10р’ NETWORK GUITAR IN THE STUDIO IMMERSION : IS IT READY то ЕН == OPM INTERVIEW NAUGHTY DOGS AMY HENNIG Licensed by Sony Computer Entertainment of America. PlayStation and the PlayStation logos are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. Tourist Trophy The Real Riding Simulat any sponsorship or endorsement of this g: From the makers of Y Г the most realistic motorcycle d Featuring over 35 real-life and fantasy сой 3 il riding gear, and over 100 licensed sport bikes E с 2 | ы that truly capture the fluid movement of man and machine: о So zip up the leathers and open up the throttle. Nothing gets you closer to the action than Tourist Trophy. LIVE IN YOU! PLAY IN OUR PlayStation.2 www.touristtrophy-thegame.com this game are trademarks and/or copyrighted materials of their respective owners. All rights reserved. Any depiction or recreation of real world locations, entities, businesses or organizations is not intended to be or imply trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. Visit www.esrb.org for updated rating information. Г other trademarks belong to their fespective owners: © NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc. 2006 Ай Right: 95 сот for infe 'egarding movie г. en. The driving sequen ч professional stunt drive nly. No attempt < аде to duplicate ct in any manner what ЕС pplica ска! state and local laws ап The Fast and The Furious is a trademark and copyright of Universal Studios. Licens 5 g LLLP AN Rights 1 F С А Please consult we Е gue rese BRR STEP INTO THE SHADOWS OF JAPAN'S UNDERWORLD. “7. А MASTERPIECE.” EE Us "AND WHAT A STORY IT IS!" - PLAY MAGAZINE - IGN.COM “... EVERYTHING FELT SO IMMERSIVE, “WHOS TO SAY WHETHER NORTH AMERICA WE JUST HAD TO KEEP PLAYING.” IS READY FOR А GAME ABOUT JAPANESE — - PSM MOBSTERS? WE SURE AS HELL ARE!” - GAMESPOT.COM NEU S EMI — өй 3 de " T ES е К | 1 f : | И 7 A ST 2 2 4 | ? « Í ЖД | 3 м COMM CN "E k А | - EU м > ^ So Е бас _ 155) S BB Ou. UNLOAD DEADLY COMBOS WITH KEEP HER SAFE AND FIND THE STRIKE WITH POWERFUL FINISHING AVENGE DISHONOR THROUGH THE OVER 300 ITEMS AND WEAPONS TRUTH BEHIND THE MYSTERY BLOWS AS YOU UPGRADE YOUR SKILLS TWISTING, DRAMATIC STORYLINE MATURE 17+ ® Blood Sexual Themes р Strong Language . Use of Alcohol PlayStation. ИШПИ Violence ESRB ® PlayStation 2 bw SEPTEMBER 8, 2006 ВЕНЕ КӨЛІМ” ОМЕОТЬ: АТ л. Welw We YA KRUCZA G ATM E СОМ SEGA is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. SEGA, the SEGA logo and YAKUZA are either registered trademarks or trademarks of SEGA Corporation. © SEGA. All rights reserved. “PlayStation” and the "PS" Family logo are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. The ratings icon is a trademark of the Entertainment Software Association. www.sega.com m uU OF FALL Jak ОВ se ба CALL OF DUTY 3 4 li TL IT 14 LETTERS If you ran the industry, we'd probably have to quit our jobs... Ф Ны 18 TOTAL IMMERSION Will Sony ever be ready to rumble? 22 BIG PICTURE Play a game, burn a flag! 24 LORDS OF ROCK RedOctane is living large. 30 PAUSE When you're not playing games. 32 J-TOWN Japan shows the love for the club scene. 34 THE OPM INTERVIEW Naughty Dog's Amy Hennig is ready for change. а НЕ ЛЕШЕ PS2 Okami D1 Professional Drift Grand Prix Series FlatOut 2 MotoGP 4 Micro Machines V4 Pac-Man World Rally + Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII Brave: The Search for Spirit Dancer Pirates of the Caribbean: The Legend of Jack Sparrow Super Dragon Ball Z Madden NFL 07 Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories MLB SlugFest 2006 ЗА Tekken: Dark Resurrection 85 Bomberman 85 NCAA Football 07 85 Ultimate Ghosts ‘п Goblins M ceni psv БӨ BEHIND THE GAME The men behind Lara's rebirth speak. ВА STILL HANGING EverQuest Online Adventures still lives. Who knew? ЦЕН FORGOTTEN GEM Klonoa was a victim of technology. 97 PS1DERLAND 2D beats 3D any day of the week. Qoa ВВ IN MY DAY Stare into the crystal ball... SEPTEMBER | 135 GAMES. i теле тен 54 46 ESI [zzi 58 вз =з = 46 4S 55 | Years’ War Call of Duty 3 College Hoops 2К7 Full Auto 2: Battlelines Genji 2 Heavenly Sword Madden NFL 07 Marvel: Ultimate Alliance NBA 2K7 NHL 2K7 Open Season Rainbow Six Vegas Rayman Raving Rabbids Resistance: Fall of Man Sonic the Hedgehog Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 Tony Hawk's Project 8 Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom Ar tonelico Avatar: The Last Airbender Bionicle Heroes Bratz: Forever Diamondz Brave: The Search for Spirit Dancer Capcom Classics Collection Volume 2 Chicken Little: Ace in Action College Hoops 2К7 D1 Professional Drift Grand Prix Series Destroy All Humans! 2 Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi Greatest Hits Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 2 Eragon Eureka Seven: The New Wave FIFA 07 Final Fantasy ХИ FlatOut 2 Flushed Away God Hand The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy Guitar Hero II -hack/G.U. Vol. 1// IGPX Just Cause Karaoke Revolution: American Idol Kim Possible: What's the Switch? Lego Star Wars II Lumines Plus Madden NFL 07 Marvel: Ultimate Alliance Micro Machines V4 MLB SlugFest 2006 Mortal Kombat: Armageddon. MotoGP 4 NASCAR 07 NBA 07 NBA 2K7 NCAA March Madness МНЕ 07 NHL 2K7 Nicktoons: Battle for Volcano Island Окаті One Piece: Pirates' Carnival Ореп Зеазоп Pac-Man World Rally Phantasy Star Universe Pirates of the Caribbean дат: The Hundred سے EX Rayman Raving Rabbids‏ Reservoir Dogs‏ 65 = Rogue Galaxy Samurai Warriors 2 Scarface: The World Is Yours Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner The Sims 2: Pets Snoopy vs. the Red Baron SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Combined Assault The Sopranos: Road to Respect Splinter Cell Double Agent SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature from the Krusty Krab Spyro: A New Beginning Super Dragon Ball Z Superman Returns Tales of the Abyss Thrillville Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 Tokobot Plus: Mysteries of the Karakuri Tomb Raider: Legend Tony Hawk's Project 8 Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria Xenosaga Episode Ill: Also Sprach Zarathustra Xiaolin Showdown Yakuza Zatch Bell: Mamodo Fury a шаш ча ПОН u ATV Offroad Fury Pro Avatar: The Last Airbender Blitz: The League Bomberman Bounty Hounds Capcom Classics Collection Reloaded Capcom Puzzle World Death Jr. 2: Root of Evil Eragon Every Extend Extra The Godfather: Mob Wars Gun Showdown Gunpey Killzone: Liberation Lego Star Wars II LocoRoco Lumines II Marvel Trading Card Game Marvel: Ultimate Alliance Mortal Kombat: Unchained МВА 07 NCAA Football 07 Nicktoons: Battle for Volcano lsland Online Chess Kingdoms 4S Open Season Power Stone Collection Rengoku 2: The Stairway to НЕАМЕ.М. The Sims 2: Pets Snoopy vs. the Red Baron SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 2 Sonic Rivals Spectral Souls Superman Returns Steel Horizon Tekken: Dark Resurrection Test Drive Unlimited Thrillville Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 Tony Hawk's Project 8 Traxion Ultimate Ghosts m Goblins Winx Club: Join the Club WTF 1$ ТНЕ РОВСЕ IN YOU? One of the things we pride ourselves on is bringing you the latest and greatest demos the gaming world has to offer. That is one of the benefits of reading the Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine, which you are holding right here in your hands. This month we ask you to travel with us to that galaxy far, far away and sample the highly anticipated sequel, Lego Star Wars Il: The Original Trilogy. You can also see what extreme sports games spent some time spinning in our PS2s and should be in yours, too. Why? Because playing hard and liv- ing dangerously is the OPM motto. So, what are you waiting for? Grab the disc and get to your PlayStation 2. Lego Star Wars returns with a blocky take on the origi- nal Star Wars trilogy. Sample a famous scene from A New Hope complete with bonus characters and codes to unlock in the full game. PlayStation. Logan learned that kick- ing your opponents out of the way while careen- ing down a mountainside was not only appropriate but mandatory. PlayStation. Dana stands by her claim that every PlayStation fan should have at least one Tony Hawk game in their collection. This one is in hers. Joe always dreamt of becoming the king of the Jet Ski world, complete with a snazzy life jacket. Luckily he could get his adrenaline fix anytime without getting wet. WATCH IT Check out movie-based games SpyHunter: Nowhere to Run and The Fast and the Furious, or sit back and go beyond this month's Lego Star Wars 11 demo to see what else is in store for you. We Tom counts ATV Offroad Fury as one of his favorite. PS2 series. The solid open-world racing and rocking soundtrack con- tribute to hours of fun. JE ats TY UNLEASHED Dirt devil Giancarlo tore up more national parks with his dirt bike than uh, er,... did we just admit that here? Ignore us, Mr. Park Ranger. also showcase the epic Yakuza, highlight Crypto 137's return in Destroy All Humans 2, and go crazy with Super Monkey Ball Adventure (what is it with this fascination of mon- keys in balls anyway?). When not tackling the snowy slopes of Northern California, Alejandro could be found practicing his snow boardin’ mad skillz from the comfort of his living room. PlayStation.@ ы” SHAUN PALMER'S Б PRO SNOWBOARDER i. cm t Scooter found this demo under a pile of stuff on his desk and wondered, "Who on earth is this Shaun Palmer dude?" Find out here. COMING МЕ? Т MONTH! Demo Disc Producers Gary Barth, Cori Lucas, Manuel Sousa, Chris Tan Marketing Team Steve Williams, Eric Lempel, Jesse Caid Executive Producer Andrew House 0A Sam Bradley, Edward Toomy Account Coordinator Justin Flores Programming and interface artwork by Lifelike Productions, Inc. Lead Programmers Wiliam Bohan, Ron Midthun, Avery Lodato 3D Artists Jason Robinson, Philip Williamson, David Hayes President Katherine Williams Technical Director Tim Edwards Maimoona Block, Kirsten Costello, Christine DeNezza, Tom Gillan, Gerald Martin, Sean Thomas, Jim Williams DISC PROBLEMS? Did you buy a copy of our magazine that did not contain a demo DVD? Simply send the receipt in an envelope marked “OPM Replacement Disc” to OPM Disc Producer, Ziff Davis Media, 101 2nd Street, San Francisco, CA 94105, with the name and address of the store plus your phone number and address and we'll send you the disc. Make sure you specify which month the corresponding disc belongs to in order to ensure you get the right one. If you have a malfunctioning or nonworking demo disc, call EDS at 1-800-627-6458. They will provide instructions to obtain repair or replacement services. Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) war- rants to the original purchaser of the Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine that the demo disc included is free from defects in material and workmanship for a period of ninety (90) days from the date of purchase. SCEA agrees for a period of ninety (90) days to either repair or replace, at its option, the SCEA product. You must call EDS at 1-800-627-6458 to receive instructions to obtain repair/replacement services. This warranty shall not be applicable and shall be void if the defect in the SCEA product has arisen through abuse, unreasonable use, mistreat- ment, neglect, or breakage during shipment. THIS WARRANTY IS IN LIEU OF ALL OTHER WARRANTIES AND NO OTHER REPRESENTATIONS OR CLAIMS OF ANY NATURE SHALL BE BINDING ON OR OBLIGATE SCEA. ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES APPLICABLE TO THIS SOFTWARE PRODUCT, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, ARE LIMITED TO THE NINETY (90) DAY PERIOD DESCRIBED ABOVE. IN NO EVENT WILL SCEA BE LIABLE FOR INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES RESULTING FROM POSSESSION, USE, OR MALFUNCTION OF THE SCEA SOFTWARE PRODUCT. Some states do not allow limitations as to how long an implied warranty lasts and/or exclusions ог limitations of consequential damages, so the above limitations and/or exclusions of liability may not apply to you. This warranty gives you specific legal rights, and you may also have other rights that vary from state to state. EQUIPPED WITH AN ARSENAL OF WEAPONS, THE INTERCEPTOR 15 LETHAL ON LAND ОН WATER. THE ULTIMATE ASSAULT VEHICLE TRANSFORMS FROM CAR TO BOAT TO MOTORCYCLE. - N E = “NOW THIS IS BURNOUT WITH GUNS.” —OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE WWW.THESPYHUNTER.COM CJD MIDWAY PlayStation.2 pu ІЛ 4 П ТІ THE OPM FAMILY ҒЫ 4 4 E E THIEI2I2v NGUYEN has deactivated brain functions like sight, touch, taste, the memory of a melancholy youth, and his disdain for the existence of praying mantises, all to make room in his Scoot- Brain for the massive info-dump that is the fall games release list. MIELKE shares with the world his disturbingly extensive knowledge of Japan's bizarro world of pop culture as the writer of J-Town. We're a-scared No, really. milkman.1UP.com GIANCARLO чагамм has tasted {пе sweet fruit of vacation, travel- ing over the Pacific to strange foreign lands where he ate delicious and unique treats, ranging from shaved ice to blue potatoes. Now to find an excuse to get back there as soon as possible... PATRICK DOYNT likes playing soccer games, but not as much as he likes downing a dozen Согопаз, watch- ing World Cup action, and crying like a baby when his team loses. halofire.1UP.com M. 4 © LOGAN PARE may be sad that the Star Wars movies are now officially over but at least the story will live on in the world of games, including humorous takes such as the upcoming Lego Star Wars ІІ, not to mention LucasArts’ secret next-generation Star Wars project! ROBERT ASHLEY comes from Texas, where they grow their game reviewers tall and snarky. He also makes music in not one, but two different bands. Hes multifunctional like that. robertashley.1UP.com JONGEWAAID almost pulled out all of her hair during the production of this issue, and now that it's finally finished and out the door, she is fleeing the country for the third time in а month. Screw Califor- nia—bring on the maple syrup, tea, and tequila! VAN WULK finally took the big step of purchasing a vehicle (a zippy little Volkswagen Golf) after four years of living car-less in San Francisco, Now if only he could find a way to keep his dog from throwing up orange chunky vomit all over the backseat. Stupid Vito. GREG SEWART hails from the same country cold comes from: Canada. He worked for OPM's sister mag, Elec- tronic Gaming Monthly, for years before joining, and then leaving, the game-design community. stewy.1UP.com JOE гУВСК is so very, very angry. He would explain the reason for his anger, but he would prefer that you just guess. Perhaps the frustration of not know- ing will make you angry as well, and then he will have company. That would make him happy. But no less angry. ALEJANDRO сначетта has had to learn to live with the knowledge that he and his beloved Argentinian soccer team, who failed to even make the finals of the World Cup, are far inferior to the might of Giancarlo and the Italians. Forza azzurri, sucker! Ш EXTENDED FAMILY ADDITIONAL CONTRIBUTORS EDIT Patrick Mauro Jeremy Parish John Scalzi Ryan Scott ART stuntkid.com Jason O'Dell Cody Pickens FONTS Community Service, Unfinished by YouWorkForThem Officia U.S. PlayStation Magazine (ISSN #1094-6683) is published monthly by Ziff Davis Media mailing offices. Ride Along enclosed in all U.S. copies, Single-issue rato: $8.99. Subscription Rates: One Year (12 issues and 12 demo discs) $49.97 U.S., $65.97 all other co к. 28 East 28th Street, New York, NY 10016. Periodicals Postage Paid at New York, NY 10016 and additional ies. Rid along enclosed. POSTMASTER: Sond addross changes to Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine, РО. Box 55382, Boulder, СО 80322-5362. For Subscription Service Inquiries call us at 800-627-6458 U.S. and Canada, or 303-604. 7445 all other c rios. Fax us at 850-683-4094 U.S, and Canada, or 303-604-0518 all other countries, or visit our subscription website at service.playstationmagazine.com. 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Return Undeliverable Canadian Addresses to PO Box 503, RPO West Beaver Creek, Richmond Hill, ON ав ав. Printed in the USA. Editor-in-Chief Tom Byron а Editor Dona Jongewaard Senior Editor Joe Rybicki Previews Editor Thierry Nguyen. News Editor Giancarlo Varanini Art Director Ryan Vulk Associate Art Director Alejandro Chavetta Disc Producer Logan Parr Issue Contributors Robert Ashley, Patrick Joynt, Patrick Mauro, James Mielke, Jeremy Parish, John Scalzi, Ryan Scott, Greg Sewart Copy Chief Jason Wilson Copy Editors Kaitlen Jay Exum, Andrew Fitch Senior Production Manager Anne Marie Miguel Production Manager Monica Brent. President Scott C. McCarthy Senior Vice President and GM, 1UP Network Ira Becker Senior Vice President and Editorial Director John Davison. Senior Vico President of Sales Scott McDaniel Vice President of Advertising Sales Marci Yamaguchi Vice President of Marketing, Research, and Events Rey Ledda Vice President of Circulation David Rock Group Creative Director Simon Cox Senior Vice President of Sales Scott McDaniel Vice President of Adverti ‘Sales Marci Yamaguchi Director of 0! Sales Brent Martyn GAMING ACCOUNTS 一 NORTHWEST Regional Sales Director Amy Mishra SOUTHWEST боли СА AZ Rogional Sales Director Leslie С. Gelfand Senior Account Executive Rita Kline EAST AL AR СО CT DE FL GA A. 0 IN KS, KY, LA, MA, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, MIN, NO, NE, NA NJ, NM NV. NY, OM, OK, OR PA, Rl, SC, SD TN, T UL VA VI WA. 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EDITORS' CHOICE ЇШЇППЕН “Best Fighting Game" “Best PSP Fighting Game” “Best PSP Game” ap И Crude Humor Mild Language Suggestive Themes Violence ESRB CONTENT RATING TEKKEN® DARK RESURRECTION 8 © 1994-2006 NAMCO BANDAI Games Inc. “PlayStation”, “PS” Family logo and "PSP" are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Memory Stick Duo™ may be required (sold separately). The ratings icon is a registered trademark of the Entertainment Software Association. All other trademarks are owned by their respective owners. WEN г. 5 PlayStation.Portable www.esrb.org «os и’ И Ii I-LJT UNE WISH OUR READERS AN THE INDLISTI2Y р CONTACT OPM SNAIL MAIL ОРМ 101 Second Street 8th Floor San Francisco, CA 94105 E-MAIL opm@ziffdavis.com and check us out at opm.1UP.com SUBSCRIPTION PROBLEMS subhelp@playstation magazine.com or call 1-800-627-6458 After reading the July issue (OPM #106), | became concerned by the amount of dissent and skepticism found in both the articles and reader mail. | work for a game store, and as the lone advocate of Sony’s products, | continually defend the PS3 (аз I've had to with the PS2) against the "Microserfs." Here are just a few points to rally us back together and bolster us for the continuance of the console wars. 1. Don't let anyone tell you 1080p isn't important. How long have we defended the great library of PS2 games against the Xbox- ers' only [selling point]: their system's better graphics? Why would these same people, all of a sudden, abandon their prior logic and say that the graphical difference is negligible? Now we have the games and the graphics. 2. Free online gaming. This is huge. When the PS3 is released, 360 owners will be pay- ing for their second year of service with Xbox Live. That means they've spent an additional $140 on top of the initial $400. After a year of enjoying free online gaming with my PS3 (having spent only $600), the Xboxers will have surpassed that amount with their third year of service (a total of $610). That's enough for now—do not lose faith. I'm an admitted Microsoft Paint addict and thought you all would like to see my mishmash Family Guy and Metal Gear Solid casts. | love the radiOPM podcast, and | think it's really entertaining to listen to. | first found it when | was searching for podcasts to play on my recently purchased PSP, and it was defi- nitely a pleasant surprise. | have subscribed to OPM for over two-and-a-half years, and | always enjoy reading (and playing) it. | think you all are doing a great job. | just thought you'd like some positive feedback about the show and the magazine! You all keep doing what you're doing, and ІЛІ keep reading, lis- tening, watching, and playing. Thank you! Thanks for the nice words, Chris. We are good, aren't we? Note to everyone else: Chris speaks the truth: RadiOPM is the official podcast of OPM, and each week offers and insight from your favorite magazine edi ип, information tors. Your always-free download begins at radiopm. 1up.com. | just wanted to point out that in Tom Byron's picture in the OPM Family section of Issue #106, he shares a striking resemblance to the X2: X-Men United character William Stryker, played by the great Brian Cox. YOU AN THE INDUSTY НАМЕ DECENT NOICE ACTING AND CHARACTERS THAT ІЛЕ CARE ABOUT If we have so many Oscar-winning actors and movies, then why in the name of Sam Fisher don't game plots feel at all engag- ing? The only reason | watch cut-scenes is when | think | might miss something important or when | want to see a difficult boss die. Typically, a game's characters and story are anything but engaging. The characters have no facial distinction, terrible voice acting or annoying voices, and irritating catchphrases. If | ran the industry, games would have plots and characters like...like the Sly Coo- per games! They have very good characters, good voices, and good stories! Sheesh. Please come up with a more creative idea than the mindless dreck | see in most of the games today. And here’s a hint—just because your game has amazing graphics and character rendering doesn’t mean that's as far as you should go. START NEST GEN SOONER Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo would get started on their next-next generation consoles—PS4, Xbox 720, Nintendo Wii Wii—right now. If they got started sooner, they would have enough consoles ready day опе--по shortages—and give developers more than enough time to make great first- wave games. ESE А SEVEN-POINT PLAN NO LOAD TIMES 1. Lengthen the life of a system: Most developers release many fine games near the middle/end of a machine’s life cycle, as their teams learn to use the tools more effi- ciently and are able to push the limit even more. Eight to 10 years seem good to me. And with an investment of anywhere from $200 to $600, people want to get the most out of their machines. 2. Nurture your in-house talent: Devel- opers have highly skilled and trained teams of programmers and designers, yet they seem to have no qualms about burning them out quickly. The long hours take their toll. Maybe with longer development cycles, these people could have more balanced lives and a more passionate outlook toward their craft. 3. Care a little/respect the customer: It's unforgivable for studios to release games with very little testing, marring products that had the potential to be fun. And with the proliferation of microtransactions and streaming advertising, the companies are showing their true colors: "We don't care about you. We just want your money, so pay up." Gamers aren't stupid. They look at companies the way they look at people: They'd rather be loyal to someone they сап trust and who'll treat them well. 4. Understand the busy-adult lifestyle: Not everyone has time or the patience to spend an hour in a confusing maze, die, then restart the last save point. Adults are busy with school, work, families, and social life. How about making most games have the ability to save anywhere/anytime or have more frequent saves? 5. Shut up and listen: Listen to custom- ers once in awhile. Why? Because they'll tell you what they want. And if you give them what they want, they might give you... money. Mostly, they want good, fun games. Sounds basic, right? 6. Support great games: So many good games flounder. When | talk to friends and family, they all rave about games like Ico and Psychonauts. Are we just more sophisticated? Probably not, but from word of mouth and reading magazines and gam- ing sites, we've learned about these great games. But without knowing anything about them, maybe | wouldn't have tried them. Showing the world how great and intelligent games can be would only help the industry. 7. Encourage rental outlets to carry more niche titles and a wider selection of games: Some people are wary of paying $50 for a game they have never tried, but they can't find said game at a certain large- chain rental store. So, they may opt to buy it used (in which case, the publisher and developer won't make any money) rather than risk buying blind, especially if it's a more unusual game. Or, they may wait until it gets cheaper. Maybe the publishers can make a deal with these rental companies about carrying a more diverse selection. And if the games are worthy, the publishers will probably get another paying customer. SEATEMBER amm Given the raw horsepower in the next-gener- ation systems, | would have developers work on no loading times. | will be very disap- pointed if developers continue to have load- ing times in their next-gen games, especially with hard drives present (at least in the PS3, anyway). There really is no reason to have loading times anymore, and there's nothing. that takes one out of the gaming experience than to have "Loading..." pop up. POLITICIANS WOULD STAY GUT OF GAMES Politicians would stick to politics instead of jamming their noses into the gaming world. There have been too many politicians that think there should be a new amendment to the Constitution outlawing M-rated games. BEHIND THE SCENES AND BEYOND THE PAGES OF THE OFFICIAL U.S. PLAYSTATION MAGAZINE о Ма Ірі > What's letter-writer Chris Stone all excited about? RadiOPM, of course! Join the cast and crew of your favorite PlayStation magazine (uh, that’s OPM) as they wax and wane on the issues and games that affect your PlayStation gaming. Recent episodes discussed Sony's controversial PSP ad campaign in the Nether- lands, episodic gaming, e-distribution, hints and tips on getting into the gaming industry, the over-the-top quirkiness of Clover Studios’ God Hand, and reader questions. Download the wacky kids at RadiOPM every Thursday at radiopm.1UP.com. Again, thanks to all the alert readers who noted that our review of Naruto: Ultimate Ninja in the July issue (OPM #106) was adorned with the incorrect screenshot. But, please—you can stop alerting us now. Please. PENNY-ARCADE.COM The Seared Ahi... And could I get that with the side salad, instead of the potatoes? Madam, this is the Sky Саре. You're royalty Well, it’s а беаоыро Yeah-hoh. Does it have any Kryptonite? Can't you 1056 Scrape it о? No, Lois. Princess. Honey дем Jewel. І can't just scrape it OPP. I'M Ping allergic. You know what that Means? It means I'll die. Tell ме about this Pan Roasted Garlic Chicken, Well, there is а light Kryptonite glaze... It's dinner and a show! (©) 2006Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins ш 4 (^ ee . TM — | ' 1 5 ВАМОА! NINTENDO G NAMCO GAMECUBE ци Р EVERYONE БЕ Mild Cartoon Violence H PREVIEWS AND NEWS FROM THE ЛОБ OF PLAYSTATION Че - 四 | 四] cR THE WAJE THE FALL LINEUP FOR THE PSP, PS2, AND PS3 zn IDEAL LAUNCH Care to spend more than $600? ze BIG PICTURE Flag burning and videogames! 24 ROCK GODS Inside RedOctane's world. 28 TIZENDSPLITTEI2 Movie games! 18 | ОП Sepremeee 2006 зо PAUSE When you're not playing games. az U-TOWMN Tokyo's beautiful noise factory. 