г PLAY "ча. р LEVEL LEGO STAR WARS I- ONE PIECE: G2AND ADVENTURE MOE ? p | OFFICIAL U.S. [ = your #1 PLAYSTATION AUTHORITY M AGAZI N E 4 €. вм AMY OF\TWO OPM! ж NEW SCREENS . NEWNFO . NEW LEVELS iere Ti a 255 EXCLUSIVES WORLDWIDE REVEAL! COMPLETELY REBORN FOR NEXT GEN 4 RESISTANCE! NEW SCREENS & INFO ON SONWS KILLER въз FPS OF Б А, i ) JADE RAYMOND BULLY! € р | / E. UBISOFT'S СВЕЕО KEEPER ROCKSTAR j l | эше ток LS THE PSZ TU A mm T PS2 EXCLUSIVE PHANTASY STARZ а= Й PSP FIRST PICS БТА: WCE CITY E = and the PlayStation logos a TUS I'M BUSY PLAYING PSP GREATEST HITS FOR #11.99; 50 CALL SOMEONE ELSE'S NAME-LIKE PRANK OR SOMETHING. ТЕК & 19.98" *MSRP-p PRODUCTS RANGE ЕМЕВУОМЕ е Е ТЕЕМ PsP PlayStation Portable “PlayStation” “PSP” and the “PS” Family logo are registered. trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment inc. Internet connection: and Memory Stick Duo™ may be required. All games featured are trademarked and copyrighted properties of respective publishers and/or licensors. Memory Stick Duo is a trademark of Sony Corporation, ©2006 Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc.. ‘ROM Е STEE INTO THE SHADOWS OF JAPAN 5 UNDERWORLD. “7. A MASTERPIECE.” je "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 A GAME ABOUT JAPANESE = = PSM MOBSTERS? WE SURE AS HELL ARE!” = - GAMESPOT.COM Xn Е А НЕА ед. UNLOAD DEADLY COMBOS WITH KEEP HER SATE AND FIND THE STRIKE WITH POWERFUL FINISHING AVENGE DISHONOR THROUGH THE OVER 300 ITEMS AND WEAPONS TRUTH BEHIND EHE MYSTERY BLOWS AS YOU UPGRADE YOUR SKILLS TWISTING, DRAMATIC STORYLINE Sexual Themes | Strong Language Use of Alcohol PlayStation. Violence ® PlayStation.2 SEPTEMBER 8, 2006 ЗЕЕ TEE SLORY UNFOLD АТ. УУЗУ КО А АТАА МЕТ COM SEGA is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. SEGA, the SEGA logo and YAKUZA are either registered trademarks ог 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 ee WWW.SPLINTERCELL.COM OWN IT OCTOBER 19" ALSO AVAILABLE: XBOX 360™ COLLECTOR'S EDITION MATURE 17+ Blood Language Violence PlayStation.e CONTENT RATED BY Е = ч ЕЕ © 2006 Ubisoft Entertainment. All Rights Reserved. Splinter Cell, Splinter Сей Double Agent, Sam Fisher the Soldier Icon, Ubisoft, Ubi.com, and the Ubisoft logo are trademarks of Ubisoft Entertainment in the US. and/or other countries. Microsoft, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox Live, the Xbox logos, and the Xbox Live logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. TM, ©, and the Nintendo GameCube logo are trademarks of Nintendo. © 2001 Nintendo. “PlayStation” and the "PS" Family logo are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. 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Lego Star Wars Il: The Original Trilogy NHL 07 NASCAR 07 Super Monkey Ball Adventure Barnyard Monster House One Piece: Pirates' Carnival Over the Hedge LocoRoco 50 Cent: Bulletproof G-Unit Edition Miami Vice The Game Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest Micro Machines V4 MTX: Mototrax Rengoku Il: The Stairway to H.E.A.V.E.N. Madden NFL 07 ИНЕНІ ps OPMIUP.COM 80 DCTOBRER COMEIZED INSIDE Yakuza яз Zatch Bell! Mamodo Fury 55 Resistance: The Fall of Man с 50 Cent: Bulletproof SB PREVIEWS Marvelous Metal Gear, great GTA, rocking Resistance, and much more. 74 INDEPENDENTS’ DAY Freedom is worth the price. ЕНЕ ЛЕ Ц S Үакиға Xenosaga Episode III: Also Sprach Zarathustra Eureka Seven Vol. 1: The New Wave IGPX: Immortal Grand Prix Zatch Bell! Mamodo Fury Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria The King of Fighters 2006 Rule of Rose Samurai Warriors 2 E ав Army of Two 72 Assassin's Creed 40 Burnout 5 Ej THE GHOST OF SYSTEMS PAST Whatever happened to the PSX? 1 10 THINGS YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOUR PSP И does more than just play games. 104 SOUND STATION The music of Madden. 105 HEAD TO HEAD Three survival-horror series enter a room; one leaves.... 