulses—and with a perpetually growing arsenal of weapons, vehicles, and airstrikes, accomplishing missions is a matter of

the right tool for the right job.

| could complain about the myriad quirks, but they’re insubstantial in light of the enjoyable fundamentals. It won't light the world on fire, but this playground offers plenty of things to do and destroy.

+С. FORD: If you won't complain about those quirks, Nick, ГИ man up. In a genre where Grand Theft Auto IV reigns, Mercs 2's herky-jerky anima- tion and copious graphical pop-in are hard to ignore. Similarly, it took me a while to grow accustomed to the clunky vehicle controls—l wanna love to drive! But damned if the game didn't grow on me. Leveling every building on an island or subdu-

have to swing the Wii Remote to jump when a button press would've been perfectly fine. It's not a deal breaker, but it screams of trying to shoehorn in unnecessary motion control (a plague that apparently spreads to the farthest reaches of the Wii library).

Though the visuals of the very urban, industrial settings start to feel a bit similar about halfway through, Blob's sound design keeps the pre- sentation savvy— different colors spit out different effects and add flourish to an excellent, jazzy soundtrack.

The Tony Hawk-inspired multiplayer's solid, but the Wii isn't exactly hurting for great games to play with casual pals. Still, B/ob fills its own little niche quite nicely—come for the color, and stay for the facile fun.

MERCENARIES 2: WORLD IN FLAMES

₪ Publisher: EA Games ₪ Developer: Pandemic ₪ Players: 1-2 ₪ ESRB: Teen

ing high-value targets had me in a destructively happy mood.

+ SCOOTER: | pretty much view Mercs 2 the same way | view fine 1980s cinema such as Predator or Commando: It's technically “flawed,” but the carnage makes up for said flaws. A giant fuel-air bomb vaporizing bad dudes makes up for additional gripes, such as the somewhat ter- rible dialogue/story and menu-heavy interface. Heck, even though the co- op has the “you have to be within a certain distance of each other” caveat, it’s still satisfying to jointly blow stuff up with a buddy—or even crash some stranger’s game and grief him by kill- ing the people he’s working for.

ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM.1UP.COM • 69

MEGA MAN 9

₪ Publisher: Capcom Developer: Inti Creates ₪ Players: 1 ₪ ESRB: Everyone

RYAN

GOOD Old- school aesthetic and challenge Difficulty sometimes borders on masochistic

Let's hear it for Robot Master equality!

Getting one-shotted by flame pillars like it's 1988

If you're one of those crazies who naysays Mega Man 9's retro vibe, I totally don't understand you. As a decades-long NES lover and evangelist, I’m overjoyed; it's a pretty daring stylistic choice in 2008—and, if anything, the 8-bit aesthetic underscores MM9's similarly old- school platforming elements, which are equal parts satisfying and difficult.

Let’s talk about that last part— difficult. Forgiveness is not one of this game’s virtues. In all fairness, you can say that about most of the classic Mega Man games, but MM9 routinely ratchets up the challenge a couple of notches past "insane." The structure's fundamentally unchanged: You guide the titular character through eight themed side-scrolling stages (in any

70 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY * EGM.1UP.COM

order you wish), armed with a simple gun and an ever-growing arsenal of useful weapons nabbed from an octet of android bosses—who each exhibit weakness to a specific weapon. So, your task is twofold: Survive each successive gauntlet and deduce an effective kill order (check the caption above for my advice).

Surviving's rarely easy, though. Whether you're negotiating the series" trademark disappearing-blocks-over- bottomless-pits puzzles in Plug Man's stage, tangling with some of gaming's toughest timed jumps in Tornado Man's stage, or fighting the miniboss from hell in Jewel Man's stage, you're going to die often. And when you do, you'd better prepare to retread a lot of ground, as each stage comes

equipped with only two checkpoints: one at the halfway mark and one at the boss' antechamber.

You'll wanna break your controller in half at times, but clearing an arduous section's extremely gratifying—and after every hard-won victory, sub- sequent trips are almost like riding a bike. MM9’s relentlessness molds you into an expert by the time you reach the final chain of endgame stages, and you definitely need those skills to conquer the evil Dr. Wily's fortress (spoiler, | guess, if you've somehow never played a Mega Man game).

ММ9 is an unapologetic nod to one of gaming's greatest eras. It might've been made for nostalgia-crazed dorks like me, but it's something that any challenge-seeking gamer can dig. ri

gamexstudios-

Introducing Lips; the ridiculously fun new singing game from Xbox 360“ The party includes two interactive wireless microphones, 40 amazing songs, and an unlimited supply of good times! xbox.com/lips

Xbox 360 (also on PS3)

SILENT HILL: HOMECOMING

₪ Publisher: Konami ₪ Developer: Double Helix ₪ Players: 1 ₪ ESRB: Mature

ANTHONY

GIANCARLO

C+

AVERAGE

The Good: Silent Hill never looked so good The Bad: Slow frame- rate, clunky controls Goretastic: Brutal death sequences

Breaking with tradition

+ ANTHONY: Clunky combat and stories that intrigue—but make little sense—are staples of the venerable Silent Hill survivor-horror franchise. But if this fifth installment’s any indication of what to expect in the future...then much has changed. Most significantly, Homecoming completely alters the series’ familiar camera and combat controls, so fights are now more about timing and counterattacks than furiously mashing buttons. And while the action’s more intense, it’s also more frustrating; | often found it nearly impossible to sidestep enemies and felt forced to confront them—a difficult task when outnumbered. The game looks (most- ly) great, but some jarring graphical hiccups occasionally took me out of

72 • ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM.1UP.COM

the experience. Homecoming’s story is entertaining; it remains grounded in series lore while also managing to make more sense than any previous narrative. While it doesn’t top Silent Hill 2 or 3, ГИ still be proud to add Homecoming to my collection.

+ GIANCARLO: Yeah, its controls are clunky, its brainteasers hearken back to survival-horror's early days, and it's painful to backtrack through an entire level to search for a single item you might've missed. Despite all of these issues, Homecoming has its moments—particularly of the crazy, grotesque sort that produce the “can’t look away from the horrible car acci- dent” effect. | couldn’t help but want to see what happened next.

ВИ What the hell has hap- pened to Spider-Man?

+ ЗНАМЕ: To someone who's been enraptured by this franchise since

its inception, this sequel makes for

a slightly bittersweet homecoming. Much like last year's Origins, this effort displays all the ingenuity of a decent Silent Hill cover band—your con- flicted antihero still thwacks sham- bling evil nurses with a stick while deciphering painfully abstract puzzles. Luckily, Homecoming manages to nail the series’ most compelling elements: Akira Yamaoka’s chilling soundscapes mesh perfectly with the dilapidated locales, providing ample nightmare fuel for months to come. $h

EGM Extras: Creepy crawlies getting you down? Our Homecoming SuperGuide on will help ya.

Xbox 360 (also on PS3)

FRACTURE

₪ Publisher: LucasArts ₪ Developer: Day 1 Studios ₪ Players: 1-12 ₪ ESRB: Teen

MEQ Crumbling under a mediocre crust

NICK

C = AVERAGE

The Good: Terraforming works well enough

The Bad: Ridiculously derivative Character Names Don't Get Worse Than: Jet Brody

+ NICK: Somewhere deep within Fracture, far below its offensively banal crust, lies a worthwhile, original game. The gimmick—terraforming terrain on the fly—works well enough (if a bit too predictably), but all told, Fracture's thoroughly unexciting. We've all heard plenty of jokes about bald space marines this console generation, but Fracture truly typi- fies this syndrome. Personality-less protagonist Jet Brody (what is this, Mallrats in space?) is perhaps the single most derivative character in the modern age of gaming, a direct combination of the heroes from Resistance/Mass Effect/Gears of War/ Too Human. If the narrative weren't so staunchly heavy-handed, Га put my money on Brody being a literal parody

of shooter-genre character tropes. That's to say nothing of the ship and armor design being lifted straight from other games—Fracture’s shameful, unapologetically trite aesthetic cannot be understated.