34 OPM INTERVIEW Amy Hennig speaks out. зв CALENDAT2 September fun awaits! К ТҮКТҮ КТЕ There's ап old, hackneyed saying, "You don't really miss something until it's gone," and when the Play- Station 3 launches on November 17, a lot of people will be shocked—or not, as the case may be 一 to find that the experience of playing a game without a rum- ble feature might seem less fulfilling. Feeling the rat- tle of the controller while firing an automatic weapon or the little dings when scraping your car against a wall in a heated race—these things have become a natural extension of the gaming experience. But the PlayStation 3's controller won't be providing them. When that decision was revealed, Immersion presi- dent Vic Viegas was just one of the many surprised by the announcement. "The game community and game developers really expect [rumble] technology and they appreciate how it improves the realism of the game," says Viegas. "The PlayStation 3 stands as a symbol of technology, so to go backward [with the controller] really didn't seem to make much sense." But, in a way, it makes perfect sense. Immersion's highly publicized lawsuit with Sony, in which Sony was charged with violating Immersion’s patents for the force feedback technology in the DualShock con- troller, isn't resolved. Sony has since appealed the Зоо она во оне в оз ь оч > зо чочовавоечиное в. court's decision, which sided with Immersion, but there's no question that a bitter taste has been left behind. Sony is scrambling to create its own technol- ogy, despite its current reasons for not supporting rumble in the PlayStation 3 controller. ^| talked to our engineers [about] whether ог not the supposed reason was accurate—if there was a conflict between the vibration and the motion sen- sor technology," says Viegas. "And in less than a full day of work, our engineers came back and had three solutions that could easily make the two tech- nologies work side by side. And Nintendo has been able to make it work. Everything that I’m seeing and believing in terms of the gaming experience says that this is a big mistake. Why get rid of a feature that 80 to 90 percent of your gamers say is impor- tant to gameplay for a feature that isn't going to be supported in many games?" For Sony, it's not as simple as reverse engineer- ing Immersion's technology. If the company wants to come up with its own rumble technology, it's going to have to spend some serious R&D money to do so. “Из possible [that they could]," explains Viegas, "but with 600 patents or patents pending, it seems to me the more appropriate path or the safest path would be to work with Immersion." Money shouldn't really factor into the equa- tion, either. The funds Sony may potentially use to develop its own technology could also be used to work with Immersion and its teams. "We're quite reasonable," Viegas says. "We've made it clear that, even with next-generation gaming technology, we're: not charging a premium for this. We have exist- ing licenses with most third parties and we'd make those available at the same rate, so we're not trying to gouge the market or get rich off this. We're just trying to get paid for inventions our engineers made many years ago and that appears to be the sticking point with Sony." Though, if you haven't been following the drama between Immersion and Sony closely, the fact that Microsoft once held stock in the company may also be an issue for Sony. Why, after all, would one con- sole manufacturer want to pay royalties to another? Viegas insists that it shouldn't be an issue. "The result of our agreement with Microsoft would not obligate Sony to pay Microsoft," Viegas explains. "Upon а settlement with Sony, Immersion would be SEATEMBER | obligated to pay Microsoft a minimum of $15 mil- lion." Even if the money issue came down to some- thing as simple as making the controller more expen- sive, yet again, Immersion says that it still shouldn't be an issue. "The implementation is actually equal to or less than the cost of the DualShock because we only use one actuator, versus the current solution, which uses two motors—the technology we're bring- ing to the marketplace would actually be cheaper." That's a pretty attractive proposition. With the next-gen consoles, Immersion has essentially com- pleted new technology that offers greater versatility. INE ZE NOT CHARGING A PREMILIM FO THIS.” In fact, there’s such a broad range of effects avail- able that if gamers had the opportunity to feel what it would be like to have them in a next-gen game, there would be even greater demand for them to be included. The good news is that there’s still time, but for now it looks like Sony isn’t backing down. SC MN ГЕ Es BE | = | =| ANE THOSE WASHINGTONS NOW, KIDS 4 While everyone has been making a huge deal about the PlayStation 3 costing $499 and $599 for the lower-tier and higher-tier models, respectively, everyone seems to be leaving out one key part of the equation. Oh, yeah, that's right: It’s going to cost you a bit more than that if you want to actually play any games on launch day. That's because, unfortunately, games still cost money—and if the Xbox 360's pricing structure is any indication, they're going to cost a lot of money. So if we have to shell out beaucoup bucks at the launch window, what do we want to be getting for our money? Well, we're hoping it will be some of these games. Any of them would make opening the wallet a little less painful. ща т Dragon-fighting and -flying simulator. If there's any single game that you want to show to your friends after you buy that cool new PlayStation 3, it'll more than likely be Lair. The guys and gals at Factor 5 know their stuff when it comes to hardware, and if any develop- ment team can use every bell and whistle that the PlaySta- tion 3 has right off the bat, it'll be them. The only question is whether that technical knowledge will make the leap from X-wings to dragons. WARHAINK A flight sim and ground combat game set in the Warhawk (Р51) universe. Simple. It's the only game currently known to make exten- sive use of the PlayStation 3 motion-sensing technology. As such, it's also one of those, "Hey, check out what the PlayStation 3 can do" games that you'll show your friends when they come over. It's just a shame that it won't be available right out the gate—because we're not sure that there's a better demonstration of what the controller can do than that in Warhawk. LE-LIFE 2 If you don't what this is, you need to turn in your gamer membership card. First-person shooters make for great launch games, and what better first-person launch game could there be than the highly praised Half-Life 2? We're a little curious as to how the port will turn out, but the turnaround time should give some insight into how well and how quickly PC games can be ported over to the PlayStation 3—though maybe that's not the best thing, since ports are generally frowned upon. HEAVENLY SWORD Goddess of War, by all accounts—expect some incredibly intense action. We all know the importance of having strong characters іп a launch game—a character that's immediately identifi- able with a given system. It worked for Master Chief and Halo on the original Xbox, and it could potentially work for Nariko in Heavenly Sword. The game has already gener- ated a ton of buzz because of her and how the game looks (and ostensibly plays). Right now, it’s shaping up to be one of the must-haves for the PlayStation 3. PLAYSTATION BITS BYTE-SIZED NEWS David Jaffe is one sad panda. In one of his latest blog entries, the director of the original God of War says that he's done making standard action-adventure дате: ntially stating that there's no fun in them. Its time for someone to take an extended vacation... While Mr. Jaffe may have a case of the Mondays, Sony is smiling at the fact that it's been rated as the top brand in an online survey conducted by Harris Interactive. Sony beat out Dell and even Coca-Cola 77 Delicious... Even more delicious is news that Electronic Arts is trying its hand at another Lord of the Rings game—but this time, it'll be based on the book: instead of the films, so you won't have to put up with Orlando Bloom's excel- lent "acting skills” any longer... Lastly, às yet another devastating blow to the PSP's movie-playing capabilities, Target has announced that it will stop selling UMD movies in its stores, though it will continue to sell them online. | РО “Тһе DualShock is a great piece of technology, but it is a passive reaction to what you're doing. This is an active input methodology, so if you ask, ‘Which do you like more then | would say, “Take out the vibration.'" —Sony CEA president Kaz Hirai OPM about the decision to the rumble feature out of the PlayStation 3 controller. го сет Е седан А REBEL SPIRIT, THE GODS HAVE EXILED YOU TO THE к MORTAL WORLD. WHEN THE WARRIOR WITHIN YOU AWAKES, YOU MUST FLEE i THOSE WHO WOULD CONTROL EN BOTH YOUR BODY AND YOUR SOUL: , CONTINUE THE Еріс AVAILABLE SEPTEMBER 26 Ё oo " [as TO А WORLD OF MY TH, 4 PlayS tation.e es CENTURIES AFTER SILMERIAS STORY. z AVAILABLE NOW ow тнв de PSP* (PLAYSTATION'PORTABLE) SYSTEM. SQUARE ENIX. www. square-enix.com Published by Square Enix, Inc. Alcohol Reference Fantasy Violence © 1999, 2006 SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD. All Rights Reserved. Developed by tri-Ace Inc. Character design. Mild Language PRODUCTION 1.6. Character illustration: KOU YOSHINARI/YOU YOSHINARI. VALKYRIE PROFILE, LENNETH, RIA, Suggestive Themes 7 SQUARE ENIX and the SQUARE ENIX logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Square Enix Со: Lids lion", CONTENT RATED ВУ аы "PS" Family logo and "PSP" are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Memory. Stick "may be required (sold separately). The ratings icon is a trademark of the Entertainment Software As Association. Ф неее KNOWLEDGE EMPTY GESTURES The more | look at videogames, the more | see the American flag. This isn't a comment on the creeping infiltration of U.S. patriotic symbols into games—and even if it were, l'd be more worried about the creeping infiltration of product placement into games. (And I'm not. Here, have a refreshing Coke!) What | mean is this: Every time | see a politician barf up some rhetoric about how we need to protect our children from the horror of videogames, it's note for note the same sort of empty posturing we get when they debate a constitu- tional amendment against burning American flags. The flag-burning vote is, of course, a hardy summertime perennial: Sometime between Flag Day and Independence Day, a vote is called in the U.S. Senate on endorsing an amendment to the U.S. Constitution barring the desecration of the U.S. flag. This is followed by a bunch of senators blathering on about how America's fighting young men and women don't deserve to see their flag disrespected, and how they're all for free expression, but the U.S. flag is different, and so on. They're followed from time to time by one of the more rational senators, who explains that if freedom of expression means anything, it means defending the right of speech—even for those whose speech you despise. Then it's time to vote, and while the vote is always close, the proposed amendment never passes, and it gets shelved until next year. The amendment will never pass the Senate. It will never pass the Senate because its value lies not in protecting the flag but in allow- ing senators to wallow in cheap patriotic theatrics that they think look good back home. The vote is always close because senators on both sides of the aisle do the political math and let the relatively few sena- tors who rely on principle cover their asses and ensure the amend- ment doesn't pass. It's the ultimate no-risk, all-benefit vote. “PASSING UNCONSTITUTIONAL | LEGISLATION DOESNT ACTU- ALLY PROTECT ANY CHILD. 4 JOHN SCALZI Now, on to videogames. There is an ever-expanding pile of case plays videogames law that establishes that videogames constitute speech. And speech, and writes novels, as we all know (right? right?) is protected from government censor- including Old Man's ship by the U.S. Constitution. But this doesn't stop legislators at all War, nominated for levels of government from continuing to propose and pass laws this year's Hugo attempting to regulate the sale of videogames—the states of Okla- award. When he's not homa, Minnesota, and Louisiana all recently passed laws along this blathering here, he's line (and all are being sued by the Entertainment Software Associa- blathering at his per- tion on First Amendment grounds). These laws are likely to meet the sonal site, www.scalzi. same fate in court as other, similarly constituted laws: They're going com/whatever. to get thrown out. It seems unlikely at this point that legislators don't = а already know this. But just as the point of the flag-burning amendment is not to be passed but to allow senators to “look good" by voting for it, the point of passing videogame legislation is not to regulate videogames or to protect children but to let the legislator look good voting for it. It's something he or she can use back in the home district to say, "See, I was protecting your children!" But, in point of fact, passing patently unconstitutional legislation doesn't actually protect any child and doesn't solve any problem, save that legislator's problem of needing a quick "values" fix for the polls. | don't burn American flags. | don't let my kid buy M-rated games, either. And | don't much like senators or legislators who waste time and tax dollars on empty gestures solely designed to make them look good. And here's what | do any time | see a senator or legislator who represents me perform such foolish behavior: | remember it the next time | vote. You should, too. | IT ВТ " I—- ЫШ D A n Ш T — Photo: E. Hardesty ibovethe influence.com ( 4 THAT WHOLE "EVERYONE'S DOING IT THING WHEN IT COMES TO BEING A TEENAGER AND GETTING HIGH? JUST ANOTHER STUPID STEREOTYPE. OFFICE оғ NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL PoLicv /PARTNERSHIP FOR A DRUG-FREE AMERICA $ неве PROFILE ORE GUNNING ON FULL | 2 ГЇ p Дам еи developers, the path to starting their own company usually Sy = begins with a need to break free from the oppressive corporate beast. та Рог RedOctane, the path was a little different: Videogame rentals. RedOctane's evolution from rental business to groundbreaking developer/pub- lisher started in Taiwan. RedOctane cofounders and brothers Charles Huang, 36, and Kai Huang, 33, were born there but moved with their family to New York at a young age. After that, the Huangs settled in Northern California, where the two brothers ultimately graduated from UC Berkeley. Barely out of college when the dot-com frenzy hit, the brothers started an Internet company but sold it by 1999, just before the dot-com-bubble meltdown. It was time to do something new. "We liked playing games, and we thought, ‘We should do something Тип,” says Charles. "That's when we thought of combining the Internet with videogames." Іп September 1999 (“the same month that Sega launched the Dreamcast. We outlasted the Dreamcast,” notes Charles with a laugh), the Huangs founded an Internet videogame-rental business they first called redgamezone.com, “red” being an acronym for “Revolutionary Entertainment Delivery.” Charles remembers the early days: “We were renting a lot of games for the import market, mostly PS1 games.” The name soon changed to RedOctane because, as Charles puts it, “Con- soles were getting really powerful. They were like high-powered sports cars, the Ferraris. And the software was the fuel. That's where we got the ‘Octane.’” 3L INL 3 A EE ЕЮ С As RedOctane's rental business grew, the Huangs noticed patterns in what people rented. “We were seeing all this interest in music games,” recalls Charles. “At that STRIKING A HEROIC POSE Guitar Hero executive producer John Tam (left) and RedOctane cofounder/COO Charles Huang (right). time, Dance Dance Revolution was at its peak fever in Japan and other parts of Asia. And so there were people in the United States who wanted to rent those DDR games from us, but they couldn't get dancepads in the U.S. And we thought, 'OK, why don't we try to buy some pads and sell them to the people that want them?'" They did that and made an immediate discovery. “А lot of the dancepads were really crappy—we'd sell them, and then like a week later, the customer would e-mail us back saying, ‘Hey, my pad broke,'" says Charles. "And so we thought, "OK, if there's a demand, maybe we can make a better dancepad." After a factory search in China (it helps that the Huangs speak fluent Mandarin and that many of RedOctane's 75 employees are conversant in it as well as other Chinese dialects) the company started manufacturing and selling dancepads in the U.S. RedOctane's timing couldn't have been better. Around the same time the com- pany began selling its own dancepads, Konami released the first DDR т the States. That's when sales for RedOctane's dancepads took off. IN PERFECT HREMONI 2 Wi е unexpected success of the dancepads—and expansion into other periph- erals like the Reload Pedal for shooters like Namco's Time Crisis and the Taiko Drum set for Taiko: Drum Master—RedOctane set its sights on a bigger market as a software publisher while maintaining its hardware business, an unusual com- bination. "[At the time,] there were two major publishers that would touch hard- ware, Konami and Namco,” explains Charles. So now RedOctane had the big idea and the hardware experience, but it still needed the software. With good timing on its side, RedOctane found itself work- ing with legendary Cambridge, MA-based developer Harmonix, creators of some of the greatest music-based game ever made. “Our first contact with Harmonix came through Sony,” Charles remembers. “Sony had published [Harmonix’s] first game, Frequency. So when [it] did Amplitude, a Sony music producer had an idea: ‘Hey, maybe we can make a really cool peripheral to play this game.’ We got together and brainstormed with Harmonix for a controller that we could make that would really improve the experience." The controller idea didn't pan out in the end, but the experience provided valuable contacts at Harmonix when the time came to make Guitar Hero. John Tam, 36, is executive producer of the Guitar Hero line and other Red- Octane products. A veteran of Activision and Capcom, Tam brought the needed software experience to the project. “We looked at all the ideas, and we brought together these: electric-guitar peripheral, rock-n-roll theme,” says Tam. “Harmonix had always wanted to make a guitar-based game.” I в ТНЕ = ново And so in early 2005, RedOctane began promoting Guitar Hero to. „indifference. "We'd send product to the press and ask, ‘Have you played this?,"" says Tam. “And they'd say, ‘Well, this Christmas, we have 500 titles to review. I'll let you know when we get to it.’ That's exactly what someone told us. And then they camiLiAcom| 25 PEOCK-N-POLL SOUL RedOctane found rock- n-roll soul in Marcus Henderson, lead guitar for the metal band Drist; one of their songs is unlockable in the original Guitar Hero. “For Guitar Hero |, all the unlocks were the original bands, and all the licensed tracks were} rerecords,” says John Tam. “We track them through WaveGroup Studio, an excellent sound studio in Fremont, CA. Marcus is one of the session guitarists. He does the heavier, hard-rock stuff, and then we have other session as Eric Clapton, becai ream. But re was a lot of early Clapton stuff that Eu fantastic.” —Huang WORLD'S GREATEST GUITAR HEZO RedOctane lucked out in hiring Raul Renteria. He isn't just good at his job as the company's star quality-assurance tester—he's also quite possibly the best Guitar Hero player in the world. To prove this, Renteria played Rage played it and they called our brand manager back and said, ‘Oh, my goodness!’ They geeked out on them. It was totally out of control." The stories that the two tell of Guitar Hero's sudden success range from exciting to the downright bizarre: "We were demoing at the [San Francisco] Metreon last yéar, and there was this guy, | swear he looked like one of The Ramones, and һе was playing ʻI Wanna Ве Sedated,’” Tam recalls. “And he had this daughter, about 4 years old. He was teaching her to head-bang. She could barely hold the guitar. He was like, ‘Honey, no! You have to be like this, and you have to head-bang!'" Even the famous have jumped on the Guitar Hero bandwagon. "We gave a pri- vate demo to Steven Spielberg and his son and Jeffrey Katzenberg at ES," Charles says. "Because Spielberg's son can clear all the Guitar Hero | songs on expert, he asked to see the Guitar Него Il demo. It was weird." JAMMING WITH AC TYSON, GIBSON PAS Charles Huang had to take out a second mortgage on his house to пер bring Guitar Hero to store shelves back in November 2005. But the gamble paid off—by March 2006, he had negotiated his company's sale to Activision, one of the world’s largest game publishers. But little has changed at RedOctane. “We still maintain creative control,” says Charles. And what of the licensing deal with Gibson? Didn't that ruffle the feathers of Fender fans? “We approached both companies, but Fender didn’t understand,” recalls Charles. “They said ‘Videogames? What do we want to do with video- games?’ They kind of told us, politely, to F off.” “Rumor has it that Fender had another deal in the works,” offers Tam. "[Fender] turned [its] shoulder on us, didn't know who we were. Gibson caught musicians do the more classic stuff." Againstthe Machine's "Killing in the Name" on Expert with his back to the screen, racking up a near-perfect score. Renteria's highest score ever in the game came in around 500,000. His advice to would-be guitar heroes: "Practice, practice, practice. Lots of practice. the vision. [Gibson] also had more shapes. For us, it's all about the shapes and having different looks in the game and such, because we can't make them sound any different. Most musicians would say, 'Oh, I like the tone or strata of this.' For us, п the game language, it’s more about the shapes and the history. The Gibson partnership makes a lot more sense.” The Gibson deal, and tagging “SG” on to the Guitar Hero controller name, brought considerable credibility among professional guitarists. “Angus Young from AC/DC plays [the Gibson SG]. That's one of the cool things, | think, that brought us credibility among people," says Charles. "When we took this to dif- “ӘМІМШӘ HAS IT THAT FENDER HAD ANOTHER DEAL IN THE WORKS.” ferent shows, we'd tell them, ‘Yeah, that’s exactly what it was modeled after, the SG guitar. Adds Tam: “When they look in the game, they see SG, X-plorer, Flying V, Les Paul. They see all the Gibson names and they see the Gibson bios and stuff, [and] they know there is a Gibson deal in place. We have the ability to produce other shaped plastic guitars, so when we introduce them, we have a full catalog of shapes.” Looking forward, RedOctane will ship Guitar Hero Il in November. Looking even further forward, we wonder if games could be created for an entire band, including drums, keyboards, bass—you name it. In answering this hypothetical question, Tam unwittingly hands OPM a world exclusive: "Yeah." | guitar players would see it and go, 'Hey, that looks like an SG.' And 26/0 OAM See atico. Ай борі 2209. Madison Media Salta New software from Sony www.sony.com/mediasoftware The easiest way to move music, movies and more to your PSP" system û J ЕН ма Photo Music (есе 62218612 PSP™ (PlayStatio ortable) Media Manager SON Y. PSP" (PlayStation? Portable) Media Manager software is the fastest and easiest way to move media to your PSP" system for portable playback and sharing. Experience the full mobile entertainment capabilities of your device your digital photo album, video player, portable music device, podcast manager and game console, all rolled into one. Just connect your personal computer to your PSP™ system, and let the PSP™ Media Manager software (boxed version includes 6 foot USB cable) provide the ideal PC interface for converting and moving media directly to your player. like.no.other* Ф | HTAE_CULTURE | | Yes, it's that dreaded M word. We all know that movie-based games generally don't do so well, | but that's not going to stop publishers from trying to cash in on these money trains. Heck, some | of them—with the exception of The Da Vinci Code since it's already out—may turn out to be pretty good...then again, maybe not. | WHATS IN оше PSP? ІТ DOES MORE THAN PLAY GAMES TETSUYA MIZUGUCHI Chief creative officer of Q Entertainment “Lumines. [smiles] Always." "| don't really watch movies on UMD, but | do putthe music videos for Lumines ll in for testing purposes, like Chemical Brothers’ "Star Guitar.’ “ Do good things come to those who wait? In the case of Prey, the answer is a resounding yes. This first-person shooter for PC and Xbox 360 has been in development for 11 years—longer, if you can believe it, than Duke Nukem Forever, the most notorious video- game vaporware of all time. But here we are in 2006, and—sur- prise, surprise—Prey is out and it MUSIC “My favorite New World Order song is ‘Regret, which is why l'm including that in Lumines II." WEB “1UP.com—of course! Now are you going to pay me?" [smiles] ! have crafted a gorgeous, challeng- ing shooter, with some of the most innovative, clever level design you are likely to see this уеаг. Preys surrealistic, Escher-like lev- els are wonders of disorientation (not since Descent has "up" been so hard to define, while the graphics (cour- tesy of Id's Doom 3 engine) constantly keep you amazed. So sure, they missed the original к. ^ does not suck. Developers Human ж 4 Head took the original 1995 plot of 1997 release date. But it's the best ri shooter of 2006 so far. So how about a PS3 port? a Native American battling aliens , ЖУНУ к аБоаг а gigantic spaceship, апа PIZATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: s DEAD MAN'S CHEST SUPEENANIEETUENS Stronger Fragrance! As the aftermath of the recent World Cup dies down, we'd like to take a moment to salute the athletes of one of the greatest sports out there. Soc- cer may not get a lot of respect in the U.S., but elsewhere around the globe, people live and breathe it. Even if you didn't get to watch any of this year's world championship, we encour- age you to check out some games and learn what the rest of the world already knows: that soccer is a thrill- ing, tense, crazy, athletic sport. LIGHTSABERS It's going to be quite some time before we see real lightsabers—sci- ence has yet to master the tech- nology behind a focused beam of energy that can cut anything. In the meantime, though, we suggest you check out one of these cool pre- tend lightsabers. No, they can't cut through anything, but they do light up, and...er...they...light up! And the craftsmanship is really good—sec- ond only to crazy knives from HSN. Pick them up at ThinkGeek.com. THE VENTURE веп5. Cartoon Network Any cartoon that can drop references to David Bowie's "Space Oddity,” “scared straight” pro- grams, The Six Million Dol- lar Man, and Jonny Quest automatically piques our interest. But The Venture Bros. isn't just a series of pop-culture riffs blared out of poorly animated characters—there's а method to the show's madness. In watching the first-season DVD, you can see that there is, in fact, a real story arc with well- designed characters—not just a bunch of one-liners. When you're done with season one, check out season two, currently аіг- ing on Adult Swim. [Ха айса Russian people Managing editor Dana Jongewaard stumbled upon this little treat—or should we say “big treat 一 while surfing online. And it's not really a "treat" so much as itis an enormous cat that appears to have been spawned from the loins of a lion and a tabby—or something along those lines. Anyway, this cat's sheer girth entitles it to a number of privileges in its Rus- sian home, the least of which entail hunting for cat- fish in the bathtub, followed by a delicious meal on the kitchen table—no, not "at" the kitchen table...on it. Check it out at jonh-devis.livejournal.com. Surely this cat will destroy us all. If life were a movie, then Matthew Herbert's recent album, Scale, would be the soundtrack to a sunny Saturday afternoon when you're hanging out on your deck and having a beverage while waiting for а couple of friends to come over. This surprisingly happy and chill electronica album is the sort of music that can't help but raise your mood. Unless, of course, you love Hitler, in which case you're probably better off listening to something like, oh, the Pussycat Dolls. This punk-rock classic is (OMG) 29 years old, but thanks to a brand-new remastered CD, it still sounds as fresh and exciting as ever. The debut album from a gangly bunch of British art-school nerds was a major leap forward for the then-new punk-rock genre: a perfectly sequenced "opera" of 21 songs, most just over a minute long. If you're into "indie" or "alternative" music and don't have this yet, fill this crucial gap in your collection right now. Visit www.esrb.org for updated rating МИ PlayStation.2 WWW.ATLUS.COM © 2006 Sor uter Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved. RULE OF ROSE is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. "PlayStation" and the "PS" Family logo are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Licensed to and published by Allus USA. The rating icons are trademarks of the Entertainment Software Association THE PLAYERS' CLUB In a special twist of events this past month, your friendly neighbor- hood J-Town author got to spend six amazing days in 一 where else?