105 PS1-DERLAND When games got mouthy. ІШЕ IN MY DAY Farewell, E3.... Barnyard Bully Eureka Seven Vol. 1: The New Wave IGPX: Immortal Grand Prix The King of Fighters 2006 86 Lego Star Wars Il: The Original Trilogy Monster House NASCAR 07 NHL 07 One Piece: Pirates’ Carnival Over the Hedge Phantasy Star Universe Rule of Rose Samurai Warriors 2 Super Monkey Ball Adventure Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria Xenosaga Episode 111: Also Sprach Zarathustra E 70 s5 SO 93 G-Unit Edition Every Extend Extra Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories Gunpey LocoRoco Lumines II Madden NFL 07 Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Miami Vice The Game Micro Machines V4 MTX: Mototrax Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest Rengoku Il: The Stairway to H.E.A.V.E.N. HUNGRY LIKE THE WOLF 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 bring you a brand-new demo for Okami. Sample three different levels from this amazing game, including the chance to fend off an onslaught of unusual villains in Shinshu Field and the Opportunity to tackle an awesome boss fight in the Curse of the Crim- son Helm. Don't forget to check out the latest One Piece game, fea- turing a hybrid of 1-on-1 fighting mixed with an adventure mode. Finally, we couldn't resist putting the Lego Star Wars Il demo on the disc once more to make sure anybody picking upthe magazine atthe newsstand does NOT miss out on this game! So, what are you waiting for? Grab the disc and get to your PlayStation 2. Haven't made up your mind about Okami? This new demo should convince you to hand over your hard- earned cash for this brush with greatness. OK, we confess: We could not get enough of this demo, and we wanted to make sure everybody had the chance to play it. We unlock the secrets of this awesome game 50 you can become the ultimate guitar hero! AII LucasArts pulls the bricks apart to go in-depth with its latest game. Find out all the juicy details on what to expect in this classic trilogy. to your memory card. you have to do is move it Take to the high seas in search of your pirate posse and engage in battles on your quest for treasures and adventure. The developers of Dark Cloud 2 are back with This paranormal adven- ture is coming to a console near you, and the Grim Reaper wants you to answer his call. wantto take you behind the scenes to discover their new adventure and the life of a space pirate. Demo Disc Producers Gary Barth, Cori Lucas, Manuel Sousa, Chris Тап 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 or 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. ТО | ОА Остовег 2006 THE DEATH OF ONE AWAKENS A PATH TO THE END. 7 THE LONG-ANTICIPATED CONCLUSION ТО AN EPIC TRILOGY. Over 8 hours of movies includin An easily accessible in-game “Xeno Bible” include: the entire Xenosaga® series. Money and shops аге back! Buy, barter, and sell any items An updated battle system comb two games, while introducing th Customize your characters with a branching skill set. \2 | You'll be h Strate 60-premade mini-game levels and a min editor for sharing custom maps with friends Language Mild Suggestive Themes j| Violence Xenosaga® 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. пама сомеелааго has started her campaign for the inclusion of the Oscar Mayer Wienermo- bile in Burnout 5 by using the office UPS services to send a daily package stuffed with hot dogs to Criterion. She will not cease until her demands are met! ПОЕ RYBICKI decided to prepare for the release of Army of Two by recruiting the most reliable game- play partner that he could find: himself. The cloning project went great—now, the only question: Which one of him gets to cash his paycheck? THIERRY NGUYEN has been alive for about 10,000 days, and what does he have to show for it? A jaunty new hat that doesn't fit his misshapen Scoot-brain and