The Entrencher gun is Fracture’s true star, allowing you to raise and lower the rocky terrain that carpets most levels—providing a mechanic that’s both unique and (theoretically) useful for level design. The limits placed on the deformation don’t feel artificial or restrictive; you can’t build a towering mountain into the sky or tunnel down to the Earth’s core, but rarely will you feel like the game isn’t letting you do what you want to do. But what the game wants you to do is a bit of a different story—it feels

| ш Would you really have noticed if we had run а screen from any one of a dozen other space shooters?

like an endless terraforming tutorial that never really goes anywhere. At least combat uses the mechanic more dynamically, as you'll create your own cover on the fly and fire bombs that travel underground, Bugs Bunny style. If only the enemies didn't take way too long to die....

Fracture isn't fundamentally bad— it's just pockmarked with annoyances and never makes good on any of the positive things it sets up. Multiplayer's worth checking out (if a bit too cha- otic), but | ended up having the most fun in the more sandbox-like Weapons Testing mode, simply messing around with the physics and terrain tools—it gives a heartbreaking hint of what the main game could have been with an injection of creativity. ќа.

ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY > EGM.1UP.COM * 3

XB360 (also on PS3)

MIDNIGHT CLUB:

ssi ANGELES

Grinding the streets of L.A.

₪ Publisher: Rockstar ₪ Developer: Rockstar San Diego ₪ Players: 1-16 ₪ ESRB: Teen

GIANCARLO

GOOD

The Good: Solid controls, addictive leveling system, amazing re-creation of L.A.

The Bad: Inconsistent difficulty, some visual glitches and framerate hiccups

The Cops:

They're pretty relentless

+ GIANCARLO: It’s a testament to the level of detail in Midnight Club: Los Angeles that | can search for a real-world L.A. landmark on Google Maps and find it, in approximately the same spot, in-game—give or take a few blocks. But the most impressive technical aspect of the latest Midnight Club is how well this massive world seamlessly serves its purpose as a hub for races. Upon entering the GPS mode, the game zooms out of your current location and gives an over- head view of the city, showing which races are currently available and their respective difficulty levels. And then it zooms back down when you're ready to hit the streets. Obviously, this isn’t a new idea...but it’s an impressive new take on it, nonetheless.

Actually, the same could be said for

the rest of MC:LA as well—none of the concepts are original, but they do their jobs, and they do them well. The reputation system’s particularly note- worthy: It does away with the typical license-upgrade system and intro- duces a more involved leveling struc- ture somewhat similar to what you’d find in a role-playing game—you earn experience points based on the type of race, its difficulty level, and where you finish. It’s addictive and, at times, evokes the same sense of grinding and reward associated with RPGs. One major sticking point for all this, though: the difficulty curve. After spending hours leveling up, purchas- ing new cars, and enhancing their performance, main missions tied to story elements (even those introduced early on) are still difficult. Opponent

| A m Races are often both fast and furious.

A.l. rarely ever makes mistakes in these races...and any attempt to forc- ibly make them screw up is useless because computer-controlled cars seem impervious to any kind of bump- ing and nudging.

Thankfully, the game's got plenty of Side races (highway races bring back memories of Tokyo Xtreme Racer on the Dreamcast) that offer challenges but won't leave you feeling nearly as frustrated, and the abundance of fun multiplayer options—ranging from standard checkpoint races to chaotic capture-the-flag competitions and even user-created races—provide ample reason to tear through the single-player campaign—if only so you can show off your brand new, customized car to friends and the rest of the world. ќа.

ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM • 75

XB360 (also on PS3)

NBA LIVE 09

W Publisher: EA Sports ₪ Developer: EA Canada

The Good: Daily ros- ter updates

The Bad: Way too many blocks

Be a Pro: Where's the career mode?

AWARD.

++ TODD: It shocks me to type this, but the future of sports videogames will debut in NBA Live 09. I’ve been а harsh critic of this wobbly series for years, rejecting its failed attempts at rebirth while the NBA 2K series continued to grow and impress. But Live’s new Dynamic DNA is a growth spurt that'll have the few remaining sports-gaming competitors playing catch-up.

An online revolution, DNA allows users to update their rosters daily, not only with the latest player abilities but also with the latest in player tendencies—so if the Mavericks’ Dirk Nowitzki loses his taste for firing up threes in real life, expect him to play inside the arc on your Xbox 360. One annoyance, though, is that the game’s

more concerned with updating me on how often a player drives to his left instead of showing overlays of player performance (like points and boards).

Beyond the paradigm-shifting feature (which | hope is the first step toward disc-free annual roster updates), this game beats the Jordans off last year’s risk-free foundational effort—more on that in a bit. But the same problem that’s plagued Live for all these years persists: a soullessness to each possession.

1 blame the HUD—which is so small that finding the score takes a telescope—and the camera. I'm so far away that | feel like a crowd member, not the player I’m controlling. | don't feel up close and personal with Heat forward Shawn Marion's oddball

III

mW Looks like we've got a repeat champion

DAVID

A-

EXCELLENT

online games The Bad: Complicated controls Sweet 16: Re-creat- ing the 1986 Boston Celtics

+ DAVID: The year after winning

a title, many teams suffer from a championship hangover. Instead of continuing where they left off, they often grow complacent and lose sight of what made them champions in the first place. Fortunately, the NBA 2K9 team at Visual Concepts has avoided this mistake.

Immediately noticeable is the pre- sentation. NBA 2K9 does such an outstanding job of re-creating the NBA experience—from the pregame scout- ing report and the reflections of the arena lights on the court to its realistic player movement and behavior—that it’s easy to mistake the game for an actual television broadcast.

And whether it's changing your dribble on the fly or altering shots in

76 + ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY > EGM.1UP.COM

midair, 2K9 offers an amazing level of freedom, but this freedom comes at a cost—the control scheme is shock- ingly complicated. Many moves and set plays require multiple button and analog presses that feel more at home in a rhythm game than a sports title. But back to the goods: The game shines particularly bright in the Total Team Control mode, which allows you to hook up online with nine other real-life players for 5-on-5 basketball. This mode simulates the experience of playing an actual game of basketball more closely than any videogame l've played. In these games, my team- mates moved without the ball much like they would in a real game, setting up alley-oops and backdoor screens like perennial NBA all-stars.

PS3/XB360

₪ Players: 1-10 ₪ ESRB: Everyone

shot or Kobe's fall-away jumper the way | do in 2K’s hoops game. Here, everything feels distant. The NBA players’ uniqueness gets lost from the cheap seats.

As for everything else, the improved Dynasty mode (which holds your hand throughout) is a model for Madden’s bore-a-dynasty to follow, and the snoozy-but-useful new NBA Academy is nice for newbies and for those who may have passed on the series in recent years. But I'm scratching my head at the lack of a Be a Pro career mode. After uncovering the thrills it offers in NHL 09, | was looking forward to it here. | guess they can stick it in next season, once the camera’s all nice and fixed and the HUD gets some attention.

NBA 2K9

wl Publisher: 2K Sports Ш Developer: Visual Concepts W Players: 1-10 ₪ ESRB: Everyone

269 also sports the usual assort- ment of online leagues and offline franchise modes, but | particularly enjoyed the player- and team-creation tools. Reconstructing the 1986 NBA Champion Boston Celtics was a thrill, and through the 2K Share feature, | can distribute my custom champion- Ship team to other users. Another cool addition is the updated Reelmaker tool, which allows me to edit my per- sonal highlights and even download the video file to my computer to share with other b-ball fans online.

The NBA 2К9 team has refined last year's game and added several new features that change the way video- game basketball is played. While it's not perfect, 2K9's certainly headed toward another title run.

IGN’S BEST OF E3 AWARD “BEST ARTISTIC DESIGN - DS GAME”

TUP'S AWARD FOR BEST OF ЕЗ 2008 "BEST DS GAME, RUNNER UP"

"Extremely fun...! really didn't want to put the DS down."

"A genuinely fun and addictive experience."

Created by a Former EGM Editor.and the Producer of GTA3

Mild Cartoon Violence

SOUTHPEAK a | №. NN

GAMES

RACTIVE CORPORATION. "SOUTHPEAK", "SOUTHPEAK INTERACTIVE", "SOUTHPEAK GAMES" AND THEIR RELATED LOGOS ARE TRADEMARKS OR REGISTERED ПОМ. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NINJATOWN CHARACTERS AND ELEMENTS ARE TRADEMARKS OF SHAWNIMALS LLC © 2008.

The Good: Improves a lot of stuff that FIFA 08 did wrong

The Bad: Goalkeeper A.l. is still frustratingly incompetent

Ugliest FIFA 09 Footballer Award: Dirk Kuyt

A. FITCH

GOOD

MILKMAN

AVERAGE

The Good: Seamless real-time battles

The Bad: Clunky menus and interfaces Palom and Porom Clones: Kill this RPG cliché, now!