— Tokyo. | was on assignment for а 10Р cover story about О Entertain- ment, the development team behind your favorite PSP puzzle gam Lumines, as well as the upcoming Lumines Plus for the PlayStatiol and Lumines Il, Every Extend Extra, and Gunpey, all for the PSP. I've played every one of these games, and they're all great. And while you may not think much of a cheap-n-easy port of the original Lumines to your TV-friendly PS2, trust me when I say it's amazing to play on a big monitor and a kick-ass sound system. But my reason for mentioning О is not just to plug its upcoming roster of games. It's because my week in the Meguro, Shibuya, and Chiba parts of the Tokyo metropolitan area—where both 1UP camera- | man Jason Bertrand and | spent every night going to clubs like LUXG, ageHa, Air, and the legendary Womb (with its unbelievable sound sys- tem)—immersed me in the club culture in ways | haven't experienced since | moved away from New York City six years ago. The U.S., with the exception of the major cities like New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago, is pretty much a rock 'n' roll (classic, alt, indie, whatever) nation, with a healthy dose of country music. Not that there's anything wrong with that. If it moves you, then more power to ya. But club music—and | don't mean Top 40 house music you might hear on the radio, | mean real club music—as played by the DJs we interviewed, has a unifying power that must be experienced firsthand in order to be understood. No matter how loud you may crank your car stereo, it can't compare to the 5 billion watts of treble and bass you can get in the clubs. Nearly everyone we interviewed we also saw perform in Tokyo—people like USCUS, Shinichi Osawa (aka Mondo Grosso, the composer of "Shinin'" from the first Lumines), and TechRider, as well as the legendary DJs Tsuyoshi (aka Joujouka from the Rez soundtrack) апа Ken Ishii (also from the Rez soundtrack). Like tribal leaders, they'd stand behind their respective altars, listening to the deafen- ing cheers of the assembled masses. And as the treble gave way to the taut basslines and kick drums, each club would erupt in a near- euphoric explosion of clubgoers, all dancing in rhythm to the beat. CLLIEB-SONIUv. GAMES It's no wonder that Tetsuya Mizuguchi's vector-graphics rave shooter, Rez (a combination of a quantized synthesizer and Space Har- rier) didn't fare well at the box office upon its release back in 2001. It was ahead of its time, by a lot. Most of North America is still indiffer- ent to club music, apart from the occasional Top 40 club hit, so club- savvy games like Rez, or Lumines, or any of Q's upcoming games might still be slightly ahead of the curve. But | think we're catching up. Dancing to the beat of a drum, like we have since we were still liv- ing in caves—that primal instinct is in every one of us. The next time you play Lumines, pump it up. | s Mielke LIKE ВЕР. Пе LUMINES MIGHT 3c | DAIT si 2006 THE DEATH OF ONE AWAKENS A PATH TO THE END. THE LONG-ANTICIPATED CONCLUSION TO AN EPIC TRILOGY. Over 8 hours of movies including voiced cut scenes. An easily accessible in-game “Xeno Bible” includes every detail from 7 the entire Хепозада® series, 4 Money and shops are back! Buy, barter; and sell any items or equipment An updated battle system combines the best aspects of the first two games, while introducing the new Break system. т Customize your characters with a branching skill set. 97 You'll be highly rewarded for strategic party management i à | f 60-premade mini-game levels and a mini-game tevel editor for sharing custom maps with friends. ПУБЛ! \ PN е,” ЗА Language Mild Suggestive Themes Violence PlayStation. Games з Хепоѕада® EPISODE III Also sprach Zarathustra &©2001-2006 NAMCO BANDAI Games Inc. “PlayStation” and the "PS" Family logo are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. The ratings icon is a registered trademark of the Entertainment Software Association. All other trademarks and trade names are the properties of their respective owners. Ф Па INT INTERVIEW Е THE PIONEE MENTALITY €— ODELL VM % 2 АЕ С АС 5 за DAIM ЗЕРТЕМВЕХ 2006 E SEPTEMBER | Tofind зотеопе ESUME Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City (1994, SNES) Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain (1996, PS1) Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (1999, PS1) Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2 (2001, PS2) Legacy of Kain: Defiance (2003, Р52) Jak3 (2004, PS2) Untitled Naughty 009 project (2007, PS3) 4 ! ОРМ How did you get into this industry? 1 AMY HENNIG Well, it was pretty much a fluke. It was in late 1989. | was trying to make money to pay my way through graduate school and ran into an old friend who knew of an opportunity to do some art for an Atari 7800 game. I think a lightbulb went off, and | actually ended up dropping out of grad school and used the work that | did on that game as a portfolio to go into EA. That was in "91. ! OPM What was the 7800 game that you worked оп? Тан Well, unfortunately it never came out; it was finished, but we were at the tail end of the 7800's life cycle. At this point, | kinda had to relearn what the whole industry was about, so | would pore over these Nintendo Power magazines with a magnifying glass to see how they were using their three colors to do their characters. It was really interesting, actually. Ironically, despite all the constraints, | found it really inspiring. | OPM That's something that we've heard from a lot of different peo- ple, this idea that when graphics weren't such а big deal, the gameplay required more creativity. Тан Oh, absolutely. And the art required a lot more creativity. Just because you had to figure out how you were going to possibly make three colors look like the wall of a factory. It did give you that sort of pioneer mentality. You felt like you'd really conquered something when сет сот 35 NN SS SN N hw - 一 一 -一 INTERVIEW ¢ HYPE de you pulled off the illusion of more graphical power than was there. But as far as gameplay goes—one of the challenges we face in this industry is that, as the graphical power of these machines goes up, it's very easy to spend all of your energy on just trying to meet [graphical] expectations. And it's really easy for gameplay to fall by the wayside. | ОРАЛ The Jak series moved from a really lighthearted beginning to something a little more serious. What we saw of Naughty Dog's untitled PS3 game at E3 looked like it was a great deal more serious. Is that a conscious direction choice? Тан к doesn't come across in a one-minute trailer, but one of the things we're trying not to do is—so many of the games you see these days seem like they're very dark, very serious, and very gritty. That seems to be the seduction for a lot of developers, just to say, "Look how photo-realistic our stuff is." Honestly, | think that's going to pass. The excitement about that simulacrum of reality is going to pass in favor of art. One of the things we're trying to do to distinguish our product from some of the other things we see people working on is to make sure that it's not so dark and gritty, that it's not taking itself so seriously. We've got our feet firmly planted in the pulp-adventure genre. There's a romantic veneer to that genre that | think a lot of games that we see out there now don't have. OPM You mentioned this unhealthy focus on photo-realism and on graphics in general. What would you say is the biggest problem with the videogame industry right now? | AH Seventeen years ago, we couldn't have possibly imagined the world that we're in now when we were doing our three-color artwork and our three-frame walk animations. And it's mind-blowing to think [of] where we are now, when the team sizes haven't grown by the same exponential numbers. | think, at some point, our production model is going to have to start to change, because | think something's going to start snapping. How do we live up to the graphic potential of this hardware with the team sizes that ме һауе now апа still ргомае the experience that people expect for their dollar? And what does that do to the people on the teams—how burned-out do they get? It feels like our biggest challenge [is] that we don't lose our soul as game designers to the god of graphical realism. | OPM Do you think that an episodic digital-distribution model would be more beneficial? | AH It certainly is а double-edged sword. One of the things that's exciting about the project that we're working on, given the fact that it's sitting in this sort of cliff-hanger adventure genre, is to think where it could go in the future. Instead of waiting two or more years for a game, people might be able to get installments every three months or every six months. | think that's exciting as a developer as well as a buyer of games, that it might be more of an ongoing relationship between the developer and the customer instead of this one-time event. | OPM Is there а downside to that? 55 HOLLYWOOD THE HEALTHIEST MODEL FUI2 | AH The downside, | think, is: Who do you listen to? It's really seduc- tive to want to go read the message boards and see what people think, but it's also really destructive if you're not careful. In an episodic model, it could be too tempting to read everything that your customers are saying and try to accommodate everyone. And then it's no longer this crystallized vision anymore. It's now something that [is] sort of diluted to make everyone happy. | ОРАЛ Well, how does that idea differ from the idea of doing focus groups? | AH Well, they can be really helpful; | guess the difference for me between a focus group, which is a limited event with strangers, and reading what your fans are saying about you online is that your level of emotional commitment to those people is different. You want to make [your fans] happy. Whereas with a focus group, it's data. Those people are in for a couple of hours and they're gone, and it's data that you can use or not use. 1 ОРАЛ Jason Rubin, one of the founders of Naughty Dog, said that we don't put enough of a spotlight on game designers. Who would you say are your heroes in terms of designers? | AH Тіт Schafer's a big one. Just because | think he's always got such a unique vision. And obviously the guys who did /co and Shadow of the Colossus. And Miyamoto always tops the list, of course, and Will Wright's everyone's hero, so that just goes without saying. It's the people who have a vision and stick to it. | ОРАЛ Do you agree with Jason's premise? Should we have the kind BS ушш ЕЕ а ТЕ к= of cult of personality for our designers that the movie industry has for its directors? | АН | don’t know. I'm not sure how | feel about that. | worry a bit, because we can all think of examples of people who went from being really good game developers to kind of engaging in the cult of their own personality a little bit. That's a natural seduction, but l'd want to see more examples of people who kind of straddled that world well. Is Hollywood the healthiest model for us to want to be aspiring to? | don't think so. | think it's great we know who did the work and we admire them, but let's not distract them from doing the work. | OPM Finally, what game of all that you have worked on are you proudest of? | AH Despite its flaws, | think the one | have the fondest feelings for is the first Soul Reaver. Only because we were able to do so much of what we tried. And so much of it was so stupidly ballsy, you know? There were just about five of us on the team and we were like, "Oh yeah, we're going to write a streaming engine." And, "Oh yeah, we're going to have two worlds and shift between them in real time on the screen." And everybody's looking at us like we were just crazy. It's that kind of ambitious challenge that I think is so invigorating for a devel- oper. Now, there's a lot of things that | wish had gone differently; obvi- ously, | didn't want to cut off the end of my game, but you know, these choices aren't usually made by the design team. And so | have regrets that still kind of sting a little bit. But on the whole, | have a nice nostal- gic feeling when I think about that game. And it seems to have meant a lot to a lot of people, in ways that | don't completely understand, so that makes it special. | EPTEMBER | BIG А “My big secret, which 1 don't often share,” admits Hennig, “is that the first game | designed was the Michael Jordan SNES game. The concept was not mine; it was sort of handed to us on a plat- ter. But we did things in that game that | wasn't seeing anybody else do at the time. | mean, obvi- ously, it's Michael Jordan running around ina platform game; what are you gonna do, right? But it was actually a really formative experience as a designer.” HTAE_CALENDAIRZ SEF IEIVIEEIZ пе THE MONTH AHEAD FOR YOU AND YOUR PLAYSTATION SUNDAY Dominic West, star of OPM fave The Wire, turns 37. We love you, McNulty—you're good police! The truth has always been out there, but we didn't know it until The X-Files premiered 13 years ago tonight. Practice up on your Elvish and quit shaving your feet, for it is Tolkien Week. MONDAY TUESDAY NEIN GAMES Yakuza—it looks like the drought is finally. over. It's Labor Day— insert lame birthing joke here. Wave farewell to two networks you never watched (UPN, the WB) and say hello to а new network you'll never watch as The CW launches. It's Video Games Day, so go buy Lego Star Wars II! Use this week's game allowance to buy a peg leg for International Talk Two men who Like a Pirate Day. saved worlds— Mark Hamill and Christopher Reeve—were born today. Too bad they couldn't save us from fellow birth- day boy Michael Hi, little friends: Scarface is out today. Madsen. NEW GAMES WEDNESDAY We were going to celebrate National Do It Day right now, but we think we'll put it off till tomorrow. How peachy! Roald Dahl was born 90 years ago. Suck on an everlasting gobstopper in his по Want a picture of a dog dressed as a vampire? Thanks to Google's launch eight years ago today, you can have it. THURSDAY Be they Belgian, cone-shaped, or in sandwich form, we salute all our tread- marked friends dur- ing this, National Waffle Week. We know you love us—but even if you don't, you have to pretend to: It's Be Kind to Editors & Writers Month. FRIDAY NEW FLICKS If you've ever cracked a red stapler joke, then get your butts out to see Mike Judge's new movie, Idiocracy. It's a dark day т theaters as Black Snake Moan (star- ring viper-lover Sam Jackson), and The Black Dahlia (with Scarlett Johansson) open. Martin H. Fischer said, "A man may be born а jackass; but it is his business if he makes himself a double one." Oh, and Jackass: Мит- ber Two is out. NEIN FLICKS SATUEDAY Bald is Beautiful Days are officially today and tomor- row, but Giancarlo and Joe would like to point out that bald is beautiful every day. | Thirty percent of Munich's annual beer consumption takes place in the next two weeks as Oktoberfest begins...that’s right, in September. лімен DIED... Play5tation.e + SQUARE ENIX. www.square-enix.com Published by Square Enix, Inc. © 2006 SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD. CHARACTER DESIGN: TETSUYA NOMURA. FINAL FANTASY is a registered trademark of Square Enix Со.. Ltd. DIRGE OF CERBERUS, SQUARE ENIX and the SQUARE ENIX logo are trademarks of Square Enix Co., Lid. All Rights Reserved. "PlayStation" and the “PS” Family logo are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc, The ratings icon is a trademark of the Entertainment Software Association Mild Language Use of Tobacco Violence LÀ * SOMETHING SURVIVED... = Li + THE WORLD OF FINAL FANTASY’ VII IS ABOUT TO EXPLODE. + A mysterious organization has emerged from the wreckage ‚ of the Meteor disaster. The enigmatic Vincent Valentine L. may be the only one who can save this shattered world. Set after the events in FINAL FANTASY VII and FINAL FANTASY VII ADVENT CHILDREN, this entirely new game features familiar characters, dazzling gunplay and shocking truths never before revealed! Take on new enemies and dangers Stunning graphics and CG cinemas Meet familiar faces and uniqu in dazzling 3D environments continuing the epic storyline allies in an all-new action adve: $ ниве GAVE лаче Ё SEOTEMBES | THE GAMES OF FALL ROLL IN Hear that? That is the sound of the PlayStation experience crashing onto your shelves in the coming months. With the companies pushing out PS2 heavy hitters, the PSP library growing ever-so-larger, and the launch of the PS3, this fall will bear witness to quite possibly the largest PlayStation del- иде in history. With that іп mind, we're going to help you navigate this more-than-90-days-of-game releases by charting which titles come out in which month (our lawyers insist that we tell you that this is a tentative list based on info given at press time, and game dates might shift or disappear altogether). Get ready to catch the wave. ИНЫЕ GAME ла 1 беда Amusement Vision PS2 Fukumoto AKUZ э оп offering р!ауег а glimpse of another lifestyle—such as the life of a burly warrior in ancient times or a spunky kid in a fantasyland or a hardcore gangster in a fictionalized knock-off of Los Angeles. But this is the first game that puts you in the shoes of a member of the notori- ous yakuza. A feared member, at that—your first action in the game is to beat the crap out of some bankers who don't pay their protection fees. Think of Yakuza as a harsher version of Shenmue or a GTA set in Tokyo. You have а main objective that continues the story, but you can wander around the city and do things like buy random (and real, such as Dekavita C energy drink!) goodies from stores and vending machines, hang out at hostess bars, or go for a round at the bat- ting cages. But don’t think the game is a wonderful romp filled with buying Banana Kit Kat bars—there's plenty of fisticuffs. You'll fight street toughs ranging from rival yakuza clan members to angry hobos. Every time we play, we get a little more intrigued and even enthralled (especially by the story, which starts with a lot of yakuza- clan intrigue in 1995, then throws you into prison for 10 years, and picks up again in 2005 with a whole new, er, underworld). But we're also hoping that Sega tweaks the camera (which tends to focus on odd spots mostly during combat) before the game fin- ishes its journey across the Pacific. Oh, and no matter how you spin it, hearing Michael Madsen's voice pop out of an evil-looking yakuza member's mouth is pretty weird. A ExEFTEITIEEFÀ | POS. Ubisoft DEV. Ubisoft PLATFOEM PS3, PS2, PSP | OPEN SEASON | HUNTER, MEET HUNTED У |Р: Typically, we hold out slightly more than no hope for games based on animated films, but Open Season gives us reason to feel more optimistic. That's because Ubisoft | Montreal, the studio that brought us Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia, is making it. These talented folks have been tasked with making a game out of the story of a grizzly bear and a deer trying to best the hunters who are after them. The result is a stealth game that equips you with weapons such as nut-shoot- | ing squirrels and "skunk bombs." 4 LucasArts Traveller's Tale: THE ORIGINAL LAUGH IT LIP, EES AS PS2, PSP у | TRILOGY The normally unremarkable Traveller's Tales (Haven) struck Alderaa- nian gold with last year's surprise hit Lego Star Wars. This fall, we may all be in for a treat bigger than the Millennium Falcon when LucasArts ships Lego Star Wars ІІ: The Original Trilogy day and date with the DVDs of the first three Star Wars films on September 12th. In a lighthearted, often hilarious action-adventure turn, LSWII will have you and your four-member rebel band saving your favorite far, far, away galaxy from the Evil Empire 一 only this time, you'll be doing it in Episodes IV, V, and V/ with over 100 playable Lego characters (including those you create), tons of secret levels (storm- troopers in Jacuzzis!), and controllable, free-roaming vehicles. With the fate of entire species (Ewoks!) hanging in the balance, you'll want to block out plenty of time for this potential Lego gem. 1PUB Namco Bandai DEU. Monolith Soft PLATFORM PS2 XENOSAGA EPISODE Il: ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA MECHS WHO ROLL WITH NIETZSCHE 3 Ld It's a bummer that Namco Bandai chopped the series from six parts into three. It's tough to pare down something massive into something that's merely big. But at least we know that there's an ending in sight—and that we won't be left hanging when it comes to learning about the Gnostics and Vector Industries' involvement with them. Plus, the game looks like the best parts of Episode / and Il fused into an überclimax! | рые: Namco Bandai DEU. Hand Co. PLATFORM PS2 | ONE PIECE: | Pus. 03 Publisher DEU. Sony CEL РЕАТЕЫЕМ PSP. | | WTF | PIRATES’ CARNIVAL WE WORK HARD FOR THE RUM NOT INCLUDED 4| | MONEY А 7 14 Yes, you've seen the One Piece brand оп the PS2 before, but this time around, the game is different! (Well, for this franchise, | at least.) Pirates' Carnival comes to you in | the ever-beloved format of a minigame col- | lection, and it features all the popular char- | acters from the television series, of course. | Chase treasure, wave pirate flags, wield thundering swords—all the fun of pirate- | dom is right there for you and three of your | closest (or even not-so-close) friends. | 4 | This Japanese collection of minigames | (which came out as Baito Hell 2000 in Japan) has been renamed for its North American debut. The acronym stands for Work Time Fun, and you'll be playing each minigame to earn money; said money allows you to unlock more of the game. Thankfully, instead of TPS reports, (һе games are focused on "tasks" like compet- | ing in belching contests. Hey—that sounds like our office! | INAKE МЕ UP WHEN SEPT. September is simulta- neously the seventh and ninth month of the year. Well, septum is Latin for "seven" and, in the Roman calendar, September was indeed the seventh month. Then, the Council of Trent decided that the original Julian (Roman to us) calendar was messing with the schedule too much, and changed over. Pub. 2K Games Dev. Visual Concepts Platform PS3, PS2 NHL 2K7 The current-gen version looks like an incremen- tal upgrade to NHL 2K6—it's when you check out the next-gen version that you notice the all- new skating-and-animation systei Pub. 2K Games Dev. Visual Concepts Platform PS3, PS2 NBA 2К7 Visual Concepts ups the ante on its excellent NBA 2K series by adding streetball. Woooo, streetball! Sure, there's other stuff, but that pales in comparison to dribbling it up on the mean streets. Pub. 2K Games. Dev. Visual Concepts Platform PS3, PS2 COLLEGE HOOPS 2K7 We're of the mind-set that college ball is a whole lot more interesting than its professional counterpart. As a result, we're more inclined to play College Hoops than its NBA big brother. This is also a chance for us to relive our errant hoop dreams. Pub. Atari Dev. Spike Platform PS2 DRAGON BALL Z BUDOKAI TENKAICHI GREATEST HITS This Greatest Hits version only indicates a price drop, not an acknowledgement of the time you made Piccolo fold Buu's stomach in half with a single h Pub. Buena Vista Dev. Monkey Bar Games Platform Р52 FLUSHED AWAY Из the next Aardman Animation (Wallace в: Gromit) movie, and, therefore, it has a game adaptation. You play as one of two rats zipping around Ratropolis, protecting it from a very bad amphibian named Toad. Pub, EA Sports Dev. EA Tiburon Platform PS2 NASCAR 07 Jokes about turning left are passé. We're going to spice things up and joke about how, this time, you turn right. And then get lots of letters from irate NASCAR fans. Okay, real info: there's anew Momentum Meter that builds up from escaping danger (i.e. not getting hit by cars sideswiping you). Pub. EA Sports Dev. EA Canada Platform PS2 NHL 07 We haven't heard much about this version of NHL, but we know that we loved how NHL 96 was included in NHL 06, and hey, NHL 07 is the 11th anniversary of NHL 96. So include it in again, ЕА ў Hee Gove wo TENE Y УРЕ ЕХ кыр ка CELL DOUBLE AGENT GOING NATIE ғ” What's the next step for Sam Fisher after stealthing it up three times before becoming stale? How about becoming a bad boy— sort of? In this next installment of Splinter Cell, Sam Fisher goes undercover with a terrorist cell and becomes a double agent for Third Echelon. That calls for the creation of the Trust Meter, а quantitative measurement of how much trust you have from both the National Security Agency and John Brown's Army (the organization you've infiltrated). As you perform actions (taking out authority figures or countering JBA objectives), the meter slides around—if it slides to the NSA side too much, you'll blow your cover. If it hovers in the JBA side, then you've gone native. This also presents interesting dilemmas, like when you need to protect a JBA member from an attack in prison—do you kill his attacker to earn his trust, or merely knock out the attacker in order for the NSA to interrogate him later (at the cost of your JBA contact's thinking you lack the necessary harshness of char- acter to join the organization)? Didn't expect to deal with moral compromise in a Splinter Cell game, did you? 54 DORM, NA d Hits ALICIA 102, е LEZARD 处 | 99 49 I PUB. Koei DEV. Omega Force PLATFORM PS2 ЗАМУВА! WARRIORS 2 DYNASTY WARRIORS SET IN JAPAN, AGAIN 4l 7 Тһе Dynasty Warriors hack-n-slash action formula, while overdone, always seems to work. Samurai Warriors 2, which again moves the DW franchise eastward to feudal Japan, introduces 10 new warriors (making | 26 total) you can use for button-mashing battles with tons of enemies on huge play- fields in story, free, and survival modes in both single-player and two-player coopera- tive. There's also sugoroku, based on an ancient Japanese board game. PUB. EA Games DEU. EA Redwood Shores PLATEDEN PSP THE GODFATHER: MOB WARS AKA GODFATHER ACID ў |” Taking а cue from Metal Gear Acid, Тһе Godfather: Mob Wars' gameplay uses a "multifaceted card-game system," while retaining quite a bit from the PS2 ver- Sion. As you build the Corleones' power and territory in 1940s New York, fear and respect are still the guiding concepts, and the choices you make affect how the game plays out. The power of the BlackHand combat system and the pressure-point tar- geting mechanics also find their way from the console version. 