a gen- eral disdain for fools who fail to regulate on a daily basis. Yeah, he’s talking about you, Tom. GIANCARLO чагамм was almost too busy to write this bio because he was off screwing around with the Virtua Fighter 4 arcade cabinet in the lobby and eating deli- cious-yet-deadly birthday cake. Also, yay for sleep deprivation—thanks, stupid cat. LOGAN PAREZ is discovering his “inner rave" at the moment. We're cool about the baggy pants with all those straps and spiky accessories attached, but the new hat has us baffled. But it does cover those UV-reactant hair extensions he just got, so it isn’t all bad. RYAN UULK was forced to use this space to give a shout-out to Lithian, a fellow ҒҒХ/ player on the Ramuh server. And now that he’s followed through on his end of the bargain, he's expecting something nice and shiny in his delivery box—preferably in the form of 1 billion gil. ALEJANDRO сначетта will have celebrated his second full year of employment at OPM by the time you read this. He wants to thank the rest of the staff for turn- ing him into a crazy dirt- bag faster than you can say "бой Hand.” Thanks a lot, idiots. ADDITIONAL CONTRIBUTORS EDIT Robert Coffey Darren Gladstone Patrick Mauro Jeremy Parish GREG SEWART John Scalzi hails from the same ART country cold comes from: Karen Chu Canada. He worked for Darren Curtis OPM's sister mag, Elec- Jonny Krieg tronic Gaming Monthly, Nate Van Dyke for years before joining, FONTS and then leaving, the Community Service, game-design community. Unfinished stewy.1UP.com by YouWorkForThem PATRICK соумт likes playing зоссег games, but not as much as he likes downing a dozen Coronas, watch- ing World Cup action, and crying like a baby when his team loses. halofire.TUP.com 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. He's multifunctional like that. robertashley.1UP.com Ex TENDED FAMILY Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine (ISSN #1094-6683) is published monthly by Ziff Davis Media Inc., 28 East 28th Street, New York, NY 10016. Periodicals Postage Paid at New York, NY 10016 and additional mailing offices, Ride Along enclosed in all U.S. copies. Single-issue rate: $8.99. Subscription Rates: One Year (12 issues and 12 demo discs) $49.97 U.S., $65.97 all other countries. Ride along enclosed, POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine, Р.О. Box 55362, Boulder, CO 80322-5362. 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Without limiting the rights under copyrights reserved heroin, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written notice of Ziff Da each in the US, 510 each elsewhere (subject to availability), Prepayment is required. Make checks payable to Official 0.5. PlayStation Magazine, Mail your requests to: Back Issues, ! is a rogistorod is Media Inc. The editors and publishers are not respon. sible for unsolicited materials. For permission to reuse material from our publications or websites, or to use our logo, contact Ziff Davis Media's Rights and Permissions Manager, Olga Gonopolsky, at permis: sions@ziffdavis.com. For article reprints and e-prints, contact FosteReprints, 866-879-9144. TM & © for all other products and the characters contained therein are owned by the respective trademark and copyright holders. АП materials in this magazine are subject to change and the publisher assumes по responsibility for such changes. The Canadian GST registration number is 14049 6720 RT. Publications | Май Agreement No. 40009221. Return Undeliverable Canadian Addresses to РО Box 503, RPO West Seaver Crook, Richmond НИ, ON L4B ars. Printed in the USA. THE MAGAZINE Editor-in-Chief Tom Byron ig Editor Dana 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, Robert Coffey John Davison, Darren Gladstone, Patrick Joynt, Patrick Mauro, James Mielke Jeremy Parish, John Scalzi, Greg Sewart [СОРУ DESKS гс сее ы чел сс, ЕРІ Copy Chief Jason Wilson