EA buries it in the upper corner once again

Ф ERIC: EA Sports takes a lot of crap from bloggers and haters because they dominate their field. But the truth is that EA Sports is successful for a reason: Them boys make some damn fine games, soccer included.

FIFA 09 and its purported "250 core gameplay additions" go a long way (though not all the way) toward perfecting that critical sports-game element: feel. FIFA 08 suffered from stilted, unnatural movements and imprecise controls, but 09 models players’ physical weight, speed, and momentum with impressive verisimili- tude. When they go shoulder to shoul- der, the bigger athletes realistically push around the smaller ones, while undersized players benefit from supe- rior quickness. Thumbstickery is like-

I~ Connect ~

Undiscovered potential

+A. FITCH: Fair warning: Infinite Undiscovery, the first current-gen action-roleplayer from acclaimed Valkyrie Profile developer tri-Ace, kicks off with a grinding stealth-action segment, a pointless escort mis- sion, and a half-assed castle-siege minigame...among other ill-advised wrong turns. In short, the first few hours are disastrous.

Stick with /U, though, and you'll be rewarded with a surprisingly compel- ling tale and gameplay that shines when it sticks to the basics. The dou- ble-digit roster should appeal to those who love managing huge casts of characters, though /U lacks the con- venient hub castle and streamlined party-swapping at the core of suc- cessful army-raising RPGs. Syncing

78» ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM

wise upgraded: It's now easy to string together one-touch passes, switch fields with a long ball, and juke a guy out of his fluorescent-pink, Euro-issue jockstrap without having to brave 08's punishing learning curve.

And speaking of Euro jockstraps, 09 features just about every top-flight world soccer league in which you're likely to be interested, including Mexico's Primera División, England's Premiership, and, yes, America's Major League Soccer. In addition to your standard one-shot, tournament, practice, and league options, 09 also features the “Be a Pro" mode. Here, you create a custom player and devel- op his skills over four seasons, giving you a chance to focus on and master a single position on the pitch. Even

up with your compadres in battle can also be a chore due to unnecessarily complex button-pressing sequences. Still, /U won me over in the end with its rewarding real-time combat (think Tales meets Final Fantasy XII), kooky charm, and goofy humor. It’s abso- lutely recommendable, but it could’ve been so much more.

+ MILKMAN: It's sometimes tough to shake the feeling that /U’s a second- tier action-RPG (generic Japanese RPG character designs, inconsistent visuals), but tri-Ace has crafted a pretty solid game nonetheless. The thing that really irritates me, though— in this age of advanced hardware—is gathering tons of accessories and gear and still being stuck with the

XB360 (also on PS3)

FIFA 09

W Publisher: EA Sports Ш Developer: EA Canada Ш Players: 1-20 ₪ ESRB: Everyone

better: You can take your custom player online and join nine of your very closest friends against as many as 10 other dudes all playing custom "pros." 09 isn't without a few foibles, of course. It continues the series' tradi- tion of inept goalkeeper A.I., which— while making for some unintentionally hilarious moments—is much more frustrating than it sounds on paper. Nothing's fun about painstakingly set- ting up your defensive strategy, only to be foiled by a bonehead keeper who won't move off his line. Also, while more fluid than 08, 09 doesn't quite reach the “bing-bang-boom” level of the real-life game. Nevertheless, 09's the best soccer game on the market— and fans that were put off by 08's flaws should surely give it a look.

Xbox 360

INFINITE UNDISCOVERY

₪ Publisher: Square Enix ₪ Developer: tri-Ace ₪ Players: 1 ₪ ESRB: Teen

same-looking character for the entire two-disc marathon. At least you even- tually acquire a giant bear ally to ride into battle—what other RPG has that?

+ SHANE: /U displays flashes of brilliant craftsmanship: Protagonist Capell’s responsive, action-packed swordplay effectively balances offense and defense, expansive out- door environments provide stunning vistas, and the soundtrack boasts some truly haunting melodies. But many other aspects of this title sim- ply feel rough and unfinished. Poor pacing, cumbersome controls, and severely linear exploration instantly disappoint, and a cavalcade of low- budget cut-scenes and repeat ene- mies reveals a lack of ambition.

Xbox 360 (also coming to PS3/Wii)

ROCK BAND 2

₪ Publisher: MTV Games ₪ Developer: Harmonix ₪ Players: 1-4 ₪ ESRB: Teen

ROBERT

A- EXCELLENT

MICHAEL

A-

EXCELLENT

JUSTIN

A

EXCELLENT

The Good: Enormous setlist The Bad: Unlocking songs is taxing

No Soul: If Duran Duran is “rock,” then so is Al Green

performance, turn on the new “No Fail” mode.

Will your neighbors ever sleep again?

+ ROBERT: Harmonix cofounder Alex Rigopulos is fond of calling Rock Band a “platform for music,” much like Apple’s iTunes. In that sense, Rock Band 2's more like a system update than a sequel. It's a collection of inter- face tweaks and non-earth-shattering new features—most notably, a couple of drum-training modes that teach aspiring pizza-delivery boys real-life drum beats and fills. The real attrac- tion is the game's bulge of songs (84 on the disc, plus 20 free downloads from the online store), and all are origi- nal recordings. As in the first game, you'll find tunes that entertain on one instrument and bore on another. And, as in the first game, at higher levels of play, you'll experience the sensation of real musicianship—plastic instruments

be damned. We still need more songs that drunk girls wanna sing, but Rock Band remains the ultimate party game.

+ MICHAEL: Don't expect a whole lot of innovation on this disc: Rock Band 2 sounds (and more importantly, plays) just like you think it will. Is that bad? Hell no. While Harmonix didn't produce a true genre-defying follow- up to their original videogame rocker, they're certainly not suffering from the sophomore slump. Everything in Rock Band 2 is exactly what you'd expect, even down to the annoying (and over- ly long) World Tour mode. Still, the few new additions (drum trainer, updated interface, etc.), coupled with the awe- some song selection, kept me (and my neighbors) up to the wee hours

of the morning. And once the music ended, it was pretty clear: Rock Band 2 is another chart-topper.

+ JUSTIN: Harmonix knows what their fans want. Beyond the staggering number of tracks available out of the box, not only is all of the current DLC compatible with Rock Band 2 (with- out having to redownload a thing!),

all but three tracks from the original will also be transferred over for $5. The hardware’s a step up as well; my apartment's an obstacle course of cords and peripherals, but Rock Band 2’s instrument upgrades—especially the wireless, sturdier, more padded drums—make this the ultimate ver- sion “for those about to rock” but who haven't quite yet. жа

ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY г EGM.1UP.COM “ 79

GAME OF THE MONTH

SONIC CHRONICLES:

THE DARK BROTHERHOOD

Publisher: Sega ₪ Developer: BioWare Players: 1 ₪ ESRB: Everyone

RYAN

EXCELLENT

Fantastic action-lite RPG in the spirit of the Super Mario RPG series BioWare's buyout by EA may mean no sequels

Remember when he was called Dr. Robotnik?

Roleplaying’s not just for furries

The idea of a Sonic role- playing game from BioWare (Mass Effect, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic) sounds like one of EGM's elaborate April Fools’ jokes. But it’s real, it’s here...and it’s awesome.

Sonic Chronicles takes the fran- chise in a new and welcome direction, uprooting the titular anthropomorphic hedgehog and friends from their action-packed comfort zone and dropping them into an RPG environ- ment that closely resembles Super Mario RPG and its handheld sequels.

The formula definitely does Sonic’s world justice: Events unfold from an isometric perspective, with nonplayer characters to chat up (most with their own conversation trees), environments to interact with (action icons trigger

80 > ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM.1UP.COM

various travel capabilities, while each area features a smattering of prog- ress-impeding puzzles), and stuff to collect (gold rings, which you'll spend on better gear and consumable items). The goofy, lighthearted story is divided into chapters; things kick off with Sonic searching for his kidnapped compatriot Knuckles and learning that the Chaos Emeralds—the series' sig- nature MacGuffins—have gone miss- ing. He meets up with various pals along the way, and before you know it, he's got a posse of furries ready to battle the Dark Brotherhood's minions. Its turn-based combat's a joy; in addition to the typical attack/defend options, each character packs a repertoire of signatures moves that expands with each level gained.