1PUB. Activision DEV. Rebellion/Neversoft PLATFORM PSP |PLIB. NIS America DEV. Idea Factory PLATFORM PSP | GUN SHOWDOWN | SPECTRAL SOULS GO PSP, YOUNG MAN! 4| | SOUL PATROL 2 7 7 It's encouraging that Randall Jahnson wrote the story for Gun Showdown— because it means Neversoft is taking this iteration of its "GTA meets the Old West" franchise seriously. Gun Showdown introduces five new missions, new game mechanics (stealth and use of explosives), new weaponry (mines and throwing knives), and Wi-Fi multiplayer (four-player deathmatch, Golden Cross, and Last Man Standing). Quickplay includes Texas Hold “Ет and Shotgun games. Yee-haw! If you've imported Shinki Gensou: Spectral Souls Il from Japan, then this PSP remake might look familiar to you (with the excep- tion of English text instead of Japanese characters showing up onscreen). Gamers who checked out Generation of Chaos for the PSP might be comfortable with Spectral Souls, as the two games share the same development team. But, while GOC was like a board game with fighting, Spectral Souls is more like a traditional RPG, so put your leveling shoes on. 4 Square Enix tri-Ace ЕЛЕНА МАСКУ INAGNEIZ Okay, so the first Valkyrie Profile is mainly known for two things: its crazy combat sys- tem (where each party member is assigned to a face button and you just push said but- ton to execute that member's attack) and its rarity. Now that the PSP version has taken care of its rarity, the sequel ups the ante on combat. We covered the addition of 3D and the leader aspects (where killing the leader instantly ends the battle) last month, but there are quite a few more combat changes. The full 3D arena means that direction matters, as both your party and the baddies have a specific range and direction that they can attack from. You can now split your party into two groups (using the D-pad), and have one group distract the enemy while the second group swings around and attacks from behind. There's also the dash ability, which lets your party quickly close the distance between it and the target—you can't get attacked during the dash, but if you're not careful, you can get smacked right afterward. NON С Sony CEA DEL Sony CEI (Г ГГ Г the дето во much that we could write а thesis оп it, we walk around humming the theme music under our breath, and we got busted trying to steal one of the import versions float- ing around our office. So it's probably not a shock to find out that we are rather looking forward to the U.S. release of LocoRoco. For you under-rock dwellers, here's a summary: You're a planet inhabited by happy little LocoRocos and MuiMuis. One day, you're invaded by the sinister Moja Troop, who like to eat LocoRocos. It becomes your job to shift your planetary surface back and forth in order to roll your peaceful inhabitants to safety. In addition to the main quest (which has 40 different levels), there are some minigames available as well. Try your hand at the MuiMui Crane—which is pretty much like the toy-catching cranes you find in arcades. In Chuppa Chuppa, hurl LocoRocos through the air while trying to avoid landing on any thorny patches. Rewards for these games include pieces of the Loco House (rated on rarity from one to three stars), which can then be built into playgrounds for your LocoRocos to run around on. If you come up with a structure of which you're particularly proud, you сап even share it with a buddy via wireless exchange. But what people seem to be talking about the most is the goofy, endearing music that provides the game’s backdrop. The lyrics are in a fictional language that was made up by SCEI employee Tsutomu Kouno (who also worked on a little game called /co), thus the nonsensical songs can be identical in all the different international versions of the game. We can't wait until some linguistics nerd posts a lyrics translation online. 1 PUB Sony CEA DEU. 989 Рг NBA 07 BASKETBALL SEASON STARTS WHEN WE SAY IT STARTS ” Sony's cager extravaganza hits the courts with tons of additions. Debuting this year are the Smart Shot Indicator—which gives. you a heads-up on how defense will affect your shots—and the Power Boarding Sys- tem, an improved way for players to react to rebounds. There are also over a dozen minigames, including 21, Own the Court, and 3-Point Shootout. And watch for The | Life: Volume 2, which gives you a behi nd- the-scenes look at the life of an NBA pro. PS2, PSP. № a 4 j EA Sports Dev. EA Canada Platform PS2 FIFA We still refuse to call this football, because we are an American publication, and no mat- ter what new features and enhancements this brings, we still think of it as “а new version of that game that's not football." ЕА Sports „ЕА Sports Р When we're not World Cupping, we're obsess- ing over March Madness. And even if your team. gets kicked out early, you can pretend to lead them to Final Four in your own dreamworld via the PS2. Konami D оО platform PSP | Old-school Bomberman (with the new twist of being able to store power-ups), but now por- table and with support for ad hoc multiplayer? This makes up. for that weird next- gen Bomber- man revamp. Want to know what we thought about it? Read the review on page 85. Pub. Konami Dev. Konami Platform PSP | OK, so there's a fancy 3D mode with animated dragons and dudes fighting it out square-by- square. Whatever. The most interesting thing is | that there 15. infrastructure play and, apparently, your victories affect the territory that your f fac- tion (which you join when you start up) gains on the world map. Yes, they made a sequel, and yes, someone on ‘staff i isa Fed Zeppelin far "ub, Namco Bandai Dev. Namco Bandai Platform PS2 Did you ever wish NASCAR had more action, ‘mechs, and was depicted іп an anime that would then spawn an action-racing game? Well, it looks like someone listened to you. | Pub. Namco Bandai Namco Bandai Pl; More mamodo mayhem as you play one. of 20 character sjdemon рака іп this ш дате You go around the world in search of fashion. | You can also partake in figure skating competi- tion and pet shows. You are also a little girl if Radical Entertainment Vivendi Universal Games SCARFACE: THE WORLD RE EE Oh, the blood, the screaming, the senseless уіо- lence—at the ESRB offices. Yep, the sensitive heads at the game-rating board are going to blow apart like that guy from the movie Scanners when Vivendi submits Scarface: The World Is Yours. Vying for the title of most brutal and intense game ever, Scarface may rankle the sensibilities of even the toughest player. And that’s OK with us. The movie Scarface, certainly one of the greatest movies of the 20th century, is an outrageous, no-holds-barred tale of a drug lord’s ascent in the Cuban underworld of 1980s Miami. This is not a pretty world, where it's killed or be killed—with guns or chainsaws—in the fight for cocaine dominance. So what's а gamemaker gonna do? A puzzle? No, try an open-world action fragfest that lets you guide Tony Montana through the brutal underbelly of South Beach and beyond. The tiresome GTA compari- sons serve as a useful reference point, but Scarface is already оп а соигзе to stand оп Из own. Зиге, there's the sort of standard follow-the-beam mission structure set in a massive world with plenty of shooting, tons of available weaponry, and vehicles that include limos, Ferraris, and powerboats. There's also the blind rage mode that turns the screen red and switches the game to a first-person shooter when the Rage Meter fills up. (In the final game, this may be called by its former label of “Balls Meter," but Vivendi hadn't decided as of press 48 | сет s 2006 time.) Even the standard "Mission Failed" message has been replaced with “You F***ed Up.” But no other game has Tony Montana, as near a perfect game protagonist as any before him. Sure, he’s based on a movie character, but think about it: Montana is smart, fearless, and brutal. Give him a territory to conquer and a machine gun in hand, and he'll proceed to kill anyone and everyone (and there's a lot of 'em— who die іп dramatic, blood-soaked fashion) that stands in the way of his goals. He also throws the F-bomb around like candy іп a voiceover that sounds uncannily like А! Pacino. That's right, it's not Al—it's reportedly his New York chauffeur of two years; Vivendi declined to release his name. Besides, Al is old. So, Scarface the game delivers the money, then the power—but what about the women? While Michelle Pfeiffer, who played Tony’s love interest in the movie, declined to participate, the game is not without its “romance”: It’s replete with femmes fatales, “women friends” who spout such random niceties as, “Would you like one of my famous”—we'll let you fill in the blank. And the side game, Pimp My Mansion, brings in the stereotypically feminine occupation of decorating the house, which you can do with anything from bongs to stuffed tigers to space suits—even a cognac fountain. Right, ESRB, this is not a game for the kids. Not by a long shot. 1 Pus. Namco Bandai DEW. Xpec PL BOUNTY HOUN GOOD OL-FASHIONED DOUBLE- FISTED ALIEN ASS-KICKIN’ й 7 | Oh, the humanity! In the future, humans. employ mercenary murder machines called "bounty hounds" to massacre hordes of aliens. In what might best be described as "Dynasty Warriors in space," you'll have. access to over 500 items (both weapons and armors) and face over 40 enemy spe- cies on four worlds. Plus you can dual- wield your alien-ending weapons. Two- player game sharing will provide hours more alien-killing with your friends. 4- THE PLAYSTATION UNDERGROUND: АВЕ YOU MISSING SOMETHING? No matter what you're into, the PlayStation? Underground" is where you'll hear about it first—from the latest tips and tricks to the hottest releases on the horizon. But if you haven't provided us with a complete member profile, you're missing out on: * SPECIAL SAVINGS on stuff gamers crave, including game coupons and offers for other cool PlayStation® premiums * INSIDER INFO from PlayStation, including a monthly email newsletter and special surprises via email and regular mail * SERIOUS ACCESS to the gaming scene—with tips, tricks and forums to help you take your playing to the next level * ADVANCE NOTICE for upcoming beta tests, cool promotions, or when your favorite franchise is launching a new title, and more Visit our one-stop MY ACCOUNT section at www.us.PlayStation.com/myaccount and access these useful features: * PROFILE: Update your current contact information, personal details, and more * PREFERENCES: Tell us what you're into so we can customize your communications * REGISTRATION: Let us know which PlayStation products and peripherals you own * MY GAMES: Manage your library of PlayStation titles in the MY GAMES section GO EVEN DEEPER: THE GAMER ADVISORY PANEL. With a complete member profile, yo i increase your chances of being asked to join the elite Gamer Advisory Panel. G.A.P. members get: $ е Invitations to participate in beta tests e Q&A sessions with game developers from Insomniac, Naughty Dog, Zipper and others е The chance to attend Е: (the Electronic Entertainment Expo) in Los Angeles * Invites to special press conferences, and other exclüsive events е Advance purchase tickets for concerts and sporting events e The opportunity to work in [3 PlayStation booth at hot happenings across the country (Dew® Action Sports Tour, Vans Warped Tour,” Ozzfest and many more) е PLUS the chance to use your knowledge and influence to help shape; NE of the industry. MAXIMIZE YOUR MEMBERSHIP AND COMPLETE YOUR ONLINE PROFILE TODAY! mmm ищ |—т— == 人 50 | OAIT == 2“ боже. N 2 А, 一 一 一 一 Capcom Clover Studios PS2 Га) Н You һауе to hand it to Сіоуег Studio, its not content with creating "normal" games. Whether it's the zany time-manipulating, side-scrolling Viewtiful Joe franchise or a peaceful game about a wolf goddess who makes things grow and uses calligraphy to change the world (see our Okami review on pg. 72), Clover's limited track record speaks of spurning convention when it сап. Said track record is maintained by God Hand, which on appearance seems like a typical 3rd-person beat-em-up, but in actuality is a beat-em-up with an, ahem, not-too-realistic style about it. God Напа looks апа feels like the boys at Clover took a game like Final Fight or Streets of Rage, put it in 3D, and made it even zanier. So not only are you progress- ing through stages and punching the crap out of punks with "805 Mohawks and heal- ing yourself via giant fruit that pops out of both crates and enemies, you're also pull- ing off super-powerful moves like a kick that propels people towards the moon. Or a hand chop that slices the bad dude's head off. Or you pull off a stomp/pummel/ spank move where you button-mash Track & Field-style in order to cram as many hits into the maneuver as you can. Or you find yourself fighting a guy with a boomerang AND _ for а hand, ога gorilla dressed ир in a Lucha Libre costume. Besides the nuttiness of the game, there's an interesting combat system underneath, where уои acquire (via purchases or item pickups) fighting tech- niques and assign these various moves to different buttons and button combos. For example, we made it so that when you hit Square four times, you get a punch, an uppercut, a sweep kick, and a pimp slap. FIND YOURSELF FIGHTING DI2ESSED UP LUCHA LIBIEE-STYLE You pull off the aforementioned super- powerful “roulette” moves by pressing R1 and selecting the move within a brief time limit (you start with three roulette slots, and roulette moves use up different slots depending on their power level). Finally, there’s no blocking—just use the right analog stick to evade enemy attacks. The only concern we have at the moment is the game's getting repetitive and looking bland, but, then again, no other game this fall lets you punch a gorilla in the stom- ach 100 times. A GORILLA MAD MAD мкам 4 Would you believe that one of the main dudes behind God Hand is Shinji Mikami, who happens to be the cre- ator of the venerable Resident Evil franchise. What a big leap, to go from freakin RE4 straight to God Hand. 3 SEPTEMBER | ІРШЕ. Capcom DEV. Capcom PLATFORM PSP САРСОМ CLASSICS COLLECTION RELOADED ISTHAT AN ARCADE IN YOUR РАМТ5? 5 7 Do you remember Knights of the Round or The King of Dragons? Remember Eco Fighters, where you took orders from Dr. Moly and fought dudes who were deforest- ing the planet? Yeah, you get those three games and more (specifically, games like Ghosts ‘n Goblins, 1942, Commando, and Street Fighter ІІ) all in portable form, with near-arcade-perfect emulation, plus tweaks like widescreen support. 4 1РИВ. Namco Bandai DEU. Namco Bandai PLATFORM PS2 TALES OF THE ABYSS NO WATER ALIENS HERE р 3 Fans of the Tales franchise have a snazzy new tale to look forward to. Like previous Tales games, you can expect a fair amount of cooking, random skits to break up the game flow, the optional Sword Dancer bosses, the weapon quest, and the Battle Arena. A big change that's been made to combat is the free-roaming battlefield, meaning that you can zip around the map willy-nilly during combat. Plus, the main character looks kind of like Ах! Rose, but anime'd up. РОВ. NIS America DEU. Gust PLATFORM PS2 AR TONELICO HEAD-GAMES 7 Тһе story is а weird tale about а floating tower and three people 一 warrior dude Lyner, and two girls, Misha and Aurica, who zip around and fight monsters in said tower. So far, it seems like a typical old- school JRPG, except with the quirky aspect of hopping into Misha and Aurica's heads— literally, as you use a machine to project yourself into their psyches. Solving side quests inside these head trips will unlock abilities, which makes this one of the more unique leveling-up concepts to date. К ТРОЕ. Тесто ОЕМ. Тесто PLATFORM PS2 ТОКОВОТ PLUS: MYSTERIES OF THE KARAKURI HUNTER, MEET HUNTED 7 This quirky PSP platformer is doing the reverse of the typical platform jump, as it's now hitting the PS2. Tokobot Plus is also a chance for the guys at Tecmo to tweak the game more to their liking, with revisions. like a Tokobot upgrade system, the power to steal and use enemy abilities, and a new Overdrive system (which allows for super- powerful attacks). Players who already went through the PSP version will also find PS2-unique levels. 4 1 PLR. Eidos РЕМ. Avalanche Studios PLATFOEM PS2 JUST CAUSE EL PRESIDENTE CHAVEZ BETTER NOT HEAR ABOUT THIS ONE y We actually dig the idea of playing badass CIA operative Rico Rodriguez, tapped to overthrow a corrupt South American junta in a massive open world. We're completely down with the idea of inciting rebellion and allying ourselves with drug cartels and insurgents. And who wouldn't want to go skydiving and parasailing and man over 100 possible land-, sea-, and aircraft in dozens of Story, side, and bonus missions with а heap- ing helping of shooting and explosions? ТРОЕ Konami OEY. Backbone Entertainment PLATFORM PSP DEATH JR. 2: ROOT OF EVIL THERE WAS A DEATH JR. 1? 4 The original Death Jr.'s quirky action-plat- former gameplay delivered more potential than the goods, so we're hoping that the sequel performs better than its predeces- Sor. This go-round lets you play as either DJ or his goth girlfriend Pandora, with new weapons like the Flaming TP Thrower and the enhanced C4 Hamster Mark Il for use іп single- and two-player co-op modes. The new rage mode lets our heroes unleash Reaper Madness and Pandemonium upon the hellish minions. MASA AS PLATFORM POGUE EELSE 100 Hoes OF GAME ON THE SCI2EEN, 100 HOILIIPSS OF GAME „4 Whenever a publisher touts the number of hours it takes to play its game, we usually see it as a challenge. “Over 20 hours of gameplay? Feh—OPM beat it in two!" But in the case of Sony's claim that its epic action RPG Rogue Galaxy will take "over 100 hours of gameplay," we're not as sure of ourselves. From what we've seen of it so far, Rogue Galaxy has the look and depth of its closest cousin, Dragon Quest VllI—which makes sense, since Level-5 (also responsible for the superb Dark Cloud series) is behind it. Even the long features list alone will seemingly take hours to read: five expansive worlds; eight playable char- acters; real-time combat; more than 500 weapons that you can gather, build, or combine; more than eight hours of cut-scenes, minigames and side quests; апа а story that takes you to the far reaches of the galaxy as only cel-shaded 3D graphics can. Like you, we're counting the hours until Rogue Galaxy's release. ШЕ Se сет s INFORMATION ЧЕ: TENS GIVY La 7۵ * «е e 4: . €» 1 Square Enix Square Enix PS2 FINAL FANTASY rll <, let's say that you happened to miss last month's OPM Final Fantasy XII spectacular, where we completely broke down the com- bat system, the summons, the characters, and even the role of the chocobo. We're а little sad, but we understand that not every- one reads every issue. Негев а quick run- down of why we're so excited about FFXII: -No random battles. -New combat system that's flexible enough to let you either micromanage everything or just plan overall strategy and let your characters act on their own. -Darker, more mature and political story compared to previous titles. The option to basically shove the silly- looking Vaan out of the main character role and use a different party member as the main character. 3 Hits Tez? ies» ما‎ Saiva 11аблаломе 231 -Badass bosses (those five awesome judges). -Snazzy-looking graphics, thanks to Sque- nix's knowledge of developing for the PS2. Forthose of you who did read last month's feature, er, we kind of covered JUDGE MASTER GABRANTH IS PART OF FFI S LOGO. НАМ... everything we know already and haven't had а chance to play much more. Well, did you know that Judge Master Gabranth (the Darth Vader of FFXII) is the judge featured in the game’s logo? He must be pretty important to be the main logo image, but we won't say why. Hmm... 4195 4195 МР 471 _ BIRGPILTY 63696369 2 eee ГРИВ. Konami DEV. Climax PLATFORM PSP STEEL HORIZON TURN-BASED STRAT WITH REAL-TIME COMBAT Ld When it comes to handheld gaming, no genre holds a candle to turn-based strategy. Problem is, there are so few. Enter Konami with Steel Horizon, a WWII strategy game | that emphasizes real-time naval combat within a turn-based framework. In 20 single- player missions, you'll build and command an armada that ranges from battleships to submarines, fighting in the Atlantic and Pacific theaters. You'll also play head-to- head through the ad hoc connection ARMAGEDDON AS TWISTED AS YOU WA [as mm rs |, Armageddon will include over 50 (yes, five-zero) characters, but if that vast array of classic fighters doesn't float your boat, you'll be able to create your own with the | "kreate-a-fighter" mode. Still not enough? How about a "kreate-a-fatality" option? Yeah, let the sickness out, and put it online to share with your friends. Speaking of online, Midway's promising improved responsiveness and deeper options for your remote-fighting experience. 1PUB. Capcom DEN. Capcom F POWER STONE COLLECTION SMASH THIS Capcom's giving you a chance to experi- ence a bit of gaming history by bringing Power Stone and Power Stone 2 (both originally released on the beloved Dream- | cast) to the PSP in one convenient package. | These two shockingly addictive games allow you to beat up on a friend (or three) in large, interactive arenas replete with handy items with which to pummel your opponent(s) about the head and neck. No big changes from the Dreamcast version, but the four-way ad hoc play is all we need. I PUE. Sony CEA Climax PLA PSP ATV OFFROAD FURY PRO | MX BIKES, TROPHY TRUCKS, AND BUGGIES? ROADRAGEOUS|, | r Sony is back with ATV Offroad Fury Pro: | bigger, better, faster 一 and hopefully less. | difficult than its predecessor. Featuring 30 | vehicles, ATV Offroad Fury Pro introduces | | MX bikes, buggies, and trophy trucks to | the racing mix іп 64 new tracks—includ- | ing ones from the original (as т PS2) АТИ games. Fury Pro also includes cross-com- | patibility with the upcoming ATV Offroad Fury 4 оп the PS2, letting you share cir- cuits, upgrade vehicles, and trade cards. UNCHAINED” AS IN “PORTABLE.” GET IT? If you couldn’t get enough of the Mortal Kombat-ified minigames in MK: Deception, you're іп luck. Puzzle Kombat and Chess Kombat are making a return in portable form. Also expect six new characters (for a total of over 30) and a slightly enhanced „| konquest mode. Unfortunately, though Mortal Kombat is one of the few franchises to take fighting online, Unchained will offer only ad hoc wireless multiplayer. | 4| 1 PUB. Atari DEV. Eden Games TEST DRIVE UNLIM HAWAIIAN PUNCH IT PS2, PSP how Atari describes Test Drive Unlimited, a game set on the 1,000-plus miles of roadway on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. How they're going to fit thousands of play- ers on the island remains to be seen, but it's certainly interesting...as is the 125-саг (and bike) garage, the deep customization of both car and driver, and the fact that - | Atari is billing the PSP version (expected in November) as “one of the first-ever genu- inely online games” for the system. “Massively open online racing.” That's | = THQ |: Pandemic TFORM 22) РЕЗ ТЕГ ALL HUMANS! 2 The goal, and the most entertaining element of the series, is right there in the title: destroying, not just all humans, but all their pitiful dwellings, is good, giddy fun. Trouble with the last game was, there wasn't a whole lot more to keep you playing. Pandemic is looking to address this issue with a much broader scale than the previous game, setting the action all over the planet rather than just in America. In addition to the wide-ranging destinations (and the corre- sponding variety of enemies), the wisecracking Crypto now has access to even more alien firepower, including the delightfully devastating meteor strike. Even more interesting is the addition of splitscreen co-op play, for the simple reason that wholesale destruction is just always more fun with a friend. To flesh out the multiplayer expe- rience, the game will also include special two-player minigames, like psychokinetic tennis. (That's just another word for telekine- sis, Kyle.) Part of the fun of the last game was the campy ‘50s vibe and social satire; this time around, the action has moved into the "606. We're curious to see how the developers handle a decade that was already pretty over-the-top. What сай) your eye at first glance of this В sequel? The fact that there's over 100 characters. You get a No-Prize for coming up with a clever nickname for DBZ fans who obsessively unlock all the characters. | ler alert: Chicken Little watches a movie adaptation of his story where he's a cooler chicken called Ace. This game lets you play as Ace. So you're playing a chicken pretending to be a cooler chicken in an action game. Reflect on that. It's like or Stars Wars, but with Bionicles instead of normal Legos, no Star Wars, and it's a third-person shooter instead of an action/puzzle platformer. So, actually, it's not like Lego Star Wars at all. Did you ever think you can take on Death | in an arena battle filled with wonderful treasure chests and a plethora of weapons? Then you'll probably enjoy the multiplayer mode, which lets you do ву that! 4 the next step for mech combat Е es? и mech combat e R оет сет 53| TE i Atlus OE Atlus PL | SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI: DEVIL SLIIMIVILINET2 -- Okay, the RPG genre is filled with big names like Final Fantasy and Suikoden, but there's an even more bizarre Japanese moniker you | should add: Shin Megami Tensei. Sure, the NN : RPGs that bear the SMT name tend to be i brutally hard dungeon crawlers with pretty | sparse stories, but the art style and (as a ||. result of said obscenely hard dungeons) - the gameplay are top-notch. Even the more | story-driven SMT; Digital Devil Saga games had crazy-hard, but satisfying, combat (that required lots of strategic weakness-exploiting and demon recruiting). Maybe Atlus realized | that their great RPGs are buried under the | harshest of gaming experiences, and аге now ‘| making a SMT title that simply plays a lot : г шш DEVIL SLIMIVIDINEI2 IS AN ADVENTURE GAME WITH астом-ггюс COMBAT... - easier. Instead of being a dungeon crawler with a few cut-scenes, Devil Summoner is basically an adventure game with action-RPG combat. You run around 1920s Tokyo solv- ing crime and ghostly mayhem, and when you fight nasty demons, it's in a real-time 3D arena with a bit of button-mashing (there is still some tactical thought required, as you need to figure out which of your companion demons are powerful against the enemy and summon one to help you out). Hey, if it exposes more people to SMT's bizarre and original worlds, we're all for it. UE. Sony CEA Guerrilla PLATFORM PSP KILLZONE: LIBERATION There's a funny thing about PSP games. Sometimes the system seems too powerful, forcing developers to try to re-create PS2 experiences poly-for- poly on its small screen, generally with poor results. Sometimes, a devel- oper recognizes that the system can offer something different from the PS2, and the idea opens up all kinds of cre- ative freedom. It looks like that's what happened with Killzone: Liberation. Rather than attempting to port the graphics-inten- sive PS2 дате, Guerrilla is taking а different direction, moving to an over- head perspective and throwing in all Yep, another game for Nicktoons-crazed kids to covet. Our crystal ball tells us to expect wacky schemes from Plankton that get thwarted through SpongeBob's lovable incompetence. Yeah, we know—we're good kinds of interesting extras to flesh out the game's 16 missions. Issue com- mands to teammates! Take control of vehicles! Play any of the single-player missions with a friend! The game will even include minigame-style challenges that will imbue your character with new abilities that carry over into story mode. With a story that picks up just two months after the events of the origi- nal Killzone, Liberation seems to be expanding the Killzone universe in a number of different directions. Will this PSP outing be enough to tide us over until the PS3 release? Well, probably not. But it sure looks good. Compete т DigitalLife's $100,000 Pro-Am Gaming Tournament and find out. Play the latest, unreleased games at the РС & console arcades апа де! your hands оп Ше hottest gear before it hits the streets. Meet your favorite celebrities. Win tons of cool prizes. Don't miss the largest gaming tournament on the East Coast! Get Tickets NOW to DigitalLife! 