Copy Editors Kaitlen Jay Exum, Andrew Fitch Senior Production Manager Anne Marie Miguel Production Manager Monica Bront President Scott C. McCarthy Senior Vice President and GM, ТИР Network ка Becker Senior Vice President and Editorial Director John Davison Senior Vice President of Sales Scott McDaniel nt of Advertising Sales Marci Yamaguchi nt of Marketing, Research and Events Rey Ledda of Circulation David Rock Group Creative Director Simon Cox Senior Vice President of Sales Scott McDaniel Vice President of Advertising Sales Marci Yamaguchi Director of Online Sales Brent Martyn GAMING ACCOUNTS—NORTHWEST Regional Sales Director Amy Mishra Account Executive Mac O'Rourke SOUTHWEST Southern СА, AZ Regional Sales Director Leslie C. Gelfand Senior Account Executive Rita Kline EAST AL AR, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, IA, IO, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, MT, NC, NO, NE, NH, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA RI, SC, SO, TN, TX, UT, VA, VT, WA, WI, WV, WY, Canada Regional Sales Manager Andrew Reedman Account Executive Jessica Reback CONSUMER ACCOUNTS Senior Director of Consumer Advertising Sales Marc Callison West Regional Sales Director Laura Hill East Regional Sales Director Bruce Kaplan Account Executive Jessica Reinert AUTOMOTIVE ACCOUNTS—DETROIT Regional Sales Manager Ken Stubblefield Promotions Manager Wendy Donohue Senior Advertising Coordinator Tipler Ubbelohde Administrative Assistant Lynn Fortunato Sales Assistant Tiffany Orf To contact sales and advertising, please call 415-547-8000 JUPCOM Editor-in-Chief Sam Kennedy Senior Manager of Ad Operations Adam Carey Audience Development Manager Nopadon Wongpakdee Advertising Campaign Coordinator LeAnne Hsu MARKETING President of Marketing, Research and Events Rey Ledda rch Director May Tong Senior Promotions Manager Wendy Donohue PR Manager Jason Freidenfelds ног Vanessa Alvarado Tiffany Ort Marketing Graphic Designer Drew Hathaway Chairman & CEO Robert F Callahan Chief Financial Officer Mark Moyer Executive Vice President & Chief Content Officer Michael J. Miller Executive Vice President, Licensing & Logal Affairs, Goneral Counsel & Secretary Gregory Barton Presidents Scott C. McCarthy (Game Group) Sloan Seymour (Enterprise Group) Jason Young (Consumer Tech/Small Business Group) Senior Vice Presidents. Kenneth Beach (Corporato Sales) Ira Becker (Game Group) John Davison (Editorial Director, Game Group) Jim Louderback (Editorial Director, Consumer/Small Business Group) Angelo Mandarano (Sales & Marketing, Internet) Scott McDaniel (Sales, Game Group) Martha Schwartz (Custom Solutions Group) Michael Vizard (Editorial Director, Enterprise Group) Vice Presidents Aaron Goldberg (Market Experts) Barty Harrigan (Internet) Kristin Holmes (International Licensing) Michael Krieger (Market Experts) Rey Ledda (Marketing, Research and Events, Game Group) Rick Lehrbaum (Internet) Eric Lundquist (Editor-in-Chief, eWEEK) Chris Maginn (Internet) Jim McCabe (PC Magazine) Paul O'Reilly (Event Marketing Group) Ellen Pearlman (Editor-in-Chief, CIO Insight) Beth Repeta (Human Resources) David Rock (Circulation, Game Group) Stephen Sutton (Audience Development, Consumer/Small Business Group) Stephen Veith (Enterprise Group Publishing Director] Monica Vila (Event Marketing Group) Marci Yamaguchi (Sales, Game Group) Randy Zane (Corporate Communications) IT West Coast. Senior Technical Analyst Bill Schmelzer Desktop Administrator Nick Kalister Contact anyone on this masthead using firstname_lastname@zitfdavis.com SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE NUMBER 800-627-6458 (U.S. and Canada only) 3-604-74 сібе online 12 | OAM Остов TAKE OUT ENEMIESIUSING “THE ROCK'S” URESTLING-INSPIREU COMBAT MOVES. BS 2% — 1 Ni ТІ EQUIPPED WITH AN ARSENAL OF WEAPONS, THE INTERCEPTOR 15 LETHAL ON LAND ОН WATER. THE ULTIMATE ASSAULT VEHICLE TRANSFORMS FROM CAR TO BORT TO MOTORCYCLE. “NOW THIS 15 BURNOUT WITH GUNS.” — OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE CJD MIDWAY WWW.THESPYHUNTER.COM PlayStation. pu з | irY9LIT Е Еа ШЕН А EHLI T ОЧе PEADEIES AlE CRAZY 4 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 Hey assfaces, yous jerks should put that crazy godhand game in your next demo disc. dya kno wat i mean?