Executing these maneuvers—and evading certain enemy attacks— requires timed stylus movements that coincide with an onscreen marker. Midfight action sequences (jump over crates and collect rings while giving chase) break things up, and boss fights are tense affairs where survival's a matter of hand-eye coordination. Again, Chronicles is a lot like SMRPG. Its light action elements provide fun puzzle-solving and explo- ration opportunities without cramping the fairly traditional RPG style, and even if you're not a big Sonic fan, you'll derive plenty of enjoyment. ќа.

EGM Extras: Marauders slowing you down? Hit up our Sonic Chronicles SuperGuide at EGM.1UP.com.

THE LEGEND OF KAGE 2

Ili Publisher: Square Enix ₪ Developer: Lancarse ₪ Players: 1 ₪ ESRB: Everyone 10+

Ninjas never go out of fashion

++ SHANE: It's funny—despite desperate pleas and fan petitions on their behalf, many of the most sought-after retro gaming revivals (Kid Icarus, Final Fantasy VII) remain dead and buried, while others, such as this DS sequel to 1984's The Legend of Kage, suddenly arrive without warning. And oddly enough, Kage 2 doesn't seem all that concerned with paying homage to its original source material. Fans hoping for the same treetop shuriken flurries of the arcade

hit may be surprised to find a game that feels more like a decent Shinobi reboot.

At the game's outset, you select either titular ninja Kage or his sultry companion, Chihiro (she fights with a chain and scythe), and set in for several hours of old-fashioned, side-scrolling jump-n-slash action. Veteran gamers will immediately wax nostalgic for the color- ful sprite artwork and synthetic chiptune music, even if it's some- thing of a faux relic—Kage 2 almost seems like some lost Super Nintendo (or even NeoGeo) game, not a product birthed of the mod- ern world. The audiovisual trappings aren't completely antiquated, but when held up against the likes of Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, Kage's lack of snazzy graphical effects and voiceovers disappoints.

Luckily, Kage's action-paced gameplay transcends its dated veneer—lighting-fast combat means that you're constantly building up a massive chain of successive kills by slicing through ninja fod- der. And while the gameplay initially appears basic, you unlock new Skills and additional ninja-magic orbs (that can be combined via a touch-panel minigame) as you progress. These ninjitsu thrills will likely keep you playing, but don't expect too many surprises along the way: Dull boss encounters and slightly repetitive level layouts keep the excitement from boiling over too furiously.

As a sequel that gamers didn't even know they wanted, The Legend of Kage 2 justifies its existence by delivering traditional ninja action. A bit more ambition could've made this a true classic (how about some Wi-Fi co-op?), but as it stands, it's the next best thing to cramming GBA cult classic Ninja Five-O into your DS. Plus, Га also like to commend the publisher for eschewing what jaded gam- ers have dubbed the dreaded “Square Enix tax” for this release—

[pg ER Kage 2 sports a value-added $20 asking price,

a far cry from the exorbitant sticker shock

SHANE Я қ

plaguing Final Fantasy DS games. B T GOOD The Good: Classic ninja gameplay

The Bad: Rudimentary level design | 2, Pscudo-sequel: Demon Sword (NES)

AWAY: SHUFFLE DUNGEON

Ш Publisher: Majesco Ш Developer: AQ Interactive/Artoon/Mistwalker Wi Players: 1 ₪ ESRB: Everyone 10+

A one-trick pony...but what a trick

+ JEREMY: Away: Shuffle Dungeon might be the most taxing game Гуе ever played. The exhaustion isn't a matter of reflexes, however; like most top-down action-role-playing games, it doesn't require thumb dexterity so much as cautious play. That's the rub, though: Caution only goes so far when the dungeon's rearranging itself every few seconds.

Shuffle Dungeon is a conceptual riff on the notorious recurring timed dungeon in fellow DS title The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, demanding smart play by making the dungeon itself a hazard. Each labyrinth is spread across the DS' two screens—every few seconds, one of the screens shuffles, shifting to a new configu- ration. Linger too long and you'll be injured—and worse, sent back to the beginning of the current floor.

So conservative play makes for a poor strategy in Shuffle Dungeon; sticking around any single spot for more than about 10 Seconds leaves you trapped as the dungeon transforms. With the world in an ever-constant state of motion, you're forced to push forward and take risks that you'd otherwise never attempt. You'll quickly learn to keep your eyes peeled so as to see which screen is about to flip, and the countdown timer becomes your nemesis as you make a last-second dash for that tantalizing chest or switch on the screen that's about to disappear (of course, you can always choose to hang around until that screen shuffles back into play, but you never know when that'll be).

Unfortunately, this clever mechanic is the only unique thing about Shuffle Dungeon. The game's overarching goal is to rebuild a town by rescuing its myriad captive citizens, much like in the Super Nintendo classic Soul Blazer, but that's really just a means to an end. The real meat of Shuffle Dungeon's gameplay is in explor- ing dungeons; doing so allows you to upgrade the town (and your tagalong party of curious magical creatures)...but really, that's just a bonus on top of all of the dungeon-diving.

Shuffle Dungeon's strength lies in its level designs, which are cleverly crafted so as to force tough choices at the spur of the moment. The limited structure grows a bit long in the tooth once

Saas you’ve been playing for a while...but even so, it

never stops pushing you to make those

JEREMY 68 snap decisions. B - GOOD The Good: Clever core gimmick with solid action on top

The Bad: Not much going on beyond the gimmick E :המוק‎ one of tne best uses of DS hardware yet

ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY > EGM.1UP.COM * 1

CASTLEVANIA: ORDER OF ECCLESIA

W Publisher: Konami ₪ Developer: Konami ₪ Players: 1-2 ₪ ESRB: Teen

mw Finally tapping a new vein

gameplay, spooky graphics and music The Bad: Confusing puzzles, cut-and- paste levels Formula: Symphony of the Night (PS1) meets Simon's Quest (NES)

Ф SHANE: As the fifth portable "Metroid-vania" to appear since Konami's Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PS1) expertly evolved the simple, arcade-rooted franchise into an action-RPG legend, Ecclesia will Surprise gamers expecting another me-too retread through Drac's abode. The game's lone new heroine, Shanoa, represents a massive devia- tion from the series’ whip-crackin’ Belmont bloodline—she's a dutiful, emotionless acolyte who wields amaz- ing magical abilities in lieu of a whip. Her clever “glyph” powers completely redefine the nature of Castlevania combat: Rather than fighting with physical weapons, Shanoa must cash in ever-regenerating MP to manifest the powers of equipped glyphs. You

82 • ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY > EGM.1UP.COM

can have two weapons and one ability (magical attack, enemy summon, etc.) ready at any time, and specific glyphs can be used in unison for more dev- astating effects. This innovative sys- tem, coupled with tougher standard enemies, makes for a true Castlevania combat renaissance—having to experiment with glyph combos in order to dispatch run-of-the-mill skel- etons feels pretty damned fresh. Ecclesia also toys with expectations for how one should traverse through a Castlevania. 2006's Portrait of Ruin experimented with warping to vari- ous locales via magic paintings, but Ecclesia gives fans of the NES classic Castlevania ІІ: Simon’s Quest what they truly desire—plenty of labyrin- thine manors, spooky outdoor envi-

ronments, and even a town to explore. Sure, some of these stages cut cor- ners with copy-and-paste level design, but expertly hidden secrets, wild new enemies, and awesomely challenging bosses keep things interesting.

So what keeps Ecclesia from ousting Symphony as the ultimate Castlevania? A well-intended set of subquests that sees you running all over creation to rescue kidnapped villagers (who then make goofy fetch- quest requests) ends up becoming a disastrous chore when you're forced to comb every pixel of the world to do their bidding. You must rescue every- one in order to access the last third of the game, and the paucity of in-game hints invokes the classic frustration of Simon's Quest. ЖЕ

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KIRBY: SUPER STAR ULTRA

₪ Publisher: Nintendo ₪ Developer: HAL Laboratory ₪ Players: 1-2 ₪ ESRB: Everyone

ANDREW P.