50% off with promotional code: at www.digitallife.com each adult ticket is only $6.00! ө е е e LEGS the ultimate consumer technology, gaming and entertainment event october 12-15, 2006 javits convention center new york, new york learn it hear it try it play it rock it live it presenting tournament sponsors: ALIENWARE / produced by: % Е D supporting sponsors: AMD Windows Media Center Edition. я THOMSON Д verizon 3 Sony CEA DEW Zipper | Е [ OBJECTIVE COMPLETE: | BRIDGE DESTROYED JESTER SAM SHIPMENT (3 ы E - уле р; XAR ` зз от SIMPLE Socom: U.S машу КТО ”SIMPLE | NEN KILLJOY. JESTER BRIDGE SAM SHIPMENT aie Ж SPECTER JESTER KILLJIGY | ВЯОБЕ 4 "44 m дка И хевзо Ф х5 mode has generally been ignored Бу сиѕѕіоп grenades to subdue enemy combatants. The most players, who tend to focus their attentions on the idea of being rated on the amount of collateral damage series’ excellent online play. So, developer Zipper is mak- your team inflicts adds another layer of depth to an SPECIAL ing another effort to bring the players' attention back to already deep дате. ОРЕРАТОМ5 the campaign 一 this time by offering four-player co-opera- Other new features include тоге уеһісіев (with three [ ан imc 00. tive play. different vehicle classes, so you can pick the appropriate For those of you Given the four-man squad format of the previous ride for the task) and a complete retooling of the enemy who don't know, the games’ single-player campaigns, it's a logical progres- Al system to allow for more lifelike behavior. You'll also "SOCOM" stands for sion, and Zipper is prepared to support the co-op mode "(S)pecial (0)perations THE MOST INTERESTING IMPROVEMENT IS THE ABILITY TO USE NONLETHAL WEAPONS. (COM)mand." Each SOCOM (there's one per military branch) is with all the resources used to keep SOCOM 3s online modes humming. That means ranking, ladders, buddy lists, messaging—basically everything you'll find іп SOCOM 3. overseen by the United Which is both good and bad. Good, because SOCOM States Special Opera- 3's online play was the best yet. Bad, because Combined find a much more extensive “cross-talk” system, which tion Command (USSO- Assault won't be making any changes to that formula for allows accomplishments in Combined Assault to influ- COM). We're curious its competitive multiplayer modes. The idea is to offer full ence gameplay in Fireteam Bravo 2 оп the PSP—and vice to see what happens compatibility with SOCOM З players, but it feels a bit slim versa. And Combined Assault will take a page from Fire- when the different to have only the promise of a few new maps to tide us team Bravo and provide “instant action” missions in any SOCOMs are put into a over until the inevitable PS3 sequel. completed area. big cage fight. That said, the improvements to the campaign mode The bottom line here, though, is the co-op play. We're are plenty intriguing. Perhaps most interesting is the very interested to see how well the single-player cam- ability to use nonlethal weapons like tear gas and con- paign translates. сетш, PUB. Activision/RedOctane DEU. Harmonix PLA GUITAR HERO Î Having now had plenty of time to sit down and do some serious rocking with Guitar Hero ІІ-езресіа у rocking of the two- player variety—we're in a fine position to offer up a little more detail on what's quickly become one of our most antici- pated releases of the fall. (Yes, we know the PS3 comes out this fall. No, that fact doesn’t change anything.) About the song list, well, we know as much as you do at this point. So far, RedOc- tane has only revealed a handful of tunes, probably because the deals are still being inked. Instead of dwelling too much on the list—‘cause if you've played the first game, you'll be as confident of a top-notch lineup as we are—we'll focus instead on the major new feature: two-guitar action. Multiplayer т the first Guitar Hero was Б оет 三 a fairly simple affair. You'd “trade licks” back and forth and maybe share a power chord or two, but generally, one player sat idle for a measure while the other rocked out. Not so with GH/I—these tunes һауе fully fleshed out guitar or bass parts for both players. The difference is startling, bringing the experience so much closer to the feeling of playing a real guitar. Especially intriguing are the extremely bass-heavy "YYZ" (Rush) and "John the Fisherman" (Primus), in which the bass sections are more complex than the guitar. And by "complex" we mean, "causing exquisite, physical pain to the inexperi- enced player." In these cases, the two instrumental parts are so different that it's easy to get thrown off by what your band- mate is playing, which is our only concern. JB. Vivendi Universal DEW. Stormfront PLATFORM PS2, PSP ERAGON ENTER THE DRAGON y d Based on the movie that's based on the book, the game isn't as bad as you might expect a licensed title to be. It's being developed by the studio that made EA's excellent LOTR: The Two Towers. You also get to fly around on a dragon, which is always cool (the PS2 game also incorpo- rates ground missions, while the PSP ver- sion is dragon-only). And as titular charac- ter Eragon, you'll be able to get help from a second player who can jump in and out to play as support characters. Cool. SE0TEMBEs | 1 Sega Pseudo M PS3 FULL AUTO 2: BATTLELINES FULL METAL RACKET Ld d Activision MAIZUEL : lineups are usually laden with shooters and rac- ing games, but only in Full Auto 2: Battlelines will you get both genres in one title. The game brings the wild and wonderful world of car combat to interactive life on the PS3. In addition to races, you'll have six multiplayer modes avail- able, including full-scale arena combat with up to eight partici- pants. Unlike the prior title (which was Xbox360-exclusive), the available weapons will be dependent upon which of the 27 cars you pick. Once you've chosen a car, you'll be able to combine any pair of weapons, rather than being forced to choose from predetermined pairings; weapons will come in both front- and rear-mount types. - Some critiqued the 360 version's physics—many felt the cars handled as if they were too light—but the team will be address- ing that in Battlelines. Also expect Unwreck (the feature that allows you to rewind time) to be harder to earn than it was before. And in case you were stressing out about glass cracking, you can relax: Sega promises that there will be "improved wind- shield texture spidering damage." Thank goodness—we hate it when that isn't accurate! 1 Сарсот Digital Eclipse PS2 П Ѕеда Backbone Entertainment PSP CAPCOM CLASSICS SONIC RIVALS COLLECTION VOLUME 2 Raven Software following games based on the Marvel superheroes even a little, you're aware that the two X-Men Legends actión-RPGs are among, the best i in that BLAST PROCESSING 7 Р53, Р52, PSP 1 Buena Vista. Q Entertainment EVERY EXTEND EXTRA MAY | HAVE SOME MORE? A RELIVE THE WASTING OF YOUR y YOUTH БЕР Hay Soni? 5 first game for the PSP is not, y ДЕ: a as expected, a traditional Sonic platformer little brother (see Capcom Classics (while its cousin, Sonic Rush for the DS, Collection Reloaded for PSP), this compi- 15). Sega likes to call Sonic Rivals a “racing lation includes old-school arcade games platformer,” where Sonic does his spin- like The King of Dragons and others. But ning, jumping, and running—but now in it also has two interesting additions: Quiz a competition with other Sonic characters & Dragons—a trivia game that will quiz (such as Knuckles and Shadow). The devel- you on Capcom history—and Super Street Fighter ІІ Turbo. Yes, the insanely hardcore, “ultimate” version of Street Fighter Il. Plus, there are a bunch of other classic games. opers are taking the basic Sonic formula and translating it into 3D space to take advantage of the PSP’s horsepower. Hooray portable hedgehogs! 7 Most puzzle 5 don't have a plot (unless you SES that feud between the dreaded L block and the rest of the Tetris clan), so the backstory of the original Flash game Every Extend (which includes the phrase “‘Sui- cidal explodion' game with new feelings") makes us giggle. Not surprisingly, the story. is insignificant; what we care about is that Tetsuya Mizuguchi (the man behind Rez and Lumines) incorporates music as a vital part of the game, fusing graphics with rhythm— resulting in more digital crack. Yay! ре” Cei ULTIMATE ALLIANCE YOU WIN а мо-егаен! the largest roster ever to defend the world from Dr. Doom and the fe formed Ma TM CO CE гасее! Hey, don't think that we forgot the latest install- ment of Sony CEA president Kaz Hirai's favorite Sony launch title, Ridge Racer. Yes, there is a new Ridge Racer (number seven!) coming out for the launch of a new Sony product (the PS3 in this case). Except the boys at Namco were 50 busy, they weren't able to send over new assets. Check later! 4 НЕЕ GAME ла 1 Зопу СЕА Insomniac RESISTANCE: FALL g says Insomniac head Ted Price, M about four things: immersion, believ- ability, creepiness, and fun.” It’s a typically no-nonsense Insomniac approach. There’s no talk of being the Next Big Thing or revolution- izing the genre; such talk from the developers of the vastly entertaining, but not exactly world-changing Ratchet & Clank would likely elicit snickers anyhow. Rather, Insomniac’s goal here is much more modest: to make a first-person shooter that’s immersive, believ- able, creepy, and fun. When you get your hands on Resistance, you realize that the developers aren't reach- ing too far outside of the FPS box. The game feels like a mashup of Medal of Honor and Half-Life 2; the environments have a gritty, WWll-era feel, but you're fighting hordes of creepy aliens (we noticed a giant alien that looks somewhat inspired by the striders of Half-Life 2) instead of hordes of creepy Nazis. Dark hallways bring up memories of Doom 3, while scripted events bring Red Faction to mind. (One particularly interesting example of scripting is seeing one of your vast army of compatriots struggling with an enemy MAKE А SHOOTER THAT IS IMMER- SINE, BELIEVABLE, CIPEEPY, AND FUN. twice his size; move in and take out the enemy, and you'll have one more piece of hardware covering your back.) It's not until you start to really play around with the weapons that you realize that you're dealing with the team that made Ratchet & Clank. Unusual weaponry is very much their forte, and squeezing unusual weapons like the homing (handy for when you're just too lazy to even try aiming) Bullseye or the boring (we don’t mean the opposite of new and interesting things, such as migratory habits of rabid ocelots, but we mean the act of, well, drilling holes) Augur into envi- ronments so reminiscent of the WWII FPS craze does put a fresh new spin on things. Mixing realistic settings with patently unre- alistic weapons (not to mention unrealistic enemies—like the ones who can crawl along ceilings and walls) makes for a pleasant jux- taposition. As a launch title, Resistance will no doubt serve as one of the showcase pieces of the shiny new hardware. It'll probably be packed to the (alien) gills with flashy lights, lumines- cent colors, and spiffy sound. Let’s just hope there’s enough content to back up the flash. TIME AFTER TIME 4 Technically, Resistance doesn't really take place in WWII, as in the game's universe, WWII never hap- pened. Instead, the Chimera (the nasty aliens) landed on Earth a while back and conquered all. Heck, the game takes place in 1951, a full six years after the conclusion of WWII. We hope that Winston Churchill is still around. 1PUB Sega Sonic Team PS3 SONIC THE HEDGEHOG SONIC'S SOPHOMORE YEAR ` 7 с и celebrate the 15th anniversary ofa Tu blue hedgehog? Have him make the leap to the PS3—and introduce a new friend while you're at it! Sonic's new pal is Silver the Hedgehog, and while Sonic maintains his signature speed, Silver prefers to use his telekinetic powers to manipulate objects and solve puzzles. Oh, and Sonic's gun-toting-pal, Shadow, is also playable. Though all we've seen him do is drive a jeep around. A hedgehog that drives instead of runs seems lazy. 1208. EA Games. DEU. EA Games PLATED PS2, PSP THE SIMS 2: PETS THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE OF OLD YELLER Ў (4 buy them Тапсу food, уои order сиз- tom-made beds, you even put them in little outfits—so it's only natural that you'd want them to be a part of your videogames, too. Pets, which are—not surprisingly—the most-requested addition for The Sims, are making their first appearance on console versions of the game. And the awesome thing is that cleaning up digital poop is a whole lot less smelly than the real thing. EA had us at "poop." р 3. Capcom DE. Capcom Е ow PSP CAPCOM PUZZLE ‘WORLD ; TETRIS FIGHTERS 3 ” һе fac this collection includes the completely awesome Super Puzzle Fighter Il Turbo (which is kind of a Tetris-type game ” enhanced by SF and Darkstalkers charac- | ters) is really all we need to know—we're already clearing off shelf space for it. But if you're a hard sell, then you might be inter- ested to know that you'lkalso be getting the Buster Bros. Collection (which compile: three Buster Bros. games) and Block Bloc! (which is basically Breakout). We might be ` easy, but it works for us. pr УИ SL EEE Sonic Team PS2 PHANTASY STAR шмчегъв ey, if you're an RPG fan and are also the kind of person who has buckets of free time on your hands (independently wealthy, unemployed, slacking in college), then Phantasy Star Universe is right up your alley. First, you get a galaxy-spanning single-player game that can take about 40 hours to get through—that might sound a bit small compared to monstrosities like Dragon Quest Vill or the upcoming Rogue Galaxy, but those games lack PSU's other advantage: online multiplayer. Phantasy Star fans have already experienced the addictive nature of online multiplayer action-RPGing on the DreamCast, the Xbox, the GameCube, and even the PC. Now, finally, PS2 players can join the party (in fact, up to six PS2 players can join). Whether you're a veteran or a newbie, you'll appreciate the new features like strafing, duel-wielding, combat lock-on, 40 ношеѕ MIGHT SOUND SHORT, BUT THAT'S BEFORE MULTIPLAVER. and so forth. It’s one thing to smack a weird space dragon on your own, but it’s six times as awesome to deliver that same smackdown with five of your PSU-playing buddies online. bisoft DEW: Ubisoft Montreal Р! RAINBOW SIX VEGAS . TOURIST SAFETY ADVISORY NOTICE OK, the Rainbow Six franchise has always prided itself on giving a pretty damn good simulation of counterter- rorism, what with its realistic scenarios, proper modeling of equipment, and emphasis on squad tactics. Now the franchise can add a “hits a little too close to home, makes city officials ner- vous” bullet point to its list of accom- plishments. Case in point: The mayor of Las Vegas is actually worried about people thinking Vegas isn’t a safe city due to how realistic the Vegas-getting- attacked-by-terrorists scenario looks in Rainbow Six Vegas. Using the power of the PS3, bombs explode, windows shatter, Team Rainbow members rap- pel, and neon lights glitter. Other overall improvements and tweaks include new gadgets like a fiber-wire that slips under a door (а la Splinter Cell), followed by the ability to “tag” enemy targets (which assign Team Rainbow members to specific targets) for better tactical planning, recharging health (while rested), and occasional third-person viewing (such as when blind-firing around a corner). THE ЗОРРАМСХ. TED IME = үш What's а mafia license THE EVENTS OF THE GAME TAKE PLACE BETINEEN SEASON 5 амо B. 1 Sony CEA GENJI 2 -HISTORICALLY ACCURATE _GIANT-CRAB COMBAT Touted аз having double the playtime of its predecessor (which was knocked for being _ too easy and too short), Genji 2 kicks the Dynasty Warriors mash-n-hack formula up a few notches with four playable characters you can switch on the fly in huge battle- fields with hundreds of enemies. The setting is feudal Japan, and—monster crabs aside— the fighting is intense. It's also authentic, as. Game Republic tapped master swordsman Mitsuhiko Seike as choreographer. ` | PLI. EA Sports DEU. EA Tiburon MADDEN NFL 07 .PRO-MOTIO. y Suffice it to say, for Madden NFL 07 to continue its role of football juggernaut, it's going to have to set high goals. Sur- prisingly, little is known about the game, except that everything will be better—from - character design and control to plays and play-calling. Oh yeah, and it will probably. look pretty good, too. We're particularly curious to see how EA will use the PSS's motion-sensor feature. We're thinking maybe they can use it for throwing and sing а game off a title that was originally reated by the late Gunpei Yokoi—the man behind the original Game Boy—is а pretty sound business plan. After all, Yokoi, showed that he might have an idea about what people like in portable gaming. Тһе _ basic concept has you lining up segments | across five columns to eliminate the piece: And as you would expect from Q Ente _ tainment (the company that brought y: . Lumines), there will also be snazzy graph- | ics choreographed to house beats. Activision Treyarch PS3, PS2 CALL OF ГИРЕУ. 59 e, Call of Duty would totally rock the PC and even the Xbox platforms, and we'd get a pretty-good- but-obviously-not-the-original version on the PS2. Now, thanks to the power of the PS3, we're getting а true entry in the Call of Duty franchise. While many WWII shooters tend to focus on D-Day, COD3 decides to focus on the days after D-Day, the harsh battle to maintain control of France. On top of typical COD exploits such as Nazi-shooting and vehicle- driving, there will be new moments such as riding shot- gun (well, if “sitting next to the turret” counts as “shot- gun”) on a tank and being its spotter (where you look at a target with your binoculars, and boom, there it was), or deciding whether to snipe, blow up, or just plain run ‘п’ gun up to a machine-gun nest (previous games were pretty linear, and this freedom of choice is a new thing). In another nod to those now-ubiquitous “looks like a cut-scene until you're told to press X at the right time to move on" moments (thanks Shenmue, God of War, and RE4!), COD3 now has those types of moments during fistfights. One example we saw was when you check out a house, thinking everything is clear until a slick German soldier jumps you and starts shoving his rifle into your face. By hitting the L1 and R1 buttons on the DualTiltWhatever controller, you fight off the German's THANKS TO THE POWER OF THE PS3, ле ге GETTING A TRUE COD TITLE... initial attack. The rest of the melee fight continues in first-person (kind of reminds us of Namco's Breakdown for the Xbox), with button-prompts breaking things up. With both Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway and Medal of Honor Airborne moving to next year, traditional WWII junkies don't need to worry about three WWII shooters competing fortheir dollars this fall. NORMANDY BleEAKOUT Call of Duty 3 will focus on Operation Cobra, which was the post-D-Day invasion plan to rapidly expand Allied influence within France. The basic plan called for the Allies to get their reinforce- ments in quickly while denying Germany's reinforcements. Ultimately, the Allies won, and only stopped advancing because they ran out of food. 上 Koei DE. Omega Force ATFORM PS3 BLADESTORM: THE HUN- DRED YEARS’ WAR BURGUNDIAN WARRIORS 1 Sony CEA DE. Zipper eu PSP. SOCOM: U.S. NAVY SEALS FIRETEAM BRAVO 2 BE NICE TO THE LOCALS 4 7 а the internal Кое! studio behind the Dynasty and Samurai War- riors games, now brings us the next-gen Bladestorm: The Hundred Years' War, this time moving west to focus on the suc- cession of conflicts between England and France (and later the Duchy of Burgundy) fought between 1337 and 1453. Reportedly capable of displaying up to 65,000 charac- ters onscreen at once, Bladestorm could be a Category 5 on the hack-n-slash meter. 7 Aiming for a more realistic experience than the previous Fireteam Bravo, Zipper is heavily revamping many of the basics for the sequel. Also, now you earn "local influ- ence" by treating civilians with respect— and spraying machine-gun fire willy-nilly will hamper your ability to access black markets for special gear. Furthermore, the developers are adding three multiplayer modes for the excellent 16-player infra- structure play, including Capture the Flag. 4 1 PLI. LucasArts О THRILLVILLE PUTTING THE AMUSEMENT BACK IN AMUSEMENT-PARK MANAGEMENT 2 7 Not only Frontier M PS2, PSP Thrillville let you test out your coasters, but you'll also actually be able to play midway games (including bumper cars and shooting galleries) and even hold conversations with the guests of your park. Better yet, other players will be able to visit your park in multiplayer mode—including the PSP version (also out in November), which will support ad hoc play and the abil- ity to trade designs wirelessly. 4 | PUB. LucasArts DE. Kuju PSP TRAXION IT AIN'T VIB-RIBBON, BUT IT’LL DO, 1 PUB. Eidos DEV. Volatile FOM PS2 RESERVOIR 0065 WASTE THE RAINBOW 4 Finally! A game where casting Michael Madsen makes sense! Work your way through a series of third-person shoot- ing and driving missions as you trace the events of the original Tarantino film (which has been fleshed out so that you'll get to play for more than just a couple of hours) about a bunch of thief types going by color-based aliases. You'll have the choice whether to be trigger-happy or whether to play it cool—and, as expected, what you choose will affect how the game plays. ГРЫВ, Buena Vista Q Entertainment F M PSP. LUMINES Il THE BIGGEST PUZZLE IS: "WHY?", 7 it. Is it possible someone's actually started to think outside the box with regard to the PSP? Traxion is a series of games that use MP3s on your memory stick to. generate ever-changing musical experi- ences, from a falling-block game generated by the beat of your tunes to a simple fight- ing game in which your enemies are сге- ated based on qualities of your songs. And it even acts as a playlist organizer for your PSP! Is this some kind of alternate uni- verse? We'd like to stay awhile, if that's. OK 7 ed Lumines? Then you'll love this! Or maybe you'll just feel ripped off. Despite the inclusion of a "II" in the title, this is а second verse that's darn near identical to the. first. Gameplay is exactly the same, but now there's video in the background (which. can be busy enough that it's tough to focus) and new music (which is impeccably cool as always). We couldn't stop playing the original Lumines, but unless this title comes at a bargain-basement price, our money will go to Every Extend Extra. | PLE. Activision DEV. Neversoft РЕАТЕОЕМ PS3, PS2, PSP TONY HANKS PieOJECT = You d our extensive cover story about this game a few months back, didn’t you? Good, good. Then we can just go ahead and bring you up to date with new information. Like, for example, the fact that Project 8 is going to feature more of an emphasis on film and photo goals, whether that be pulling off tricks in a photo shoot or following the direction of a filmmaker with a handicam. Or the fact that civilians will play a bigger role than ever before, offering feedback, respect— even abuse—in response to your boarding skills. And we can also tell you that the game is now confirmed for release on the PS2 (with Shaba Games handling translation) and the PSP (from Page 44 Studios, of Freekstyle fame). All three versions should be coming out in November. Now how will you choose? SEATETBER 1 PUB, Sony Online DEU. Sony Online PL CHTO- D le e Is DAZK KINGDOM CAST MAGIC MISSILE INTO THE DARKNESS! 4 It's not a system launch unless you һауе mindless bashing, and Sony Online hap- pily obliges with Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom. The development team recently tevealed the mage, which is the third and final character (along with Golan the war- rior and Zala the scout) that will be initially included in game. As you might be able to deduce, the mage relies primarily on magic, which means he’s good for ranged attacks but doesn't have a lot of hit points. While several of the mage's spells are your standard RPG magician fáre—shoot- ing flames, exchanging mana for health, teleporting out of the way, slowing down enemies—and he's also got a few more unusual options up his sleeve. We're anx- jous to try out the spell that allows him to charm enemies into becoming his allies. Magic aside, our favorite thing about him is his nifty ninja-looking outfit. That, and 1 PUB. EA Sports DEY. EA RS PLATFORM PS3, PS2, PSP TIGER WOODS PGA TOUR 07 TIGER + PS3 - TIME TRAVEL = SWEET PLE. Namco Bandai DEU. CyberConnect2 FLATETEM PS2 ое 0. VOL. 1// REBIRTH MAYBE THE WORLD IS ENOUGH, і PUE. Buena Vista DE. Q Entertainment PLAT Fo PSP LUMINES PLUS GREAT PUZZLE GAMING GOES COUCH-BOUND Pub. Konami Dev. Bottlerocket Entertainment Platform PS2 XIAOLIN SHOWDOWN If you watch the kid’s WB show that this game is based on, and are a big fan of the PowerStone games, then this game was lovingly crafted with you in mind. Pub. Konami Dev. Konami Platform PSP. MARVEL TRADING CARD GAME All we want to know is whether there will be cards for losers like Speedball and Turner D. Century. Pub, Konami Dev. Konami Platform PSP WINX CLUB; JOIN THE CLUB This is a test. We know that the average reader is а роз!-соПеде dude. But if you're a little girl who watches this show and is anticipating this game, let из know. Really. Е Pub, Buena Vista Dev. A2M Platform PS2 KIM POSSIBLE: WHAT'S THE SWITCH? The Switch is when Ron Stoppable's mind Switches with Doctor Drakken; so Kim and bad boy Shego team up to unswitch it. RAIN Hey, remember a few pages back when we talked about how Sep- tember was originally the seventh month before the Gregorian д Calendar changed 7 We're so pleased we won't һауе to chase Tiger through time in career mode that we'll happily take EA's word for the importance. of "universal facial capture (UCAP) technol- ogy," which makes Tiger Woods look "so real, you won't believe your eyes." You'll also find new PGA courses and new PGA players, which you'll be able to appreciate with the new picture-in-picture camera. But let's hope the "just a little tougher" swing system doesn't prove too frustrating. 7 Like MMOs, but hate people? Then .hack/ G.U. Vol. 1/Rebirth, a single-player game set within an MMO world called The World, is probably right up your alley. And since the story line traces main character Haseo's quest to slaughter all the player killers in. The World, you'll virtually get your revenge on all those jerkfaces who kept rushing you when all you needed to do was finish the last piece of a quest for that fancy +20. breastplate you'd been coveting. 