\ that Godhand game. The one that';s all crazy ni s***. . u know that feeling when ui drink too much wine and you're all like " whoascrap wats happen- ing?" well thats the feel ing I’m getting and u should put a video of Godhand s in ur next demo disc. | weiil get и \. din't underestimate the power of TEKKEN MAN! love, а FRIENDLY I2EIVIINDEI2 FROM ОРАЛ ШЕЕ PLAYSTATION 3 IS IN STORES NOVEMBER 17. I'm very interested in getting into the gaming industry as a gaming journalist or a writer. | was wondering if you had any advice for people like me. This is one of the most common questions we receive. While there’s no surefire way to guarantee employment in gaming journalism, there are some things you could do that might help. Here are eight ideas: 1. Be an expert in the field. It’s not only important to like games; you have to know a lot about games—and not just PlayStation, but Nintendo, Xbox, PC, GBA SP PSP, and so on. There are people at Ziff Davis (publisher of OPM, ЕСМ, CGW, and 1URcom) who are walking encyclopedias when it comes to games. 2. Become a writer. Write a lot, have people critique your work, and take their comments seriously. Teachers, friends, family-—anyone who will give you an honest opinion. Take writing classes. Hone your skills. 3. Write, write, and write! Start a gaming blog (perhaps on 1UP!). Start a local gaming fanzine or website. Write letters to the editor. Write for game fansites. The more public writ- ing you do, the greater a credible portfolio you'll build. 4. Get to know people in the gaming busi- ness. Many gaming press have blogs (includ- ing all of the OPM staff) or other ways to be contacted. Get to know some of them. You may find you can build a good relationship that could lead to opportunities. 5. Check around for internships. Ziff Davis, for instance, considers college-age applicants for internships. 6. College and/or college-level writing courses or a journalism (or related) degree help, but they're not necessary. A degree does say you take a writing career seriously. 7. Be professional. Always. People pay attention to people who are reliable, knowledgeable, competent, and enthusiastic about what they do. 8. Persevere. A good attitude is essential for this—nothing's going to happen over- night, so the proper way to approach all this is through patience and perseverance. In regard to your Hype featurette about over- priced goods (OPM #107, August 2006), I'd like to add something: At the Formula One store (fistore.formulat.com), they have mouse pads (mouse pads!) priced at over $450. OK, so they are made out of carbon fiber, but they're bloody mouse pads! Is God of War Il going to be on PS2 or PS3??? Sony has announced GOW2 only for the PS2. We're kinda betting on the rumor that there will be a high-resolution version for the PS3 at some point, and of course if this installment does well in sales, expect to see more GOW in your next-gen future. Гуе been searching everywhere for the giant robot mech simulator PS2 game that requires a huge multibutton-joystick game controller. If you know the name of the game, please reply. Daniel, Daniel, Daniel: You are so cold, you could single-handedly disprove global warm- ing. The game you are thinking of is Capcom's Steel Battalion...on Xbox only. I just got the August issue of ОРМ (#107) and was appalled to see all the people cry- ing about the price of the PS3: $500 for the cheaper or $600 for the high-end model. That is an incredible deal! Look at what the PS3 offers. It is the