A- EXCELLENT

The Good: Plenty of powers to absorb The Bad: Forgettable DS-specific features What We Want Next: Kirby: Canvas Curse 2

Tickled pink

+ ANDREW Р: If you've played any of the Super Smash Bros. games and wondered where a good deal of the items and characters came from, chances are you've never played a proper Kirby game. Considering that the pink puffball's usually emerged toward the end of each Nintendo con- sole's lifespan and has never received the push he's deserved, this is forgiv- able. But now, it's also redeemable: Super Star Ultra is an enhanced remake of the excellent Super NES platforming classic Kirby: Super Star, with some DS bells ’n’ whistles thrown in for good measure.

Ultra's assorted game seg- ments each put their own twist on the Kirby platforming idea (calling them minigames would be sell-

84 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY > EGM.1UP.COM

ing them short). In the starter level, Spring Breeze, you'll acclimate to the mechanics of absorbing enemy powers and playing with your co- op buddy (either A.I.-controlled or a second player with a separate game card—which we were, unfortunately, unable to check out). After Spring Breeze, you unlock further Kirbyverse adventures featuring characters like Meta Knight and King Dedede. Some areas are more substantive than oth- ers: The Great Cave Offensive sees Kirby traversing levels in search of 60 hidden treasure chests, while Gourmet Race is a simple face-off through a small obstacle course.

But while these concepts are inter- esting, a lot of the excellent material gets repurposed in the later unlock-

able game types. In particular, bosses are plentiful, and the strategies never change. The Meta Knightmare Ultra mode essentially consists of repeat- ing portions of the game that you've already seen, but with an overpow- ered Meta Knight instead of Kirby.

It's an issue further exacerbated by Kirby's inelegant level design; it's clever at times, especially when you need to use specific powers situ- ationally. But compared to the Mario games from that era, Ultra's filled with flat, wasted space that platforming vets won't have any trouble with.

At the same time, that problem's easy to tolerate because Kirby and company are just too damn cute and cheerful. If Smash Bros. piqued your interest, Ultra’s your next step. жа

DS

VIVA PINATA: POCKET PARADISE

Ш Publisher: THQ ₪ Developer: Rare И Players: 1 ₪ ESRB: Everyone

Portable рїйаїа paradise for one

“¥ ANTHONY: The Viva Piñata series has always been about obtain- ing and breeding adorable living piñata creatures. The way in which you do it—through cultivating a beautiful garden that's attractive to the breed of pifiata you seek—really captivated me on the two Xbox 360 versions, and it moves to the DS with grace.

Pocket Paradise functions as a series of loosely connected quests—luring one рїйаїа into your garden will likely attract another one, thus keeping you constantly engaged...assuming that sort of thing appeals to you. You gain experience each time a new piñata visits, becomes a resident, or is successfully bred. Leveling up isn't just about getting a higher number to appear on the screen, though; higher levels mean new pifiatas as well as new objects to purchase from the in-game stores.

The basic gameplay remains mostly intact despite the downsiz- ing, but lots of little differences from the 360 versions keep things interesting for Viva fanatics. For instance, aquatic plants no longer need to be watered, as they apparently obtain water from the pond. It's just one of many little differences—far too numerous to recount here—but the important thing is that these changes alter play enough that even the most seasoned gardeners must rethink the way they go about working their land.

The biggest difference—and the one that takes the most getting used to—is the stylus control scheme. | was worried that the touch screen wouldn't be sensitive enough for me to place my seeds exactly where | wanted or to dig a pond to my desired specifica- tions, but | was wrong. The stylus works splendidly, and within the first (of many) hours | spent with the game, | was quickly navigating with the same ease | experienced with the 360 version, creating gar- dens that rapidly attracted waves of new pifiatas.

The team at Rare did an awesome job at retaining a surprising amount of features in this DS iteration. Even the colorful art style makes the transition, though understandably, it’s nowhere near as gorgeous as Pocket Paradise’s console counterparts. And while | still prefer the console version—its beautiful visuals and delightful music are pleasures to take in from the comfort of home—Pocket

Paradise will always have a place in my pocket

EE] (and my heart) when | need my piñata fix on

ANTHONY the fly.

B+

соор The Good: Addictive as always!

The Bad: Addictive as always... ME 2360/08 connectivity: What we wouldn't give for it

PsP

STAR OCEAN: FIRST DEPARTURE

₪ Publisher: Square Enix ₪ Developer: tri-Ace ₪ Players: 1 ₪ ESRB: Teen

A proper Star Ocean ‘sequel’

+ A. FITCH: Nearly a decade ago, tri-Ace’s under-the-radar PS1 sci-fi action-role-playing gem Star Ocean: The Second Story hooked me like few RPGs ever have. Its addictive item crafting and unique relationship-sim elements coaxed me into more than 10 total playthroughs in my absurdly ambitious quest to trigger all 80-plus ending vignettes.

Come 2004, though, | couldn't bring myself to complete PS2 entry Star Ocean: Till the End of Time even once. The characters, combat, story, and clunky transition to 3D just never clicked—and its notoriously shocking plot twist was, in my opinion, an unwarrant- ed slap in the face to fans of Second Story (endless message-board screeds will attest that I’m not alone in this feeling).

With all that in mind, then, First Departure—an enhanced remake of the previously Japan-only Super Famicom series debut—is the “sequel” we should’ve gotten all along. Nearly every familiar ele- ment from Second Story is lovingly re-created here, whether it’s the 2D sprites on prerendered backdrops, the simple yet satisfying but- ton-mashy combat, or the deliciously haunting music. Even the all- capping of every playable character name hearkens back to RPGs of old, and protagonist Roddick is right at home in this retro motif, with his pointy ears and poofy ’90s RPG hero hair. In fact, it’s the no-frills story, not the archaic graphics, that truly betrays the game’s advanced age.

So, if it feels a bit dated, why the hell have | been staying up till 4 a.m. playing this game, then? Easy—the ridiculously engross- ing crafting minutiae sucks me in every time, whether it's cooking up a sumptuous feast, penning tomes of arcane knowledge, or composing orchestral opuses. You can even customize character relationships via skits that influence affection toward various com- rades—which, in turn, affects the ultimate ending. And with more than 20 possible party combinations, just about every quest plays out a little differently.

Look, I’m not stuck in the past—I realize that this series’ ultimate future lies with next year's Star Ocean: The Last Hope on Xbox 360, and I'm cautiously optimistic that they'll get it right this time. But I’m

also elated that with First Departure, an over- looked classic's finally getting the follow-up it so richly deserved.

The Bad: Archaic storytelling and presentation A Distinct Lack Of: Stars, oceans, or general spacefaring

A. FITCH GOOD The Good: Addictive item crafting, relationship building

ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM.1UP.COM • 85

SPORE

₪ Publisher: EA Games ₪ Developer: Maxis ₪ Players: 1 ₪ ESRB: Everyone 10+

Ml A tangible realization of intelligent design

SCOOTER

The Good: Seeing you and your bud- dies’ creations propagate

The Bad: An imper- fect mix of genres 1UPScooter: Add me to your buddy list and let my race of Nomnoms ravage your galaxy!

+ SCOOTER: Is Spore the greatest and grandest creation to spring from the ginormous cranium of mastermind game designer Will Wright? No, but that’s because I’m not sure if “game” is the proper term. Like Wright’s other projects (SimCity, The Sims), a bet- ter description would be a “toy,” as you invent your own fun by messing around with the various gameplay systems. While The Sims is essentially а dollhouse/life-drama toy, Spore's a home-science kit that sees you take a species from single-cell simplicity to vast galactic empire.

Spore's five phases feel like a mishmash of five different games at once; it plays like PSN microorgan- ism muncher f/Ow (Cell), then like a blend of World of WarCraft, The Sims,

86 + ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM.1UP.COM

and Simon Says (Creature), then like real-time-strategy-for-babies (Tribe), then like an even more streamlined Civilization Revolution (er...Civilization), and finally like an online sci-fi role- playing game fused with Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Space). While the overall genre blend is pretty spiffy (I grew quite attached to my race of Nomnoms as they developed from paramecia to a race of spacefaring savages), each phase that precedes Space actually feels quite shallow. My main Spore game took about 15 hours to finish, but four of those were spent breezing through the first four stages, and the last 11 or so were just in Space (which adds layers of complex- ity, like diplomacy, trade routes, star navigation, terraforming, interstellar

₪ Oh, dear. This will not end well.

warfare, and so on and so on). Simplistic gameplay aside, Spore’s best features are the various intersect- ing editors (creature, vehicle, building) and the online Sporepedia database. Seeing the weird things that other players have made (flying teddy-bear spaceships, Mario-shaped houses) and interacting with those creations in my own game is a different and unique experience. It’s a flawed game that tries to do too much, but—when you view it as a take on intelligent design with a focus on creation and sharing—it’s more than worthwhile, much like the rest of Wright’s work. жа.