7 Gamers who don't have а PSP will finally be able to sample one of the best titles to appear on the handheld system, as the PS2 version of the popular puzzler is finally coming to a television near you. There are some new skins to go with the new platform, but at its heart, this is still the same game that PSP fans know and love, it over to the ninth month? Similar story here, as November's etymology suggests that it should be the ninth month, but oh well, now it's the elev- enth month. Too bad for you Roman fans! down to the two-player battle mode. We're already chair-dancing in anticipation of “Shinin in the living room. DPmILIPEm| 67 L 12.2 Sony CEA c .. Ninja Theo HOW DOES SHE GET SUCH HEAUEANLY НЕШЕ? Unfortunately, at press time, the guys over at Ninja Theory are too busy fin- ishing this third-person action game. We've heard that one of the “synergistic processing elements” (SPEs—in other words, one of the chips that burn mad energy within the PS3) is dedicated solely to main character Nariko’s hair—which is why it flows and flutters so luxuriantly as she zips around and fights dudes. SEPTEMBER | NINJA HYPOTHE If Ninja Theory is an unfamiliar name, don't worry, this is its first game under that new name. It was formerly known as Just Add Monsters (who did Kung Fu Chaos for the Xbox back in 2003), and while that name was keen, the team wanted something with the word "Ninja" in it. To that end, we're going to make a magazine called "Ninja Law." | ness into the game with the help of EyeToy. -4 1 PUB, Ubisoft DEU Ubisoft PS2, PS3 RAYMAN RAVING RABBIDS ALL THE RIGHT MOVES 7 well-received King Копа, Michel Ancel has gone back to his roots. In Rayman's new outing, the armless, leg- less, neckless guy will be facing off against a bunch of rabid rabbits (thus, "rabbids"), which, based on the game footage we've seen so far, kind of resemble the popular Teddy Scares stuffed toys. This new version of Rayman's world will be more open than in prior games. Rayman can now tame certain creatures that he can then ride around on. In addition to speed- ing up Rayman's transport, these creatures help him approach things from different angles—for example, the spider lets Ray- man walk up walls and on ceilings. Rayman will need to have his dance steps in good shape, as executing smooth moves (different costumes determine the type of dance) can hypnotize the rabbids, making them easier to defeat. Ubisoft is mum on whether the motion-sensitive controls of the Wii will show up in the PS3 version of the game, but we're crossing our fingers. І Konami Blade PS2 KARAOKE REVOLUTION: AMERICAN IDOL GIVE YOUR BEST; HAVE NO REGRETS AT ALL к h inging brutall % 2 to have your singing brutally % critiqued in the comfort of your own home? ғ Look no further than Karaoke Revolution: % 2 American Idol, which brings 40 new songs to the Karaoke Rev format and adds “verbal | feedback" from American Idol judges. Іп addition, expect the return of the KR Chal- lenge, plus other Karaoke Rev standbys, such as the ability to import your own like- 4 ] ISSO SS 5 222222222220020. р ХУ. = а. a Eee сет сет! ВО mi = > E Want to һеаг what our editors аге excited about before your next issue arrives? Tune т to 1UP Radio where the editors of 1UP, Electronic Gaming Monthly, Computer Gaming World, and the Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine sound off on various topics each week. Each episode is filled with juicy tidbits and behind- the-scenes info that we couldn't fit in the pages of this magazine. Log on to http://podcasts.1up.com/ and choose your poison: 1UP Yours EGM Live CGW Radio RadiOPM * Warning: These podcasts are pretty addictive. You should probably subscribe and download our podcasts to your MP3 player - then you can take us on the road with you! ЕЕ OKAMI STRAIGHT FROM THE Агт MEE ха TEKKEN: DARK RESURRECTION FIGHTING IN MINIATURE FADAL US PLAYSTATION BAME OF THE MONTH НЕЕ Ш MAKING THE WORLD А BETTE PLACE, ONE GAME AT А TIME © [PSZ & Brave: The Search for Spirit Dancer 76 D1 Professional Drift Grand Prix Series во Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII вз Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories 76 FlatOut 2 нг Madden NFL 07 79 Micro Machines V4 вз MLB SlugFest 2006 76 MotoGP 4 та Pac-Man World Rally в Pirates of the Caribbean: The Legend of Jack Sparrow 81 Super Dragon Ball Z PSP 85 Bomberman 85 NCAA Football 07 BS Ultimate Ghosts ‘n Goblins In our new scoring system, a game that receives an OPM score of 10 is something truly special that deserves a spot in your collection. On the other hand, a 5 is merely average. And а 0.5? Well...at least they're fun to rip apart. — MD sir NESE <> —— Nm: 1113112 CC CR amen In the continuing argument about whether or not games are art, Okami should be entered into the Pros column as Exhibit A. Often when people describe a game as "amazing-looking," it's directly related to how closely the game resembles reality-based graphics, such as film. Even cel-shaded games are compared to their cartoon and anime counterparts. But Okami's unique look goes a step beyond this, bringing legendlike tales to life through art and story in such a seamless fashion that | feel it's truly one of the most beautiful and complete games that l've ever played. THE PEN IS MIGHTY Okami begins by relating the legend of Shiranui. In a nutshell: The Japanese village of Kamiki has been terrorized by Orochi, an eight- headed beast who demands that a villager be sacrificed to him each year. When Orochi chooses the maiden Nami as his next victim, war- rior Nagi decides that Orochi must be stopped. However, Orochi is too powerful, and soon Nagi is fighting for his life. Just as he is about to give up, a white wolf named Shiranui appears and helps Nagi in his battle. Together, they defeat Orochi, but Shiranui is mortally wounded. The village erects a statue in the wolfs memory. One hundred years later, which is when the gameplay begins, Oro- chi has been released from his prison, and the Japanese sun goddess Amaterasu (whom you play) assumes the form of a white wolf and returns to the Earth to defeat Orochi and save the people. In order to do this, she needs to recollect the 13 spirits of the brush, who were scattered throughout the heavens upon the return of evil. Each spirit teaches Amaterasu a new brushstroke that has a different power. For example, one type of symbol makes the wind blow, while another lets you draw a moon to turn the sky to night. “пкам"5 UNIQUE LOOK BRINGS LEGEND LIKE TALES ТО LIFE THOUGH STOleY AND ает IN A SEAMLESS FASHION. Overall, the brushstroke system works amazingly well. To use the brush, you simply press R1, which freezes the scene, transforming it into a black-and-white drawing. After you've placed the brush at the desired starting point, simply press Square and use the left апа- log stick to make the shape you want. While it's tough to make any refined movements, each of the brush strokes is relatively broad, so for the most part, you'll have no problems. (The only stroke that | found at all troublesome was the cherry bomb, and my only difficulty there was getting it to land in the right place.) Your brush is fueled by your inkpots, which refill on their own after a brief period. For the most part, the brush is relatively quick and simple to use, yrYrrY; OS®) BUSH еее Okami's unique paint- ing technique is used for more than just combat. Here, a brush- stroke is used to send the flame from the fiery ae se ч + E streetlight to ignite an |^ Е с За unlit torch farther down -— | | mos ЫЗ | y 5 ° the road. ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT | DIFFERENCES IS THE MESSAGE. сет. = ==! J| БЕС ШЕШЕ 252 Amaterasu does not speak, but she is accompanied Бу the chatty Issun, a tiny sprite who rides on Ammy's head and wants to learn all the strokes of the Celestial Brush. Issun is a good addition to the game: While Okam/s narration and story line hold true to the over- all feel of a Japanese legend, his dialogue adds a levity and silliness that keeps things from getting too ponderous or melodramatic. This is not a perfect game, though. For example, dialogue can go on for too long at times. And when the game changes between day and night, there's always a quick cut-scene that gets annoying—it can be skipped, but it would've been nice to be able to turn it off. Also, while the story is fairly linear, the game world itself is pretty sprawling and wide open, which means that sometimes it can be difficult to figure out exactly what you're supposed to do next. Ultimately, the biggest issue that many people will have with the game is that it's simply not difficult. Your health is quite robust, you pick up plenty of health boosts along the way, and as a result, many "typical" gamers will probably be disappointed that there isn't more of a challenge. But then, Okami is not a game for everyone. People who are fans of fast-paced action are likely to be bored after a few min- utes—Okami is a game that's best suited for someone who enjoys exploring and isn't necessarily in a rush to get to the end. And all of the things that might bore John О. Gamer are the very elements that could draw in someone who would normally not even think of picking up a controller. It's rather ironic that companies are spending hundreds of thou- sands of dollars trying to figure out how to make games that will 42002449 人 AN À AS duum their уш. rre immer ei appeal to nongamers, while in the meantime, this quiet gem hits store shelves without much of a fanfare. And that is both Okam/'s greatest strength and greatest downfall: This is a game that's revo- lutionary in so much more than its art style, but the people who | THIS IS А GAME THATS EENOLUTONAPY | IN SO MUCH MORE THAN ITS ает STYLE. would most appreciate it probably won't even know that it exists. But even so, that doesn't change the fact that Okami is great. Every element—the art style, the combat style, the experience, the dialogue—complements and reinforces the central story. So often games feel like they were put together in chunks or had elements shoehorned in without regard for how they fit in with the overall experience, but Okami feels like it was crafted as опе whole. Dana Jongewaard VERDICT Despite some minor flaws, this beautiful game is an instant classic. 006 SEPTEMBER | 1DPM What were some of the major hurdles to over- come in the development of Okami? I ATSUSHI INABA Establishing the game's style. We had key concepts in mind that piqued our curiosity: "A game about the beauty of nature," "a wolf as the main character," and "healing a broken world." However, realizing all those concepts in a great gaming experi- ence is much easier said than done. We wavered back and forth [between] many different styles of gameplay, from simulation to a "communicating with humans" type of hybrid style. Before we knew it, over a year had passed, and we had very little to show for it. We nearly lost our way before going with the decidedly simple solution: an adventure game. It was a very pricey experiment. But one could say that we would not have realized this style had it not been for the mas- sive amount of trial and error we put into the product. Each misstep ultimately led to a new discovery that made the final product even better. The next hurdle was developing the Celestial Brush mechanic. Since we settled on the basic adventure genre, we needed something that felt new to push game design forward. A game that was built on fancy graphics just wouldn't be enough. The key concepts of the main character's being a god that could con- trol the world, as well as heal it, gave us the hint we needed to create a system that matched the beauty of the game world. So we threw ourselves in a meeting room for two days and planned and bounced ideas off each other. The end result was to focus on the art, and therefore, the Celestial Brush came into being. ГОРАМ Were you worried some people wouldn't understand the use of the Celestial Brush? ГА! Using the brush to freely interact and modify а highly stylized world is something that anyone (gamer or not) would instinctually realize, so | wasn't too con- cerned. However, making the controls feel flexible yet easy enough to use was one area of concern. Did the brush respond well enough? Was it fast enough? Did it slow the action? All of these [issues] had to be taken into consideration when developing this system. Some people on the team said there were too many Celestial Brush techniques and that it was ruining the game pacing. However, we ultimately decided that the Celestial Brush was what made the game what it was, so we went with a large number of techniques to give the player more freedom to interact. Even though | can't truly do justice to how cool the Celestial Brush system is through my words, just believe me when | say it is both easy and entertaining to use! ІСІРІМ Any particular reason why you used a wolf to tell this story as opposed to a human figure? I Al Okami is supposed to be a story in which the player interacts with a naturally beautiful world. We felt that, that have come out of Japan in the past, there have been a variety of genres, but none of them really represented the Japanese culture and art styles of the past. | feel that, with Okami, we were able to re-create the magic of the past. І ОРМ An original demonstration of the game showed a very different graphic style. Why did you choose to move away from that? 1 Al The game went through several redesigns along the way. Initially, the main focus was on nature and not just showing off its beauty, but also [demonstrating] how severe and harsh it can be. We all agreed that to truly realize concepts like harsh climates and surviving severe conditions, we had to shoot for a more realistic style of graphics. However, during the many long hours "THE GAME WENT THOUGH SENWEPAL | REDESIGNS ALONG THE WAY.” in our world, animals are the closest thing to nature. In Japanese, the word Okami has two separate mean- ings: “wolf” and “great god.” Perhaps our ideologies of what a god is may differ from culture to culture, but we decided the majestic wolf would be our symbol for the Japanese goddess Amaterasu and designed the game around that character. Also, when I was a college student, | read an art book titled White Wolf: Living With an Arctic Legend by Jim Brandenburg, who photographed arctic wolves over the backdrop of their severe and harsh winter surroundings. Ever since then, | knew that | wanted to create some- thing that could feature such a majestic animal. 1DPM What part of the game аге you most proud of? ГА Probably that we were able to convey the beauty of the Japanese culture and history through the unique art style. If you look back on all the games of trying to get this concept up and running on cur- rent consoles, we realized that our goals were a bit too progressive, and that this generation of consoles didn't have the power to give us the best of both worlds. If we wanted to show the beauty of nature, we would have to do it stylistically. It was at that time the main designer was playing around with an old Japanese charcoal paint style and drew up a rough sketch of Amaterasu. Immediately, everyone in the team knew it was the right direction, and even the programmers agreed that from a technical perspective, this was a goal we could achieve with current hardware. OPM Any chance we might see a sequel? ©! Currently, we do not have plans for a sequel. Okami was designed to be complete story with a proper end- ing. However, if the timing is right, it might be worth pursuing in the future. ! етшш 25| Ы | ВЕЧЕШе PSZ Ся 01:5 4:788 | MOTOGP 4 ROCKETS IN YOUR POCKETS 1 Namco Bandai Namco Bandai Е 539.99 ل1ل‎ МЕ he The MotoGP series continues firing on all cylinders, outdoing even Polyphony Digital's Tourist Trophy in most respects. = WWE fans will rec- ognize Yuke's as the developer of most of THQ's good WWE games. The longtime wrestling developer may just be slumming it with the D7 game— we're not really sure. But they should go back to giant, half- naked men embracing one another instead. The “other” MGP series we mentioned resides on Microsoft's Xbox family of systems, courtesy of publisher THO and developer Climax. It's always. looked nicer than the PS2 version of MotoGP. and, for a while there, played nicer as well. But MotoGP 4 is debat- ably better than their latest rehash, MotoGP 06, on the Xbox 360. D1 PROFESSIONAL DRIFT GRAND PRIX SERIES SLIP-SLIDIN' AWAY Mastiff E 10+ Yuke's $39.99 eee Remember that montage in The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift where the lead pretty boy keeps stalling out or sliding into crates/walls/other cars while he's learning the mechanics of exactly how to drift? Well, that's what this game's about. No, not the entire movie. Just that frustrating bit about not being able to drift. Taking a turn in DIPDGPS is about as complicated as the title's anagram. Pull the e-brake, let off the gas, floor it, steer into the drift, pop the clutch for a bit of extra spin in the rear, and drive out. Go too slowly and the rear wheels will grip, causing you to drive into the infield. Go too hard and you'll either slam into the outside wall or just do a quick 360. Oh, and 80 per- cent of the time, the front tires will lose grip and you'll go into a four-wheel slide. Yeah, good times. Oh, and you get graded on each drift, so there's no faking it on your way to the finish line. On top of the frustrating interface and goals in the basic game, some idiot decided that the only way to get at the meat of the experience—the career mode—was to work your way through the most irritating set of tutorials ever. Seriously, the game needs to explain exactly how to play for more than an hour before you’re actually allowed to play more than a two-minute test run. Sure, you can tackle the single-race modes, but the main portion of the game is effectively locked until you manage to complete the not-so-easy tutorial mode. After suffering through it—if you even bother to get that far, and | wouldn't if | were you—the payoff isn't worth it. All the licensed rides and unlockable drifting vid- eos in the world can't make this game that much fun—or worth the effort needed to even play it in the first place. | Greg Sewart ^ Realistic drift physics apparently j don't equal a good time, especially when added to a frustrating—and mandatory— “ E AS ІП SCORE FLATOUT 2 DESTRUCTION DERBY Vivendi Universal T $39.99 Bugbear Entertainment “М2 The original FlatOut has garnered а sort of cult following, despite generally lackluster reviews and, quite honestly, pretty shallow gameplay. FlatOut 2 does a decent job of rectifying the latter, adding loads of cars, tracks, and a few different series to the career mode, but some of the original pot- holes haven't been completely smoothed over, either. Career mode is pretty deep this time around, tasking you with both destroy- ing competing cars and finishing high in the running order. Earn cash to upgrade your ride or buy a completely new set of wheels, and compete for the highest score in minigames that involve launching your driver through the windshield and into vari- ous obstacles. The stars of the show—just like in the previous game—are the almost fully destructible environments and cars. By the end of each race, the course is so littered with debris and parts that the biggest chal- lenge is making it through all the detritus without wreckin: And, just like in the previous game, that's the game's biggest issue. The physics in FlatOut 2 are touchy at best, bizarre at worst. The “floaty” feel of the cars makes them pretty unresponsive—and wildly unpredictable when colliding with the bits of wood, metal, and rubber strewn all over the place. Cruising to an easy win only to go careening off into a ditch thanks to hit- ting a wayward fender is a pretty common occurrence in FlatOut 2. Despite its problems, though, | find myself enjoying FlatOut 2. It offers mindless fun along the lines of the Burnout series, but is different enough to be worth playing even if you've already beaten EA's franchise to the ground. Just don't expect greatness—only а fun, light, destructive romp that's best done in bite-sized chunks. | Greg Sewart l'UEIPDICT Features fun, arcadey action and 1 ап impressive amount of destruction 一 with a slightly irritating interface. SCORE 2 erie" ning 70р „ о a pre melanomo del og, " ауды tng о), о 2 er C7 Cup NETWORK ТЕРМІМА т" GATES Ng NAL Ө » 4 4 ax ри INTRODUCING NEW POCKET-SIZE TAG BODY SHOTS. LOAD IT, LOCK IT, AND ROCK IT AT YOUR OWN RISK. "^. CONSIDER YOURSELF MICRO МАСНІМЕ5 \/4 TOYS РОВ LITTLE BOYS 1 Codemasters Supersonic Software Е 529.99 <<“е УЧ It's been 15 years since Codemasters released the original Micro Machines on the likes of the NES, Genesis, Game Boy, et al. A decade and a half later, the details have changed a bit, but the basic gameplay has remained the same. And that makes this series stale. You can't accuse Codemasters and developer Supersonic Software of not try- ing, though. The tracks in MMV4 are pretty clever, for the most part. And the sheer number of cars to collect is staggering— around 750. MMV4 doesn't lack for content, that's for sure. But the content just isn't exciting enough to keep most people playing. While there are 750 vehicles, they're grouped into spe- cific classes, and cars within those classes handle mostly the same out on the track. And they're so bland-looking that you won't even want to waste any time admiring the contents of your extensive garage. The whole game is pretty lackluster in the presentation department, really. Neither the cars nor the tracks really pop out during play. Everything's either too oversized or too tiny to be impressive. The combat racing wears thin quickly, too. The limited weapons aren't the least bit spectacular, and the wildly swinging camera tends to move at the wrong times on every track. Falling to your doom is a pretty stan- dard issue early on in your Micro career. With time and practice, you can get a handle on the tiny machines—but, honestly, you probably won't want to play that long. Micro Machines V4 does a decent job of delivering what it promises: a slightly upgraded version of the same game Code- masters has been releasing since the early ‘90s. It's just really hard to be excited about that old game anymore. Most players will likely want to trade up from these dinky little cars to something more meaty—like, say, FlatOut 2 or Burnout 4. Micro Machines' charm is officially gone. | Greg Sewart This was a great game...15 years ago. The new Micro Machines fails to offer anything new or exciting to an already stale series. SCORE = ІП ж” SEPTEMBER | РАС-МАМ WORLD RALLY PROOF SOME CHEAP CASH-INS CAN BE FUN 1 Namco Bandai Namco Bandai E $29.99 [LOTS Sack КЕЛН RS Sa ҮЛЕ TEE | | can't get too angry with Pac-Man World Rally. It does make me mad, but not as hideously, blood-chillingly angry as most updates of ту beloved childhood до. Namco Bandai probably started the дате as just a way to milk a few dollars more from the never-complaining Man, but a mildly entertaining kart racer managed to sneak out of the process. As long as you're sticking to the racing, mild is the key word for the whole game. It's when you try out the battle mode, to "Battle in Pac-Style," that the bitter acid of garbage overcomes the mild flavor. The racers include the familiar stable of ghosts and Pac-offshoots, as well as a few unlockable surprise characters. They're divided into three safe categories for any designer to choose: light, medium, and heavy. There are plenty of weapons, but the reality is that most of them are just slightly different bombs. And, ultimately, there's no real reason, even on the hardest difficul- ties, to do anything but the basics. It's the no-frills approach to kart racing: Accelerate as hard as possible, drop bombs as often as possible, and be sure to hit the shortcuts every time. The track selection is boss. The actual design involves lots of basic-to-frustrating layouts, but each track is а visual treat. From the Funhouse's psychedelic layout to racing inside an arcade Рас-Мап, there's а well-thought-out visual design that's executed interestingly. It feels like there's a Pac-Man roller coaster park out there some- where that I don't know about, and each level is promoting one of the thrill rides. (Except the shooterlike Battle mode, which would be promoting getting mugged in the parking lot.) This is a neat game for kids or people who are chronically bad at racers, and it's not actually offensive to Pac-Man fans. | Patrick Joynt FADD А POINT If you һауе young children who need a new game or just suck at Mario Кап. РОВ YOUR LUGGAGE FOR YOUR POCKET РОВ YOUR PRE-FLIGHT PAT-DOWN CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED j | REUELS_ PSZ P Azul the Cerulean "(remm .”