EGM Extras: Wanna build the ultimate creature? Check out our Spore SuperGuide at

»DOWNLOAD/WRAP-UP

d downloadable content

ing games an

te looks at late-break

-minu

Last

your body, get ready— LittleBigPlanet is your new life.

PS3/XB360

BROTHERS IN ARMS: HELL’S HIGHWAY

₪ Publisher: Ubisoft ₪ ESRB: Mature

Our full Hell's Highway review was supposed to be here, but 11th-hour multiplayer issues hindered the process. On the other hand, the single-player mode will be instantly familiar to those who've played the previous titles and features new cover mechanics, environments, and improved А.І. that ensure even skilled commanders will have their work cut out for them.

Perhaps the most charming, inventive,

and downright smile-inducing game ever. And one of

the best.

BIOSHOCK

₪ Publisher: 2K Games ₪ ESRB: Mature

Our return to Rapture might

look essentially the same on the PlayStation 3, but the new "Survivor" difficulty mode, which decreases the damage you dole out while increasing the amount you absorb, gave us a much harsher greeting. Like, signifi- cantly. It'll be a good challenge for the Legendary/Veteran crowd that thinks extra Eve is for babies.

Bottom Line: One year later, BioShock remains a beautiful and haunting game. And new content, in the form of downloadable challenge rooms, is a good thing.

Bottom Line: If you're looking for a shooter that fits nicely between "sim" and "fun,"

PS3/XB360

DEAD SPACE

₪ Publisher: EA Games ₪ ESRB: Mature

Dead Space seems to veer away from its scary aspects more than promised, verging on Gears of War territory— some Call it a horror game, but it isn’t. The main difference is that the difficult sections are the ones where you're low on ammo (as opposed to just fighting enemy waves). But as a tense action game with enemy-dissecting guns, it works extremely well.

Bottom Line: We’re intrigued by what Dead Space has to offer, but its lack of memorable moments—we've only seen a couple at this point—makes us a little skeptical.

take a stroll on Hell's Highway.

PS3/XB360

BLITZ: THE LEAGUE Il

₪ Publisher: Midway ₪ ESRB: Mature

Once again, former NFL great and one-time addict Lawrence Taylor reprises his role as Blitz’s cover "athlete"—and, as before, you'll "juice" players up to recover quickly from their frequent injuries. The single- player mode offers some RPG-lite fare to this arcade-style game as you select your player attributes during an introductory press conference.

Bottom Line: If you love filling your players with enough steroids to be mistaken for Sasquatch, you might actually enjoy this one. The squea- mish need not apply.

ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM “ 87

| х Pui

4 SIN ROW 2 V P Wi НО ₪ ESRB: Mature

The original Saints Row was a hit, partly due to th СК of competition from a current-gen Grand Theft ~

‘Auto, but also because it was a solid, enjoyable open-world shooter. We recently played a near-final version of Saints Row 2, which—despite being in GTA4's ample shadow—once again sucked us in. From its sick character creator to its embellished urban theme to its exemplary online co-op setup,

we're primed for the final game.

Saints Row 2 is no GTA4 killer...but an

entertaining, less-serious offering works for us.

Wii/PS3/XB360/PS2

MOTOGP 08

₪ Publisher: Capcom ₪ ESRB: Everyone

Incredibly slick-looking, Capcom's latest MotoGP is the most comprehensive yet. With tons of real racers, bikes, and tracks, fans of the so-called "fastest-growing sport in the U.S." will be champing at the left trigger to get a hold of MotoGP 08. Career mode's the standout here, allowing you to join a team, earn upgrades, and ultimately rock socks. Arcade mode makes biking a piece of cake, yet still manages to entertain.

Bottom Line: It's not perfect, but MotoGP 08 is a must-have for motorbike fans.

SAMBA DE AMIGO

И Publisher: Sega ₪ ESRB: Everyone

A cheesy remix of "Livin' La Vida Loca" is never a good idea. And when the most excit- ing extras are ridiculous alternate maraca sounds (think: a voice saying “Hey!” for each shake of an eighth note), you'll begin to see that— despite the inviting veneer—Samba de Amigo on Wii just isn't the sequel fans were hoping for. Even as a remake, it falls short of the original's maraca-shaking fun.

Bottom Line: From what we've played,

Samba's a lot like its included minigames— lazy and disappointing.

88» ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM.1UP.COM

PS3/XB360

PURE

₪ Publisher: Disney Interactive ₪ ESRB: Everyone

A gorgeous off-road racer with a nifty approach that keeps you busy from start

to finish, Disney’s Pure marries two distinct disciplines—racing and high-flying aerial tricks—into a single undertaking. Easy to grasp but harder to master, the game delivers 30 incredibly scenic circuits, a surprisingly deep garage and ATV-creation facility, and more free fall drops than a skydiving school.

Bottom Line: Pure may be a thrill-seeker's dirt-encrusted paradise, but it also ingeniously puts you on the clock. And that's its charm.

PS3/XB360/PS2

TNA IMPACT!

₪ Publisher: Midway ESRB: Teen

Spandex-lovers have been itching for a new wrestling game since the SmackDown vs. Raw series became as stagnant as a Triple H title reign. But TNA Impact! doesn’t quite provide the relief for long-lasting rope burn. The graphics and animations are superb, but this grappler’s still green in the ring—the lackluster features and grapple system pin

it down.

Bottom Line: SmackDown vs. Raw is still the king of the gaming ring, but TNA Impact! could be a worthy contender down the line.

>THE SALES CHART B.

Amazon.com's Top 20 for Aug./Sept.

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Name Platform | Scores 1 Wii Fit Wii B+ B- B 2 Madden NFL 09 XB360 A B A- 3 Madden NFL 09 PS3 A B A 4 Mario Kart Wii with Wii Wheel Wii B+ C+ с 5 Gran Turismo 5: Prologue PS3 В+ C+ В+

ж

If Prologue keeps selling this well, we can only imagine what the actual game's going to sell like.

6 Rock Band: Special Edition Wii B- (on 1UP.com) 7 Madden NFL 09 All-Play Wii Not Reviewed 8 Тоо Human XB360 с- C- D+

It's obvious that review scores have little influence оп sales after all. Here’s hoping we still have jobs....

9 Madden NFL 09 Р52 Not Reviewed 10 Mario 8 Sonic at the Olympic Games Wii C+ B- C+ 11 Grand Theft Auto IV PS3 At А+ А 12 We Ski Wii A (on 1UP.com)

We Ski's doing well for

- ; k Ж s > itself—maybe Namco Bandai

А 4 should release We Canoe

1 S adn Avr en, during the summer months.

WI > SSANISNS LNIWNIYLYIJLNI > NOISIG 9 SLYV TVLI‏ > פטאב םבהברס4ובא1 > Z NOILINGOYd MOHS > SLYV SNIGHOI9Y‏ נסחטוטפ

13 Mario Super Sluggers Wii B 14 Мем Super Mario Bros. DS At A B+ SCHOOL OF GAME DEVELOPMENT 15 Madden NFL 09: XB360 A B А- 4 Te

3300 University Boulevard • Winter Park, FL 32792

800.226.7625

Financial aid available to those who qualify * Career developme

20th Anniversary Collector's Edition

+ Accredited School, ACCSCT

16 Super Smash Bros. Brawl Wii A A- A-

17 Madden NFL 09: PS3 A B A- 20th Anniversary Collector's Edition

18 Soulcalibur IV PS3 A A A

19 Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 All-Play Wii B (on 1UP.com) 2 3 Real World Education

20 Rock Band: Special Edition PS2 A (on 1UP.com)

fullsail.com

and asked to put it in my Nintendo DS.

You'd think this would simply turn me into a murderer, a madman—like the comedy writers who are forced to review poorly manufactured hallucinogens. But, no— instead, it’s tuned my senses. Now, with a glance of a DS box, | can accurately gauge the despair contained within it. And I’m about to prove it.

Before reviewing each game, РИ write my expecta- ae” tions for it. To let you join in the fun, I’ve also left a With school back in

blank space where you can write in your own precon- session, Seanbaby ceived notions. I’m trusting you to use the honor sys- is ready to teach t АРАН АН chock Goog trade inf America's youth the em and not read ahead, check Google, or trade infor Uc ded mative love letters with Future Keanu Reeves in some splits while punching lame movie. You and | are not even allowed to look at dudes in the balls.

the back of the box for further information. Then, after our guesses are tallied, ІЛІ review the game. Later—or, as you know it, now—you'll read ahead to the game's review and see how close we were. It sounds compli- cated, which is only one of the reasons this has never before been attempted. You only get three shots at this, so guess big.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

E] Since Seanbaby is EGM's plucky comic relief and not an 97 Top 10: Videogame authorized reviewer, he will not be giving these games “real”

Politi scores. Ever since he gave .8 Phil Collins Marrying Himselfs

to a game, our lawyers have limited the official capacity of his reviews. For this article, however, our lawyers have given him the authority to rate the performance of his own expectations. He is not a wizard. By using methods nothing short of amaz- ing, though, he will also grade how well your expectations do. See if you can spot a bad game as well as our expert!

| | |

ВОТС ВЕРОВТ CARD |

GAME Smart Girl’s Magical Book Club |

| MY EXPECTATIONS: You think you girls are

Press continue for grading scales, Reagan, more buds, and Michael 8

| YOUR EXPECTATIONS: | ה‎

rc = ACTUAL GAME: | | This is Brain Age for ages 0 and below. With | | bunnies and piggies as your guides, this col- | lection of minithings allows you to color pic- 3 tures, count hats, and draw adult themes. None

| of TE makes “sense” in the way you and I kno | Lit, but ifa nearby baby owns a DS, why ms |

СС > О Ш = < О ^

| HOWIFARED: | I really don’ | there. A с: Е |

| HOW YOU FARED: | | Psh, you really blew it, though.

90 • ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY е EGM. 1UP.COM

ROTC REPORT CARD

GAME Plushees

MY EXPECTATIONS: oe This simulates life as a lonely security guard at a stuffed-animal factory. The B button

eagerly pants, and the A button penetrates toy bears. Pressing L or R checks for onlookers.

ROTC REPORT CARD Ж. е E x

came Space Chimps

YOUR EXPECTATIONS:

MY EXPECTATIONS: : {ыз With Space Chimps, I'm going to гі mo unexpected. So I'm expecting kn ee full of bats and that my grandfa ie но let is actually useless—the ב‎ JEA Unicorn Gateway was inside me the

ACTUAL GAME:

Plushees is all about purchasing stuffed

toys by pouring hours of time into arcade ticket games such as Pachinko and Skee-Ball. Or as it's called in Plushees: "Holes Game." Seriously. Now, the process of naming a retail product is no simple task, and we live in an age of information, so it's virtually ітро5- sible that the makers of this stuffed-animals

YOUR EXPECTATIONS:

ACTUAL GAME: ou switch between 3D sequenc- Pas never Came across the fact that the title P 2 be horrible and platforming а 50 means "people who hump these things.” Is es too confusing ic to be described. The sto- Jt a coincidence? If it is, then explain why sequences too gener all of these dolls are so, so Sexy. I mean,

d rushed that I think dt. while the writer 5

Tiff. It would

rent an 911 dispatcher

A d off ac burning car P е Т even felt like I was

to improve E Dind Ше Hedgeman 2 оп d ш А i system. But if you И D , 8 DA ie you still couldn't enjoy this game M eem жик to your head. | if someone held a b

Waldo the Moose might as well be filled with Chocolate cake and backing into me.

ry's so incohe was told to a

HOW 1 FARED:

I nailed it! You might think “nailed it" has some kind of crass double meaning since this is a game based on interspecies relationships. But it's a triple meaning—Hollywood the Monkey was there, too, choking Waldo.

| HOW 1 FARED: I knew it!

HOW YOU FARED:

You got disqualified Since you al ready own this game.

tation of

1 1 n adap Guessing that it was al | | а role rejected by the Olsen twins

hen they looked like chimps got you a | — My experience slightly edged out your blind cynicism with

wi i i rue. ` WÎ a score of win to you lose. Congratulations on a well-fought

> SEANBABY'S REST OF THE CRAP „g last place. 4%

GREAT uc | EXPECTATION

Reviewing the finest games based on their box

| HOW YOU FARED:

“ж Final Scores

ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY > EGM. 1UP.COM “ 91

BEST BUDDIES & FOUL-WEATHER FRIENDS

‚ and with

. Resident Evil 5’s co-op,

u d di es it's blowin’ up even more. ر‎ А The 25-year road їо seam-

less online tag-team zombie- shooting has been long and bumpy, and the following are some of the best (and worst) sights along the way. Gauntlet

198 Atari * Arcade

Admittedly, Gauntlet’s four-player co-op design was created as a means of efficient- ly sucking quarters from four kids at once, using the fun of hacking through endless dungeons packed with monster hordes. Less fun: Getting your head dunked in the

toilet for shooting the food. 1 9 8 Forgotten Worlds

a Capcom * Arcade Capcom’s side-scrolling shooter Forgotten Worlds required true cooperation. Your spaceborne heroes had a full 360-degree range of fire, but they were slow to reorient. Only by coordinating with your partner did you stand a chance at victory.

1 9 8 A Boy and His Blob a Absolute * NES

A platforming puzzler by Pitfall! creator David Crane, this quirky adventure saw players assisted by a rapidly mutating white glob who'd transform into new shapes depending on how you regulated

his all-jelly bean diet. 199 River City Ransom American Technos * 5 Sure, Double Dragon may have done co-op beat-em-up action first, but River City did it best by adding a healthy dose of humor, open-ended design, and RPG elements.

92 * ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY > EGM.1UP.COM

A history of co-op games, good and bad

Also: It allowed you to wield your buddy as a weapon. Genius.

199 Secret of Mana Square ° SNES

Even after the novelty of a multiplayer role-

playing game wore off, Secret of Mana was

great fun for three players. Except for when

you had to stop to let the sucker who got

stuck playing the Sprite grind his magic

a Namco * Arcade A cop flick transmuted into pure arcade genius, Lucky & Wild put one player in the driver’s seat and the other riding shotgun— almost literally, since player two’s job was

to gun down escaping criminals. Starsiege: Tribes

199 Sierra On-Line е PC

One of the first games to feature online clans, Tribes’ fluidly shifting gameplay style and determined genre-bending made for a game years ahead of its time.

> WITH FRIENOS LIKE THESE...

1983:

By Jeremy Parish

1 © © Х-Меп a си. Konami * 6 Sure, Gauntlet’s four-person co-op was fun, but it had nothing on Konami's insane six-man X-Men brawler. It may have been chaos—and someone inevitably had to play as the ultralame Dazzler—but it was fun chaos.

Ico

200 | Sony CEA • PS2

Yorda would probably be the worst com- panion—she's scatterbrained and help- less—if not for the fact that the player develops a bond with her, making the game’s ending all the more heartrending.

₪. 2 00 Crackdown

Microsoft • XB360

What's better than open-ended super- powered sandbox mayhem? How about the same as above, with a friend, over the Internet? Who needs missions when you've got impromptu cross-city races and dumpster Jenga? ih

Screens courtesy of HG101, vgmuseum.com, and Games Press

EGM Extras: Your favorite not on here? Check out an expanded list at EGM.1UP.

Modern control

The Wing™ Wireless Controller is a totally awesome way to breathe new life into Wii™ Virtual Console™ games. Enjoy up to ten feet of wireless freedom — no cord connection to the Wii Remote™ required. Space-age technology delivers up to 30 hours of playtime on two AAA batteries - or play into Ihe future using a USB cable and any standard rechargeable batteries". IFs the ultimate control for the next generation of gamers.

*USB Cable and Rechargeable batteries not included.

Available at your favorite retailer. Or urn on your personal computer and до to ће Warld Wide Web: www.nyko.com. Ask your parents for help!