- тем 6/18 458 ‘Limit ВРвакег ЕЕ АЕА Square Епіх 549.99 AN 1 Square Enix CQ Tm — > (ашан 7 501/380 = ese UF CERBERUS DOG DAY AFTERNOON FANTASY 4 For а while, there was a rumor that Square Enix was going to use the Final Fantasy VII brand to create a new third-person action game called Cloud May Cry. On paper, it kind of works—Cloud is an iconic FF char- acter, and he has a big sword that could make for good melee-combat hijinks. The rumor evolved into a reality: Squenix was indeed making a third-person action title in the FFVII universe, but starring support- ing character Vincent Valentine instead of Cloud. Again, in theory, that works. Vincent is cool and brooding, has a neat-looking red cloak, uses guns, and even transforms into big, bad monsters. So a DMC-style game could totally work. That is, if the developers actually ended up pulling it off. Which, in the case of Dirge of Cerberus, they didn't. Dirge takes place three years after FFVII (and one year after FFVII: Advent Children) and focuses on some bad dudes from Deep Ground SOLDIER going after Vincent. While fighting them off, Vincent gets involved with the World Restoration Organization (headed up by Reeve/ Cait Sith from FFVII) and learns a bunch of secrets about his crazy past that involve Lucrecia and Hojo and his time inside a giant vat of goo. As expected, there are a fair amount of in-game cut-scenes, though most of them aren't CG. The few CG scenes that do appear, though, are actually quite awesome-looking. Disappointingly, however, the story itself ends up being a bit on the melodramatic side. Gamewise, Dirge feels like the result of a group of car engineers get- ting together and trying to Frankenstein up an airplane. It's as though they said, "Hey, airplanes/shooters have wings/upgradeable weapons, so let's just bolt them оп and add a rudder/double-jump—it'll definitely fly/play well." As a result, Dirge has many elements of better action games—there’s just the small problem of those elements either not being executed well or not even meshing together. For example, the over-the-shoulder aiming perspective and the various guns and gun upgrades make the game seem very shooting-oriented. Yet the autoaiming mechanic (get the target within a large aiming area and a smaller reticule will then lock onto your target) only works sporadi- cally—the time it takes to acquire a target is on the slow side, and firing blind usually causes you to miss or do too little damage. That means that fast enemies (like the weird robo-dogs) are a pain in the ass to shoot at—especially since they tend to get up close; the over-the-shoulder perspective works against you in that scenario. The melee attacks look like an afterthought, until you realize they're sometimes much more effective in inflicting damage than your MUSICMAN guns. And even though there are loads of gun upgrades, side mis- ЕЕ Masashi Hamauzu, who will also be creat- ing the music for the upcoming Final Fantasy XIII, was the composer sions, and cool-looking enemies, the very drab levels kind of sub- tract from the fun of those other elements. At its very best, Dirge of Cerberus is an average action game with RPG elements, nice ideas, and decent fan service. If it had been any other game, I'd probably have shelved it, but my FF fandom—com- bined with the general sense of morbid curiosity that the game fos- ofthe Dirge score. ters—compelled me to keep on playing. | Thierry Nguyen Other games he has = = ڪڪ‎ — composed the music for include titles such as Unlimited SaGa and Musashi: Samurai Legend. The CG looks damn cool, and on paper, the fusion of upgrade- able guns, punching, leveling up, and FFVII fan service sounds cool... ...but the actual action game itself shows what happens when RPG people try to make shooty-shooty games. SCORE E 10 2224 4 4 ОЖ SEPT ETA PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE LEGEND OF JACK SPARROW WE'RE NOT SURE HE DESERVED THAT 1 Bethesda Softworks 7 Studio T $39.99 کے‎ 00000000. Ah, Captain Jack Sparrow—perhaps опе of the most memorable characters in recent film history, played brilliantly by 21 Jump Street's Johnny Depp. Funny enough, this role seems to have changed Mr. Depp's opinion about taking roles that previously may have not been up to his personal standards. Take The Legend of Jack Sparrow for instance— Johnny Depp actually provided voice work for Jack Sparrow in the game while other stars from the movie did not contribute. It lends some major credibility to your enjoy- ment of the game if you're a fan of the film, even if Depp just phoned it in. But that's not really the problem with. this game. More than anything, it's a very rudimentary action game with some fairly sloppy gameplay mechanics and Al that's so. bad it might as well have been programmed by some sort of weasel-like creature. Yes, it's that terrible. Not only do enemies often get caught on objects in the environment and run| in place, but your own partner—which can either be Will Turner, Jack Sparrow, or one of the other characters from the film depend- ing on what sequence you're in—often just stands there while waiting to Бе slaughtered by other pirates. Additionally, all of the puzzles are very basic and consist largely of the "go here and do this to open the door" variety; they also repeat within a level mul- tiple times. It’s just bad, which is really unfor- tunate, considering that the subject material would make for an excellent game. The license isn’t totally wasted. The story is actually handled in a fairly clever man- ner that's representative of Jack Sparrow's way of thinking, or lying, as it were. Most of the game is set in Sparrow's recollection of events that happened in and around the first movie, but this method of storytelling does get a little confusing later in the game—not really worth it for fans or those looking for some pirate booty. | Giancarlo Varanini Character models for main charac- ters look good, Johnny Depp provides the voice for Sparrow Bad Al, action is basic and tedious SCORE = 10 BRAVE: THE SEARCH FOR SPIRIT DANCER NO, THIS ISN'T TAK 4 1 SouthPeak VIS Entertainment E $39.99 EER гү асел шу SED UE UE] Brave: The Search for Spirit Dancer is, ostensibly, a wry little action-adventure platformer starring a Native American boy named Brave as he zips around trying to find the Spirit Dancer (а shaman to end all shamans) in order to take down a really evil and hairy primate. Yet in reality, Brave is basically a run-of-the-mill game that, at first glance, might be mistaken for a new install- ment in the Tak franchise. It starts innocently enough. Brave wants to pass his warrior trial. So he beats up birds with a stick, throws rocks at a really per- turbed bear, and does a fair amount of jump- ing and climbing. On occasion, he absorbs the spirit power of creatures to gain abilities (such as swimming in the water thanks to a fish, or climbing a tree courtesy of a squirrel) and reads about the ancient battle between the Spirit Dancer and the Wendigo (not to be mistaken for Sasquatch). Oops! The Wendigo comes back and tears through the village, so now Brave needs to find the Spirit Dancer—and so the game properly begins. At this point, Brave has more platforming mayhem, and his arsenal expands beyond a Stick to include a tomahawk and a bow and arrow. He even gains the ability to become various creatures—such as a ghost bear, which should be featured in more games. There's also an incident early on where he possesses the body of a skunk. Oh, and as expected of a game featuring Native Ameri- can lore, Brave rides a buffalo at some point. Brave wants to be an exploration of Native American themes wrapped in Lilo & Stitch-inspired visuals, but it just ends up being a tour of typical gaming tropes, like the “desert level” and the oh-so-popular "ice level.” Brave's problem isn't that it's terrible—it's that it's so generic (which is arguably a worse fate than outright incom- petence). Despite its title, Brave is merely a meek little adventure. | еггу Nguyen Rather than describing the game А itself, "brave" more describes the thoughts of releasing such a generic and ultimately forgettable game into the crowded market. , SCORE БЕ 10 4 PlayStation. Super Dragon Ball Z marks the series" seventh—that's right, seventh—appearance on the PS2. Before that there were also two titles that came out on the PS1. The Japanese mech series Yuusha is marketed in North. America under the ті Sadly, there is no relationship to this game, which could have benefitted from there some giant robots to help distin- guish it from the rest of the pack. SUPER DRAGON BALL Z DBZ GETS A LITTLE SOUL 1 Atari Namco Bandai Т 539.99 VOU WIN! The DBZ series goes legit in this fine attempt to be like a real fighting game. K.O! It still has a way to go before it can replace Soul Calibur, but Из off to a good start. SCORE сети сет | 81 ( ЖЖ ате5 1 ЕАб EA Tiburon E $49.99 LIP YOU PANCAKE COUNT San Diego Chargers fullback Lorenzo Neal leads the way, filling the hole to plug the gap, stopping Baltimore Ravens middle linebacker Ray Lewis (last year's Madden cover guy) in his tracks, and springing tailback LaDainian Tomlinson for a two-yard run up the middle. It’s not only a first down late in the game, but also the most gratifying Madden experience I've had in years. That might sound as ridiculous as my leading this story with a fullback, but it's not. | was the one who delivered the Neal block via Lead Blocker—the new Madden feature that, unlike last year's pass- ing cone, actually revolutionizes gameplay. Lead Blocker encourages a ground game; straight blocks—or cut blocks (watch the knees) if you're outsized—turn the defender away from the play. Lead Blocker also gives you a new appreciation for what gigantic offensive linemen and fullbacks—the dudes in the trenches—do on a football field. And now, checking the number of pancakes in the stats means something, because you can tally them yourself—which offers a completely new way to play the game, putting the spotlight on the guys that do the dirty work and, until now, got little glory. When you take control of the ball carrier, the Highlight Stick (the right analog stick) lets you do more than just bull forward or step back. The advanced arsenal of jukes and cutbacks that are available depend on the skill and style of the runner. When in the grasp of a defender, you tap X to break the tackle while the defender taps X to take you down, and the fastest fingers win. | could do without button mashing at this or any point in the game. With Shaun Alexander on the cover and history as a barometer, you knew EA Tiburon would refine the running game, but Lead Blocker is extremely effective for pass blocking. Being able to take out that advancing defensive end or blitzing linebacker before taking control of the quarterback changes strategy. Other enhancements include onside kicks with analog kicking, but booting field goals proves way too easy—you shouldn't be able to routinely drill 50-yarders. There are also a ton of boring angles of the NFL that get covered in the game—for example, pricing the foam fingers in your stadium and dealing with contracts—but Lead Blocker breathes more pure football fun into Madden. Oh, and about that game— ran Brian Billick’s Ravens into the ground for an easy victory. Gave the ball to LT, stayed true to the run, kept the chains and the clock moving. | established the run, which put me in position to win. Simple. Effective. Realistic. Gratifying. | Pat "UERDICT Lead Blocker rejuvenates the Madden experience. SCORE FAME GAME Last year, games in superstar mode felt too similar to games in franchise mode, so now if you need that single- player story mode in a sports game, you create your player and play only that position in the hope of becom- ing a Hall of Famer. Play whatever position you want—wide receiver, defensive end, even kicker. | created a punter, signed with the Bucs, lived a boring existence, but couldn't make it to Canton. Then again, if former Oakland Raider great Ray Guy isn't in, then | shouldn't. be in, either. 4 SEPTEMBER | ONE OF THE TOP FIVE GAME-DEGREE PROGRAMYS - Electronic Gaming Monthly MLB SLUGFEST 2006 ON-FIRE BASEBALL FOR FIRE SALE-CHEAP ı7 Midway ı7 ıı Midway Е Е MseP $19.99 РРР et's г et on the same base here right at the beginning—there aren't any improve- ments from 2004's SlugFest: Loaded here worth dropping normal retail on. The graphics are the same, the designers pared the actual gameplay modes down to the bone, and there's no online gameplay. It's not even worth picking up for an up-to-date roster list, because it ships with a roster updated in February, Midway, in its finite wisdom, is shipping S/ugFest 2006 at a wal- let-friendly 20 bucks instead of the normal retail price. Presumably, they conjured some strange licensing magic to get this made even though Take Two picked up the semiexclusive MLB license last year. No matter how badly your chosen team may perform, the franchise mode is the real loser in this game; it apparently took two years for Midway to strip it down to а shivering, naked “season mode.” This is the baseball season with 52 games and no trading allowed, which seems to be how they do it in the city of Bargain Game, U.S.A. | guess it's better to have a watered- down version of a key feature than to lose it entirely, since it's at least possible to play this surreal version of a season of baseball. There's no option to play online at all. The create-a-player and create-a- team modes don't make up for it. They're actually just cruel jabs at the loss of the full franchise mode. That said, if you want to play some arcade baseball, the core gameplay still sports the easy-to-control and fun-to-watch stylings of Loaded. If you don't want to hunt down a (probably beat-up) copy of 2006's predecessor, or if a roster uselessly updated early this year is worth the stripped-down feature set to you, 2006 is only 20 bucks. And those are the real players you'll see— even though they'll look like death on that old graphics епдіпе. "UERDICT If this game had online play and were a PSP title, we'd be pretty pleased. But it doesn't, it's not—and we're not. SCORE гүп DISGAEA 2: CURSED MEMORIES AND THE DEJA VU TO GO WITH THEM ге NIS America Nippon Ichi г<паТ wsce $49.99 EEA ee ee рорр шар ү ДСЁ t's be е knowledge that the MMORPG is the greatest time sink in gam- ing. Yet how quick we аге to dismiss the days of old, when hundreds of hours spent slogging through menus and monsters by yourself in an RPG was just as bad. Enter Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories, which contin- ues Nippon Ichi’s line of incredibly involved strategy-RPGs. New hero Adell is a good guy, a change from the first game's nasty wannabe-demon-lord Laharl—but Adell's forced to cross to the dark side in order to return the daughter of Overlord Zenon. Plenty of humorous, grid-based fun is along the way, including the return of favorite friends and foes (including those “doodi- cal” Prinnies). As the sequel to one of 2003's sleeper hits, you'd think there'd be lots more to Dis- gaea 2. But you'd be wrong. Aside from a better use of color, there's the same old lev- eling to be had. The best improvement over the original is that stacking a tower of char- acters (a vital, if goofy, tactic to get around the тар) retains everyone's ability to attack, letting you inflict even more pain than usual. Otherwise, all the systems, units, апа rules are more than a little familiar. ОҒ course, if it ain't broke, don't fix it—but after three years and two superior games т the same genre, forgive us for expecting some sort of new approach. The plot doesn’t have much spunk, either: Making your way up through the demon- world ladder was a fresh twist in the original game, but performing naughty deeds as a brawny do-gooder makes things feel a little uninspired. And plentiful Saturday-morning- anime clichés make it rather groan-worthy. Still, Nippon Ichi is a force to be reckoned with as it continues to prove its mastery of the console strategy-RPG—no matter how often you think you're getting sick of mov- ing stumpy characters around a swamp and watching their numbers go up, you're bound to jump right back in. Just alert friends and family when appropriate. Iv It feels like we've already had enough tactical role-playing for this decade. | SCORE ЕП = ШЕ Real World Education 3300 University Boulevard Winter Park, FL 32792 Financial aid available to those who qualify Career development assistance Accredited College, ACCSCT ш | HEELS PSP 1LPUE. Namco Bandai Deu. Namco Bandai exea Т mser $39.99 TEKKEN IT TO THE STREETS (PLEASE KILL ME МОЛ) i І ever got paid for writing was for Tekken 2. At the time, the heated battle in the fighting-game arena (if you will pardon the expression) was over the relative merits of the Tekken controls versus those of Street Fighter. Me, | was a Tekken man from day one. Something about each button controlling an individual limb just made far more sense to me than the less intuitive control scheme of the SF series. So it was with great fondness that | fired up Dark Resurrection to find all of my favorite characters jammed into this tiny little package— plus an extra two (fairly underwhelming) new characters to bring the grand total to 36. And holy crap, they look really fantastic. The game manages to bring much of the subtle expressions and environmental detail that’s characterized the most recent Tekken games onto the portable screen. Also welcome is the vast variety of game types, offering more than your basic story mode (а bit light on Namco's typically stunning CG, alas) and a surprisingly relevant arcade mode (more on that later). You've also got the tourney-style Tekken Dojo, a series of attack modes (time attack, command attack, etc.), and even a variety of bonus games—including the ever-popular Tekken Bowl. Из all very, very solid, but perhaps the biggest surprise was what a good fit the arcade mode is for a portable system. The ability to earn gold, gear, and higher rankings in a mode that would normally be considered a fairly inconsequential time killer makes all the differ- ence in the world. It's nice to be able to squeeze in a few matches on the bus and maybe unlock a really ridiculous hat or move a step up the ranking ladder. However, it remains to be seen whether the online ranking and ghost-data database (not yet active as of this writing) will provide enough of an incentive to really max out your characters. Though it would have been nice to be able to actually conduct matches online, ad hoc wireless play is the next best thing: It's sur- prisingly quick, with absolutely no noticeable lag. You can even play a match with a friend who doesn't own the game via the generous game sharing. The only real problem | find with Dark Resurrection is one of com- fort: If you've played a lot of Tekken, chances are you play overhand, using two fingers to hit buttons instead of trying to hit, say, Square and Circle simultaneously with your mutant, triple-jointed thumb. (You freak.) This is literally painful on the PSP, however, and furthermore requires finding a stable surface to be able to play this way with any precision...thereby practically negating the game's portability. If you can deal with that handicap, Dark Resurrection is a more than worthy successor to the Tekken throne. є 2 Pantloads of content, characters, unlockables, and extras; that familiar Tekken formula; looks great Essentially the same game as Tekken 5; all but impossible to play PSP overhand со SCORE 4 LIPDAT Though Dark Resurrection is certainly very similar to Tekken 5, it does have a slightly different cast. In addition to the new characters Dragunov and Lili, the game also reintroduces Eddy Gordo as a separate character, and brings back Armor King as a separate character from your regular vanilla King. SEPTEMBER NCAA FOOTBALL 07 COLLEGE FOOTBALL FUN ON THE GO 1 PUB. Electronic Arts DEV. EA Tiburon зов Е мѕер $39.99 2 کے К happened! A PSP sports game that loads fast and plays almost like the PS2 version! NCAA Football 07 bursts on the handheld scene complete with the most relevant addi- tions—jump the snap, onside kicks, monster. playbooks—from its excellent PS2 equivalent. As with most PSP games, you'll initially be. reaching for the right analog stick that's not there. Fortunately, EA Tiburon did a tremen- dous job of creating the illusion of a second analog stick by combining the L button with the face buttons. Big hits, slide protection, linebacker shifts—what you control with the right stick on the PS2, you can intuitively command on the PSP. The pause menu pro- vides a FAQ option with accessible images of all controls, which offers an easy way to see how they differ from the PS2 without refer- ring to the manual or deciphering on the fly. In fact, pump fakes are about the only control missing on the PSP. As in the PS2 version, the new-to-this-year Turn the Tide feature helps make NCAA all the more lifelike. | played as Notre Dame taking on USC in Los Angeles (in the battle for the Jeweled Shillelagh). After going up 17-0 early, | was driving—only to botch the option, fumble, and watch the defense return it the distance. Оп my heels from there, | fell behind late in the third quarter, never to regain momentum. Or the lead. Damn! But this feature does add an excellent ele- ment of suspense. Dynasty mode only lasts 10 seasons, but it features recruiting during. the year, plus Bowl rankings, the Heisman race, and all that. There isn't a PSP Campus Legend mode, but it hardly kills the fun. You don't need a single-player story mode off the field to enjoy the college gridiron. The only major gameplay issue | had was that running the ball between the tackles felt significantly less realistic than on the console, making you break runs outside—whether the play calls for it or not. Glitches that plagued Maaden's PSP debut last year—delays after selecting plays, inexplicably random crash- ing—were, thankfully, nowhere to be seen. Let's hope quick-loading handheld sports games are here to stay. | Patrick Mauro | Load times апа controls excellent Бу | PSP standards PSP/PS2 interface ED 4 SCORE BOMBERMAN IN WHICH A BOMB IS A GOOD THING 1 PUB. Konami реч. Hudson Soft ESCB Е MseP $39.99 г ММ ИРИ РИИ ИИИ РИИ РИИ ИИИ If part of the definition of a "classic" is a game that holds up over time, then Bomberman should probably have its own Hall of Fame. Like Tetris (and checkers and chess), Bomberman gameplay has remained essentially great over its 20-plus years—no matter the platform or graphics. It should come as no surprise, then, that the PSP version is already one of the best games on Sony's handheld. While that may not be saying much—there simply aren't that many "best games" on the PSP—it's an important point. Bomberman is fun, it's always been fun, and the PSP is a strong showcase for the game. In most regards, Bomberman PSP plays like the classic game—our hero strategically. places bombs on the playfield to destroy barriers, enemies, and collect power-ups— with some notable, and largely welcome, differences. The game's in 3D and is awash in crisp, colorful images. Surprisingly, the switch from 2D—while probably necessary to “modern” it up—can cause the minor irritation of hiding the escape hatch, which can lead to accidentally blowing it up and ending the game. But the more significant change is the way power-ups are handled. Instead of using them only for the duration of a level, you can collect and bank them for use in later levels, including the boss battles (except for the "extra time" power-up). This is a godsend, especially since you can use power-ups on the fly. Bomberman can be a tough game, though. Of the seven worlds, | found myself repeating a lot of levels to bank more power-ups because | couldn't get past particular bosses. The game has an autosave feature, but be a little careful on the level-start screens: You can’t save multiple games—you either save over the current game or don't, so you run the danger of having to start a world all over. Of the 50-odd versions of Bomberman over. the years, the basic formula is still intact. This is a good thing, and the PSP version should feel right at home. | Tom Byron Additions actually make this classic better. Can be really tough at times, especially the bosses. SCORE EXC 4 PlayStation. M Want a better Ghosts "n Goblins update? Try Maximo for the PS2. Or Demon's Crestfor the Super NES. Or Ghouls ‘n Ghosts for the Gen- esis. Seriously, anything but this. A Bomberman game can't be truly а Bomb- erman game without multiplayer. The PSP version doesn't disap- point with its two four- ү player ad hoc modes: ; Battle, basically a last- man-standing game with up to 20 stages; and game sharing, allowing four players off one UMD. ULTIMATE GHOSTS ‘N GOBLINS HOPEFULLY, IT'S “ULTIMATE” AS IN “LAST ONE EVER” 1 рув, Capcom оғ. Capcom esee E10+ mser $39.99 І É Oh...not actually very modern ’ The graphics, the controls, the 0 | io 4 ‘SCORE ИЕШЕ ШЕШ) М | БЕШЕШЕ МОЧЕУХ V for Vendetta is based on the graphic novel written Бу the iconoclas- tic Alan Moore who, during the production of this film, was appar- ently so irritated by something one of the producers said that he ordered his name taken off the final cut. | won't gainsay Moore's deci- sion—you know, it's his life—but I will say that | think it’s a shame his name's on a crap movie like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and not on this one. Unlike that waste, this film is both excellent in and of itself and as a reasonably faithful adaptation of Moore's tale. So with Moore “officially” not in the picture, we can chalk that excellence up to the equally iconoclastic Wachowski brothers. Their screenplay (perhaps as atonement for the mishmashy mess of the Matrix sequels) hits all the high notes of Moore's tale of one masked man's struggle against a dystopian, racist, and totalitarian Britain—while making as few concessions to Hollywood as possible. The Wachowskis sat out directing—their longtime colleague James McTeigue, who clearly was paying attention, handles that—but their touch is as much in evidence as Moore's, and in line with it. And what аге Moore and the Wachowskis trying to say? Mostly that freedom is hard work, and that freedom given up through fear is very rarely returned. Yes, the story has resonance at the moment (for its outlines, not its specifics). Personally, | think it’s a very good thing to find it in something passing itself off as mainstream entertainment for the action-movie crowd. Whether that crowd listens is another matter entirely, but getting the message out there is half the battle. Well done to McTeigue, the Wachowskis, and to Moore—whether he wants the credit or not. 86 сет РРР 2 ‘AKEELAH AND THE BEE | Keke Palmer, Laurence Fishburne ] This excellent film looks at the freakish and insular world of kids' spelling bees (which, to be fair, is no more freakish and insular that the world of, say, high-school football—and at least these kids learn how to spell) through the eyes of a girl from the wrong part of town. This film, like its main character, is smart, engaging, surprising...and the best film of this kind since Searching for Bobby Fischer. Yes, that's high praise. SCORE ‘BRICK | Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Lukas Haas | 4 If you ever wanted to know what the results would be like if someone jammed a bunch of teenagers in a box, kept them away from all forms of media except the film noir of the 1930s and '40s, and then released every one of them into the wild on a Saturday night, then boy, oh boy, is this ever the film for you. This high-school murder mystery is mannered to the edge of parody, but it clicks against all odds. A future cult hit. SCORE IHOOT | Logan Lerman, Luke Wilson | | feel sorry for Carl Hiaasen, who's one of the funniest writers in the world right now, but who's had rotten luck with film adaptations of his work (remember Striptease?). Hoot adapts his novel about three kids trying to save some owls from conscienceless developers; some- where along the way, Hiaasen's wit and charm got dredged out of the story, and now it just sits there, waiting for someone to do some- thing interesting. Better luck next time, Carl. SCORE 5 IRV | Robin Williams, Cheryl Hines | This is the sort of поме that used to star Chevy Chase, but god only knows where Chevy Chase has gotten to recently...and, frankly, no one seems to miss him. Instead, we've got Robin Williams jamming his movie family into an RV and having hilarious hijinks involving raccoons and septic tanks. Yes, you'll be reasonably entertained. You'll also be sad that Robin Williams has Chevy Chase's career. Look what it did to Chevy Chase. ІЅСАВҮ MOVIE 4 | Anna Faris, Craig Bierko | 4 The Scary Movie franchise has become kind of like a live-action version of Mad maga- zine—and like that magazine, the parodies of more popular films are generally only as funny as your tolerance for the word “blech.” This time, we get send-ups of War of the Worlds, Saw, The Village, and so on. And if you don't find one joke funny, wait five sec- onds—another will be along. It is what it is. You know if it's for you. ны 2 SEPTEMBER | Silent Hill is one of those rare videogame- derived films not made by Uwe Boll, which means that it's not hobbled by that man's feculent cinematic touch. It is, in fact, directed by Christophe Gans, the crazy Frenchman who directed the loopily fun Brotherhood of the Wolf. And in this film as well as that, Gans offers something worth looking at. But does Gans deliver something worth listening to as well? Sadly, no. As with just about every other videogame movie made, Silent Hill falls down dead when it comes to the details of story, dialogue, and acting. It's not that none of those three exists here—there's quite a lot of plot—it's just that none of it works in the con- text of the movie. For all this movie's visual style, the sound and fury of it signify nothing. SCOPE 21 10 " 4 AAA ITHE SENTINEL Ве ас | Michael Douglas, Kiefer Sutherland | АУ ute Oe Someone's trying to kill the President of the The Shaggy Dog United States, and it’s up to Michael Douglas’ V for Vendetta Secret Service agent to stop them—that is, if August 8 | һе сап get them to believe he's not the one Brick attempting the assassination. This thriller sets August15 up all the plot points and checks them off effi- Hoot ciently: nothing too surprising, but not a bad RV way to waste a couple of hours, either. And Scary Movie 4 Kiefer Sutherland’s on hand to do that squinty August 22 — thing of his. Love that. Silent Hill August 29 _ SCORE 3 Akeelah and the Bee The Sentinel ITHE SHAGGY DOG | Tim Allen, Robert Downey Jr. | Ver enda Bitten by a 300-year-old dog (that's 2,100 in August 22 dog years, har-har-har), Tim Allen becomes a Silent Hill dog over the course of this film, Бесаиве...