NYKO

Transformers

Publisher: DreamWorks ils: Whether

you're old enough to 1

love the Transformers

for real or just got

caught up in the Г hoopla, there’s 3 по denying that

Michael Bay’s big-screen adaptation of the "805 cartoon packs as many explosions, car chases, guitar solos, helicopters, planes, hot bods, and robots into the movie’s 143-minute run time as humanly possible. But then again, this is a Michael Bay film, and what Michael Bay wants, Michael Bay gets. He wields more military power

in every directorial flick of his wrist than the last five real-life presidencies combined, so when an onscreen grunt yells, “We need air support, now!” he gets it within 8.5 seconds. Die-hard Transformers fans may bristle at such quibbles. The real comedy, however, is found in the director's commentary. Check out Bay’s impersonation of his Japanese lead animator—you'll need a squeegee to wipe the ego from

your screen.

Still, thanks to the manic nonstop- panic mode of star Shia LaBeouf, Transformers survives its horrible one- liners, convenient plot devices (the future of humanity is on eBay), and the rendering of Optimus Prime from TV's patriarchal leader of the Autobots to the movie's dunderheaded homeboy (“Му bad.”). This does not make Transformers a good movie; it merely makes it watchable. But thanks to the unbelievably nimble CG robots, if ever you wanted to show off how dope your high-def AV system is, this is the movie to do it with.

or: Michael Bay ting: C Bonus Material: B4

AMING MONTHLY > EGM.1UPCOM

+

Ж

4

> ШЕ

BLU-RAY BUNGALOW

HD-DVDs in disguise £

Dirty Harry

Publisher: Warner Eastwood Bros.

Details: “Dirty” Harry

Harry Callahan,

the character that

Clint Eastwood *

made famous back in 1971, returns to relevance thanks to the movie's reminting on Blu-ray, and you'll

be glad to know that everyone's favorite badass cop has stood the test of time. It's interesting to see Harry running rampant around San Francisco in an attempt to nail down a slippery serial killer, mostly because you can't imagine a cop like that in

a modern setting, kicking ass first

and taking names later. But the film's effectiveness truly hits home when you bookend his famous "You've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do feel lucky?' Well, do you, punk?" line and compare the difference between the two deliveries. At the beginning, he's practically chuckling as he delivers the line to a wounded bank robber. But by the film's end, when he's facing the movie's killer on the docks, the same line feels like it's held back by chains, punctuating the movie's violent conclusion. And they sandwich a terse crime thriller that may feel out of sync with today's ultraviolent Glock-fests,

IKE TO WATCH

By James Mielke

but that’s all the more chilling because Harry’s quarry is a regular Joe. Director: Don Siegel

Rating: A Bonus Material: A

Cloverfield az) Publisher: Paramount 312138 Details: The larger-

than-life product of J.J. Abrams’ desire to create a |. Godzilla film for the West, Cloverfield rose above the trappings of its viral marketing

to become one of 2008’s most surprising hits. Part faux documentary and part disaster flick, Cloverfield mostly succeeds thanks to its frenetic pacing. Seeing a stunningly realistic CG replica of New York City—a city still smarting from 9/11—crumble under the combined weight of the invading monster and the subsequent military effort to destroy it resonates in ways that no Godzilla movie could. OK, so cameraman Hud was mega- annoying—but have you seen the “acting” in a Godzilla movie lately? Cloverfield’s a sharply executed giant- monster flick that will hopefully teach Japan’s Toho studio a thing or two in time for Godzilla’s 60th-anniversary revival in 2014.

Director: Matt Reeves

Rating: B Bonus Material: A mi

₪ Watch out for the crappy dialogue, people!

Blood

Crude Humor

Mild Language

Sexual Them

Use of Alcohol and Tobacco

Micresoft PED GTI

IS THERE A BLACK BELT FOR MOVIE TRIVIA?

Whether you're a venerable master

or humble beginner, Scene |)? Box Office Smash! is the ultimate movie trivia game, featuring all-new real movie content and tons of ingenious puzzles

Whether you play in your living room or

on Xbox LIVE? use the wireless Big

Button Pad to show the world xbox.com/sceneit that you're the movie trivia kung-fu master.

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> PREVIEWS

$

On sa

:

Ш Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3/XB360) W Prototype (PS3/XB360)

> REVIEWS

М IT'S A SECRET TO EVERYBODY. (EXCEPT US) Someone get Kyle Hyde on the horn—our cover story for next month is a mystery. It's a damn good one, too! We reckon you're going to want to come on back in 30 once we officially reveal this Manhattan- sized announcement. It's funny, 'cause we want to tell you, but we'd rather that you wait and see for yourself.

Though our cover story's clouded in secrecy, we can tell you about

December Issue (#235).

a preview that’s sure to be a hoot. Or batty, we should say—return here next month for an update on Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Also, be sure to brace yourself—this fall's big blockbusters are starting to drop into our laps. Are they making us hot? Why, that’s personal. But | guess we'll tell you: Check back as we give you the final word on Gears of War 2, Guitar Hero: World Tour, and

Resistance 2.

(All planned editorial content is subject to change.)

> ADVERTISER INDEX

L LittleBigPlanet (PS3)

Ш Saints Row 2 (PS3/XB360)

₪ SOCOM: Confrontation (PS3)

Ш Spider-Man: Web of Shadows (Wii/PS3/XB360)

E Fallout 3 (PS3/XB360)

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> ан“ TOF ТЕН

VIDEOGAME POLITICIANS

Election time puts us in a voting mood By Scott Sharkey

=O Mario game LO- 4 i Operation Secret Storm (NES): Saddam Hussein - с 1 Ё 2 f [SECRET STORM] 12 (various): á - He тау not have had any WMDs, but Saddam did have | = ве pesca a giant, pissed-off vulture, a fire-breathing camel, and Satan изра оаазїоо {

himself working for him. According to the manual, the game’s protagonist was actually George Bush the elder, who doesn’t make this list on account of controlling like crap and dying in three hits.

Peach is clearly a fig- urehead with no actu- al political power. Her retinue of mushroom retainers holds the

reins of the Mushroom Kingdom, which is

lucky for all involved, given her typically vacu- ous, aristocratic cake- centric problem-solv- ing strategy.

Final Fantasy VIII (PS1): Laguna Loire

It might’ve seemed a little weird that he ended up as the president of anything, but Laguna Loire had everything it took to lead the technologically advanced city-state of Esthar. And by that we mean a constant, unbreakable state of befuddled uselessness. I’m sure someone in Final Fantasy-land does a brisk business selling “Laguna-ism” calendars.

Bionic Commando (NES): Master-D

The suspiciously Hitler-esque leader of the “Badds” didn’t have much of a chance to enact any of his policies before his head vio- lently explod- - B Guerrilla War (NES): ed, but he did Fidel Castro

make great Fun fact—Guerrilla War was known strides in the as Guevara in Japan, with player one arena of swear- taking the role of Che himself and

BioShock (XB360): Andrew Ryan Can’t quite swing your

№ РМ] wacky new political paradigm in the real world? Go ahead and build your own little cut- throat free-market uto- pia to reign over—and lemonstrate to everyone that Objectivism can do a

elluva lot more damage than just turning anyone who | "9 at people player two guiding his buddy, Fidel. > and being 10 Ever wonder how he stayed in power eads Atlas Shrugged into a complete jackass for a $ feet tall. so long? Extra lives for a quarter.

ith or twi

Final Fight (SNES): Mayor Mike Haggar

The spitting image of future Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura, Mike Haggar was the original trailblazer of former pro-wrestling politicians, beating “The Body” to the punch by nearly a decade. His “personally pound the crap out of everyone” platform has sadly failed to enter the realm of life imitating art.

| HEY DUDES THANKS. ₪ Fight Club (PS2): Abraham Lincoln Here's one of the weirdest unlockable characters in history. Watching Honest Abe emancipate the teeth from Fred Durst’s stupid head was the only reason to consider buying the Fight Club game (other than an

overdeveloped sense of irony).

FOR RESCUING

4E. LET'S GO FOR A BURGER....

на! на! Ha! на Metal Wolf 0805 (ХВ):

President

Michael Wilson

In the future, America’s

political infighting will

be settled with giant

friggin’ robots, and the

president himself will

duke it out with politi-

cal opponents on the South Lawn of the White House before piggybacking into orbit on the space shuttle. We really should let Japan rewrite our Constitution. h

Bad Dudes (Arcade): President Reagan Oh, Ronnie. You’re so hip and in touch with youth culture. Maybe later we can go smoke some “reefers” or listen to that music. The “rap.”

ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY • EGM.1UP.COM • 97

MATURE 17: ^ Blood and Gore

Language

Partial Nudity д Violence PLAYS ТЕЗ Т1 = ГТ. 3

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