оһ, | don't know, maybe because Disney wants to make sure CGl-effects people in L.A. can make their mortgages this month. That's really sweet of Disney, but the only reason you want to watch this is to see Robert Downey Jr. as a mad scientist. Dude, he was totally sober when he made this. Really. www.ESRB.org „ a system in pla 292 2N <3 ۹ EVERYONE © 2006 ESRB. All fights reserved. НЕЕ NIE PEWUNG UP THE PLAYSTATION WAYBACK MACHINE | SIAE ал STILL HANGING PRT E E 5 a = ] Did you know that EverQuest Online Adventures is still = n = running? We examine the reasons behind this MMORPG's C 7 аһ M hw | | = | | | Г Л | N continued success. L اڪ‎ L [ ё LE a = ILI * HOW TOMB RAIDER: LEGEND GOT IT RIGHT | FORGOTTEN GEM: KLONOA In an era when 2D platformers were falling out of fashion, 7 7 7 7 7 this “2.5D” masterpiece leapt into our hearts. PS1-DELAND Jeremy takes a critical look at the extinction of the aforementioned 2D platformer. сет сет | 89 ( — i IA | REPLAY BEHIND THE ЗЕМЛЕ 1 L zc TAES 22 41 I. [penc Eg m — | ~ В Ш THE SECRETS BEHIND LAROS TRIUMPHANT EETUEN Я S SEPTEMBER | а = 8 8 E = M Now that Tomb Raider: Legend has finally hit retail, are you happy with the reaction? гел Цпаписъо We're very happy with the fan reaction. It's ultimately how we judge the quality of our games: Did the people we make it for appreciate it? So that they've been as happy as they have [been] has been really rewarding. Why do you think this game has been so well received? What did you do that made people love Lara again? | CD I think it's just that, from day one, we set out to be true to Lara and to create an experience that put her back where she excels—in the tombs. Of course, get- ting off the grid system of the past six Tomb Raiders was very important as well. The physics gave us room to do some new things with level design. There were a lot of things [we concentrated on], but from day one, it was [our intention] to stay true to the first two games in the franchise and bring Tomb Raider up to modern gameplay standards. Is there any particular level or section of the game you're most proud of? | CD The very first physics-based puzzle that takes place in the heart of the first tomb. It uses this relatively new game system to re-create the classic Tomb Raider сетот | Ol — | ! - а = o M } Tomb Raider: Legend: | Robin Hood: Defender of the Crown Secret Weapons Over Normandy Star Trek Bridge Com- mander |: ‘4 Star Wars: X-Wing Alli- апсе Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter—Balance of ` p compared to similar scenes from Legend. How far she's come! А Г = — — — The length of the game is always a challenge, given the art fidelity we go for. That much custom content for every corner of the game, let alone every level, means that everything takes a long time to build—and then a long time to iter- ate—as new technology comes online. And people want a good-looking game. We had a couple of physics puzzles that we were excited about that we weren't able to get in. Look for lots of physics-based fun in the next games. | OPM Is a sequel inevitable? Anything you can say about it right now? Wish we could... ОРМ Do you think the Tomb Raider series lends itself to any sort of online play? Was anything like that considered for Legend? Very early on [in the design process,] online was considered and then dropped. We had our work cut out for us in just delivering a quality single-player experience. Part of the problem with multiplayer in the Tomb Raider universe is there aren't many characters you'd want to play besides Lara. That said, | wouldn't rule it out as a future possibility. “ЛОШЕ ОМТ = E OUT (ONLINE PLAY] room-filling puzzle. The physical aspect is very kinetic, and Lara applies force to it in a fun way. | OPM Is there anything in the game our readers may have missed on their first playthroughs? Most of them probably didn’t get all the rewards and their associated unlockables. There are some helpful gun upgrades and pretty cool outfits if you do—and they’re fun to find. Some of [the associated] puzzles are the harder ones in the game. I OPM Legend feels a tad short compared to earlier games in the series. Is there anything you hoped to add to Legend but couldn't due to time constraints? | aS A FUTURE POSSIBILITY.” I OPM The story line of Legend re-creates the origins of Lara to a certain extent. Does that mean everything that happened in the first six games has been com- pletely wiped away? Not at all. We chose to tell a story that didn't have much to do with the previous Tomb Raider stories, but we also tried not to trample what the previous stories had established. There are some backstory elements that have been care- fully preserved as well. These elements are only touched on in Legend, but we're doing our best to create a cohesive universe for future stories that doesn't ignore the previous ones. | OPM What was your favorite of the first six games? Did it have any major influ- ence on Legend? Probably the second. It delivered the Tomb Raider experience better than the other five. The first and second games both had a major influence on Legend. They defined the spirit of what we set out to deliver: cutting-edge movement ` AENA 5% During our interview, ме asked the guys at Crystal Dynamics if the rumored remake \ of the original Tomb Raider would come to pass. Although they dodged the question, we figured the project was inevitable, thanks to. a video circulating the Web at the time with Core Design's name featured prominently (check it out at www.gamevideos.com). Soon after, though, Core Design announced that while the video was real, the project had been canned. But the very next day, Eidos ч announced that there would indeed be а 10th-anniversary remake of the original Tomb Raider for the PS2, PSP, and PC. But Crystal Dynamics will be the devs—not Core. ИТТ ts Li mechanics, spending the vast majority of the game in and around ancient spaces, large physical puzzles, and acrobatic combat. 1 ОРАМ Tomb Raider practically became the poster child for how not to milk a series. Where do you feel the series went wrong originally? Was the pressure to produce a new sequel every year the main problem? | CD Тһе pressure to produce a sequel a year is always an issue. Making any big game in that time frame is a challenge. Who knows what hurdles [Core Design] had to jump in making their games? All kinds of things happen in this industry. That said, from the outside, it looks like they spent too much time trying to evolve the "soft design"—story, characters, and locales—and not enough time on the "hard design"—controls, mechanics, and game systems. This resulted in Lara get- ting further and further from her element—tomb raiding—and left the gameplay almost exactly where it was when [the series] started. I OPM How will you keep the same thing from happening with Tomb Raider this time around? = “THE PRESSURE ТО PRODUCE A | SEQUEL A YEAR IS ALIVAYS AN ISSU | CD We саге a lot about story. We believe in it as a critical component of the experience and essential to developing Lara's character, but gameplay comes first. We'll not forget this. I OPM Before Tomb Raider was handed to Crystal Dynamics, Core Design made a lot of noise about their future plans for Lara and her story following Angel of Darkness. Does Crystal Dynamics have any sort of overarching story line they've only just scratched with Legend? 1 СО We've put a fair bit of energy into the backstory. Legend was really about Lara, as any Tomb Raider game will be, but future games will deal more with this developing backstory to give fans a better sense of the larger forces at work in Lara's world. | OPM What kind of input did Lara's creator, Toby Gard, have on the project? Will he be consulting on the inevitable sequel? i / /F o E Й === ДІ Tomb Raider: Legend: Legacy of Kain: Defiance Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2 Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain Solar Eclipse | СО It was great to have Toby on board in developing Legend. He's smart and friendly and obviously cares a lot about Lara. He did a lot of different things on Legend, including providing direction for cinematics, collaborating on story, and doing character concepts. He always had great feedback for those things he wasn't directly on the hook for as well. He'll definitely be tapped for contribution to future projects. I OPM And finally, we just have to ask whether you've had a chance to mess around with the PlayStation 3. What are your thoughts on the system? 1CD We look forward to having three consoles out there to show our work on. Only our engineers have played with it thus far. We're sure they're having some fun with it. сет сет | 93 —1] ШЫ” 222. ; | REPLAY COMMUNITY HANGING ON 72222 Ж EUEP EST TUNE Resume 94 | сет NSN Back in the golden age of massively multiplayer online RPGs (aka the late 1990s), EverQuest publisher/developer Verant Interactive (now part of Sony Online Entertainment) ruled the genre with a +5 elven-chainmail fist. In February 2003, four years after the original PC-based EQ's release, SOE attempted to cash іп on the console crowd with EverQuest Online Adventures for the PS2, predicting a whopping 100,000 subscribers out of the gate. EQOA fell consider- ably short of those figures (topping out at roughly 50,000, accord- ing to MMO tracking site mmogchart.com) and received just one гета! expansion—EverQuest Online Adventures: Frontiers—in November of that year. Skeptics might expect the game to have died a quiet death at some point since...yet three years later—and despite the spotty retail presence—people (approximately 30,000 of ‘em, says mmogchart.com) still play EQOA. It certainly isn't for lack of competition; Square Enix's Final Fantasy XI easily tops EQOA's subscriber base by an estimated 1,600 percent, and anyone willing to look beyond the PS2 can “DOUZ COMMUNITY IS A THEI- LING, TIGHT-KNIT BUNCH.” obviously find a staggering selection of high-profile MMOs for the PC (World of WarCraft, anyone?). SOE, for its part, main- tains that the game's quality keeps it afloat. “I can tell you that our community is a thriving, tight-knit bunch,” says associate producer Leah "Sapphyra" Ruben. "We've got a fantastic track record of 'stickiness'—when people log in, they generally like what they see and stick around for a while. A few months ago, we ran a promotion that allowed all inactive accounts in good standing to log in for 30 days to give us a try. According to our reports, over half the people that logged in subscribed for at least a month after seeing how the game had changed and evolved since they'd logged in last. EQOA specifically shines as an engaging game you can play from your couch—something many of our players enjoy over PC games." According to Ruben, EQOA also does OK for itself when it comes to attracting new customers—not the easiest feat in the world, considering the game's retail nonvisibility. "Word of mouth is key," Ruben explains. "People that get involved with the game like to tell their friends about it...and chances are, the average per- son is more likely to have a PS2 rather than a bleeding-edge PC. We have families, neighbors, and couples that play together. For maintaining our subscribers, we do what we do best: constantly update the game, try to make it just a little bit better each time, and keep in constant contact with our community." SOE's community efforts include a weekly "In Development" report on the EQOA website, a monthly SOE podcast (the first one debuted in June and included an EQOA segment with Ruben), and a surprisingly active message board—where we put the big ques- tion to the players themselves: Why do people still play EQOA? Forum user Saeadarra cuts straight to the chase: "My PC can almost-but-not-quite meet World of WarCraft's specs, so that settled that for me. EQOA was the first online game | tried, and it was so easy to get into, easy to learn the controls, and the early levels were a stepping-stone for learning one's [character]." CMax, who plays EQOA with his family, takes this rationale a bit further: "We cannot afford three computers and the required upgrades. Having three PS2s fits the bill. Also, my wife does not care for games where many of the actions require a keyboard, and our son is not allowed on the computer with all that is going on today." CMax ends his post by affirming that “I’ve been play- ing EQOA since before the beginning and will keep playing until the end. If a sequel [comes] out for the PS3, my family and | will be there, too." Several others cite the game as a great alternative to dealing with potentially expensive PC upgrades, while extolling EQOA's uncomplicated gameplay and an active, friendly community— often in stark contrast to Final Fantasy ХГз grueling nature. "The community in FFX/ was far from helpful," user Lando complains. “| roamed around for hours in a starting city begging people to help me. EQOA is way different—people will help you if you ask them to. They'll give you advice and maybe even help you get a coach or two." Fellow poster Youscareme backs up the commu- nity sentiment: "I, too, play this game mostly for the people. If it weren't for them, | would have been gone awhile ago." PHAT LENT: THE NEST GENERATION? But while many players sing the praises of EQOA's affordability and kinship, some fear for the game's long-term life expectancy, especially with the PS3 looming on the horizon. Forum user Bra- vado says what's on everyone's mind: "Hopefully SOE [makes] another expansion for EQOA, whether for the PS2 or PS3. A lot of revenue and potential will be lost the day the servers shut down if SOE decides not to continue this game." SOE's Ruben assures us that no one needs to panic. "The answer is that we're committed to updating and continuing devel- opment on the game," she pledges. "Our 'to-do' list is literally infinite. In terms of expanding the game beyond just updates, we've got some stuff on the drawing board." That may not be quite the confirmation that many players want—but it's better than nothing. | Ryan Scott Neither EverQuest Online Adventures nor its lone expan- sion, EverQuest Online Adventures: Frontiers, managed to achieve quite the same level of distinction as their PC-based brethren. For those of you still completely in the dark about North America's first PS2-based MMORPG (and those who need а refreshe here are the basics: Sony Online Entertainment Sony Online Entertainment J $39.99 (EQOA); 529.99 (Frontiers) Febru- агу 11, 2003 (EQOA); November 17, 2003 (Frontiers) $12.99 (or $24.99 via SOE's all-inclusive Station Access) 30,000 as of May 2006 (source: mmogchart.com) everqueston- lineadventures.station. sony.com f сот 2.5 ош of 5 (ЕООД! out of 5 (Frontiers) ІНЕН Ач! FORGOTTEN GEM KLONA Fee UID Та ва ANN SEPT EMAaEA Poor Klonoa. Just like the games he starred in, he never quite fit in. Released in 1998, Namco’s Klonoa: Door to Phantomile arrived right when 3D gam- ing started getting good. It appeared right as traditional side-scrolling platform action games were being written off as dead and buried (and good riddance, said the press). It showed up as gamers were starting to realize that maybe cuddly mascot characters weren't really necessary for a good game. Needless to say, as a 2D platformer star- ring a fuzzy cat-thing, Klonoa was greeted with a resounding shrug of indifference when it hit American stores. Even those who gave the game a chance were mostly underwhelmed by all the cute critters and what appeared to be almost insultingly easy gameplay. Poor gamers. They missed out on one of the finest 32-bit games ever created. For those who saw the game through to its end, Klonoa offered a truly engrossing experience that belied its childlike aesthetic and simple play mechanics. In an era where DualShocks and the N64's three-pronged controllers required increasingly intricate hand contortions to perform the most basic of actions, Klonoa's limited interface—the ular character jumped and grabbed/tossed ies using only two buttons—was a wel- come reminder of the satisfaction inherent in intuitive, pick-up-and-play gaming. His dou- ble-jump, enabled by using a captive enemy as a stepping-stone, was about as complex as the controls ever got. Yet the game was anything but a push- over—at about the halfway point, its chal- lenge suddenly ramped up. Enemy placement became trickier, often requiring complex maneuvers to defeat foes. Level designs grew gradually more complex as well, packed with branching paths and puzzles that required devious applications of Klonoa's minimalist skill set. And while the game never lost its sac- charine cuteness—everyone spoke in an imaginary language of babbles, and Klonoa's companion Huepow was squeaky enough to make nearby dogs howl in agony—the story took a dark turn along the way. The villainous Ghadius shattered the idyllic world of Phan- tomile, and Klonoa himself suffered a heart- breaking loss. But most bittersweet of all was the hero's realization of his true place in the world. PlayStation gamers like to hold up Aerith's death in Final Fantasy VII as the most emotionally devastating scene they'd ever witnessed in a videogame, but it really had nothing on watching Klonoa and Huepow's happy ending take a bittersweet turn. Klonoa's true sophistication came in the form of its graphics; rather than transpiring in a flat, two-dimensional world, the game action was rendered in polygons. It certainly wasn't the first game to adopt this style, but Namco gave this effort far more polish than the likes of Clockwork Knight and Pan- demonium! Not only did the visual design allow for sweeping vistas and majestic boss encounters, it also gave the 2D action a hint of depth—Klonoa could sometimes move away from the camera via branching paths, or toss enemies at targets located in the fore- ground or background. As a small bonus, Klonoa is one of the few games to genuinely benefit from the PlayStation 2's ability to smooth out textures in PS1 games—not only does the feature make the backgrounds look even crisper, it transforms the character sprites from confusing blobs into something resembling actual artwork. It's mysterious black magic, but it's definitely welcome. While the game spawned several sequels, none of them have meshed together in quite the same way as the original. The portable puzzle spin-offs are challenging and enter- taining, but they lack the visual splendor that the PS1's polygons offered. К/опоа 2 for the PS2 helped pioneer cel-shaded graphi- cal design, but it gets bogged down by far too much story and less imaginative level designs than its predecessor. And the import- only К/опоа Beach Volleyball for PS1 is like Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball for the Sesame Street set. Klonoa is a unique gem, rivaled by a few games (Tombal, for instance) but surpassed by none. It's a perfect combination of graph- ics, level design, story, and intuitive game- play. And, like so many works of genius, it went sadly unappreciated in its time, both by the public and by much of the press. Ultimately, though, what K/onoa most represents is Namco's special touch: the ability to create great games that made the company such an arcade powerhouse in the early '80s. Amidst the violence of its Tekkens and the realism of its Ace Combats, Klonoa proves that Namco still values simplicity, charm, and—above all—good fun. By bucking trends and stepping boldly backward, К/опоа became a 32-bit classic...and a great game in any era. | Jeremy Parish PS1-DEIRPLAND ACROSS THE DIMENSIONS JEREMY PARISH When he’s not trying to reclaim his vanished youth with obsolete games, Jeremy works as 1UPcom's features editor and charming mascot. Check out his blog at toastyfrog.1UP.com Ld As a child of the NES era, | have an undeniable soft spot for plat- form games. You know, the run-and-jump affairs—collect 100 of this, strain to reach that out-of-the-way ledge, maybe grab а power-up somewhere along the way. RPGs, first-person shooters, and sandbox adventure games all have their place in this world, but when it gets down to the brass tacks, the heart of gaming is about hopping on your enemy's head...with gusto. Maybe it's just my age catching up with me, but | definitely pre- fer platformers of a 2D nature. They tend to be much faster-paced, more intuitive, and—best of all—require far less wrestling with uncooperative camera controls. 3D platformers tend to be overde- signed and plodding, requiring a lot more effort for the same amount of leaping satisfaction. Alas, wonderful as Super Mario 64 was, it represented an extinc- tion-level event for the 2D-platforming genre. Dinosaurs had their comet; 2D platformers had Bob-omb Battlefield. Mario 64 became the standard. Gamers enjoyed that game—therefore, game cre- ators reasoned, they'd enjoy other games just like it. Meanwhile, the neophiliacs in the media urged the swift death of anything that smacked of a mere 16 bits. Thanks for 10 years of good times, two- dimensional planes. It’s been real, parallax scrolling. Don’t call us, bit-map graphics—we'll call you. And we greeted the extra dimension with open arms. A decade of 2D platformers had given rise to a /ot of bad ones. Usually, they sported a movie license or a furry mascot—or, in worst-case sce- narios, both. Of course, it didn't take long to realize that this wasn't so much an issue with 2D gaming as it was an issue with gaming in general—where Mario leads, imitators follow. But by then, it was too late. 2D gaming was all but dead. With our best David Byrne anguish, we asked ourselves, “Му god! What have | done?” Fortunately, certain clever developers had sorted out a way to enjoy the best of both worlds—2D games with the 3D graphics necessary to trick the PlayStation generation into playing them. Clockwork Knight on the Saturn was the first game to really pull it off, and Sega’s NiGHTS took it in a dazzling aerial direction—but the NiGHTS-inspired Klonoa perfected it. The polygonal graphics allowed for majestic camera angles in both gameplay and cinemas, to say nothing of the spectacular boss battles. And all without sacrificing the tight gameplay and simple controls that were the hallmarks of the best classic games. These “2.50” games have experienced something of a resur- gence in the past year or two, thanks to the rise of powerful hand- held consoles. True 3D doesn't work too well оп portables—turns out that judging depth is tough on a 3-inch screen—which is why Mega Man's PSP outings have featured 100-percent retro-classic gameplay, exact control, and the fully polygonal graphics neces- sary to trick the kids into thinking they're all newfangled. Meanwhile, the 2.5D New Super Mario Bros. over on the DS has already sold 2.5 million copies worldwide, proving there's money to be made with this pseudoretro style of game...and mak- ing it likely that we'll be seeing quite a bit more of them. It seems that no matter the dimension, where Mario leads...well, you know the rest. | JOE ІӘУБІГКІ looks forward to play- ing all the hottest games of the future on his BrainStation, surgically implanted by ¢ the friendly doctors at the Sony labs. Want to share your own visions of the future? opm@2ziffdavis.com. ГУП OA... ‘MEMORIES OF THE FUTURE Sharp-eyed readers will note that last month was the 10th anniversary of my first day here in Ziffalia. Things were different back then—very different. You damn kids with your music don't realize how good you've got it. When | started, not only was | working on a Macintosh Ilsi (сігса 1990 and lacking even а CD drive), | had to share it with another employee. We didn’t even get e-mail until 1998. All grumpy-old-manliness aside, this anniversary has got me think- ing about the bad old days, how far we've come since then, and where we might be headed. So | thought | would share with you a few of my predictions for the next 10 years. In 2016... -..graphics will be so advanced that we won't even use them as a standard for judging games. Ав іп the days when graphics consisted of one or two moving blocks, gameplay will be king. ...Зопу Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi will be hyp- ing the PlayStation 5'5 ability to play датез іп (һе sixth dimension. Мо one will have any idea what he's talking about. .. № е will look back and laugh at today’s spinning-plastic-disc technology. Games will be downloaded directly to multiterabyte hard drives, or sold in stores on 100GB flash memory. ...there will no longer be a distinction between PC games and con- sole games, because Microsoft (whose headquarters, incidentally, will grow to occupy the entire Pacific Northwest, eventually seceding from the U.S. and asserting its independence as the Republic of Gatesylva- nia) will have integrated Xbox game support into Windows. Speaking 2006 of the Xbox, | have two words for you: Xbox Ultra. Seriously, where do you go from "360"? «UMD movies will still be dead. ...Sony's crack technicians will finally figure out a way to implement both rumble and motion-sensing in a single controller, just in time for the next big wave of novelty control systems: brainwaves. ...the designers of Duke Nukem Forever will have finished wall tex- tures and will be moving on to floors. ... Videogame consoles will cost as much as high-end televisions— but they will be hooked up to everything in your house. With the help of your PS5, you will be able to record TV shows, listen to music, surf the Internet, turn on your air conditioning, program your coffeemaker, open your garage door, start your саг, shop for groceries, draw a bath, detect intruders in your home, get a totally bitchin’ tan, travel through time...oh, and, uh, play games. --ап army of cybernetically enhanced clones of antigaming zealot Jack Thompson will stalk the streets at night, blasting down the doors of black-market adult-gaming dens and incinerating the scum within in a purifying fire of righteousness. Lacking the convenient target of videogames, parents will discover that the responsibility for raising their own children has, in fact, been theirs all along. ...and a new GTA will make someone angry. I’m pretty sure about that last one. | бірге: а ADUERTISER INDE? _ Atlus Software www.atlus.com ae 31 Eidos Interactive, Ine. www.eidos.com 100 Full Sail Real World Education wwwfullsail.com 83 Midway Games, Inc. www.midway.com demo, 11, 66a-b Namco Hometek www.namco.com demo, 4-5, 13, 16-17, 33 Napster www.napster.com 99 Office for National Drug Control Policy wwwwhatsyourantidmug com. 23 Sega of America wwwsega com 67 ‘Sony Computer Entertainment America www.scea.com 23 Sony Media Software www.sony.com/ mediasoftware 27 Square Enix U.S.A., Inc. www.square-enix-usa.com 21, 39, 40-41 The Gillette Company wwwigillette.com 29, 78, 79 LISTEN ТО OVER 2 MILLION AT NAPSTER.COM COMING FALL 2006 | Language DVD-R M ЕШТЕН Sexual Themes M Just Cause © 20 idos, In р е саан ВЕ e ке Developed by Avalanche Studios. Published by Eidos, Inc. Just Cause, Eidos, and the Eidos logo are trademarks of the SCi Ent: {чш жае кышу logo are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Microsoft, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox Live, the Xbox logos. с | ftware platform logo (TM and ©) IEMA 2006. The rating icon is a registered trademark of the Entertainment Software jte Жа gem me, ONE REVOLUTION | ISTC LATED Blood а o Drug Reference. Intense Violence | CL PlayStation.e NT. THANKS FOR JOINING THE aw STA TIO шге: тет Here's your FREE copy of the Official US. PlayStation Magazine and your FREE PlayStation’2 demo disc. Now that you're а member, you can look forward to receiving more cool PlayStation® stuff straight from the source! | Xeox |; PlayStation [Agi MAGAZINE | ве Made with love Бу -<БЕКСОМАС- Ourgoal is о presene с/аѕѕіс MICE ‘дате magazines SO ше they! аге пой lost permanently: People interested in helping out in any capacity, please visit 05 at геќотадѕ- сот" № profitis таде тот thesescans, nondo we offer anything ама|йа етот е publishers themselves: Ifyou соте across anyone selling releases from this site please ао по support them апа | Ко letus know: Thank you!