only—and | am including the too-little/too- early Xbox 360 in this—console that is going to truly deliver when it comes to HD gaming; 720p is not 1080p by a long shot. Also, even the lower-end version comes with a hard drive where you can store downloaded content, pic- tures from your digital camera, files you cre- ate, and so on. Not only that, it gives you the ability to surf the Web and download content from the comfort of your living room—and it's a Blu-ray player to boot! That's worth nearly a grand by itself. If you have an HDTV and don't feed it HD content, what is the point? By no stretch of the imagination am | rich, and | am the only one working to support my 4-year-old son and my wonderful gamer-girl wife, but still | see the PS3 as a deal. You who , 0nSti-DexO Power Pads™, Facewipes to Go®, АоһоМгөв pads, Day & МОНИ, or Clear Сусетм, in compliance The Power To Win The Fight Against Acne Without A Prescription atment I peep penetrating tre works inside pores. Is acne-causing bacteria. SINGLES USE! PACKETS Stri-Dex Power Pads. The first pads with e you can get Only Stri-Dex Power Pads give you the proven acne-fighting power of benzoyl peroxide in a non-prescription pad. It’s a super-effective treatment that penetrates deep into pores and kills acne-causing bacteria over your entire face. Prescription Power—without the prescription. 230173 MANUFACTURER'S COUPON / EXPIRATION DATE 10/31/06 RETAILER: Biistex Inc. will reimburse you for the face value of this coupon plus 8e И submitted as a part payment 5754138835776 with our redemption policy. Copies available upon request. Void if copied, prohibited or regulated. Coupon may not , be assigned or transferred by you. Cash value 1/100 cent. Send to Blistex Inc., PO. Box 880296, El Paso, TX 88588-0296. Good only on indicated Str Dex products, any other use constitutes fraud, Limit one coupon per purchase. Х пет may just not Бе that interested in electronic entertainment, don't have an income, or need financial advice—all of you are forgiven. The rest of us will be happily playing MGS 4, Kill- zone, MotorStorm, and whatever the brilliant Fumito Ueda (/co and Shadow of the Colos- sus) and his team come up with soon enough. | have just read Joe's In My Day in Issue #107 (OPM August 2006) and | have to agree with him on the anti-Sony hate going around. Ever since the PS3's price was announced, every- body is either with Sony or against it and, like Joe said, trying to bring it down like a colos- sus. | personally don't know whether | will be asking for a PS3 or an Xbox 360 for Christmas this year, but Sony has set the standards of its system, and it's time to pick whether to go with a cheaper system or the technically supe- rior system. | have been wondering if you have con- sidered sending out a demo UMD for the PSP in your magazine every month, or even bimonthly, or just as a one-time special. This would be greatly appreciated by the PSP- owning community. | don't know the legal or financial matters of doing this, but | do know that it would be very cool. They could contain game demos, previews, trailers for movies that will be released on UMDs, and even OPM videos, like E3 coverage or some behind-the-scenes things. Paul, the idea of including a UMD demo in ОРМ is the sort of outside-the-box thinking we like to see around here! Make it happen! Er... we mean WE'LL make it happen. In fact, we're working on it. Seriously. Watch for something sooner than you think. | have three words to say to the people complaining about the price of the PS3: Get а job! l've been doing three-day weeks as a dishwasher, and it took me two months to save up about $575! That's not a lot of work, especially for a 15-year-old. | know that if the PS3 is as good as the games look now, it's worth every penny. Oh, one more thing: Adults with real jobs should not even com- plain—they probably make about $500 in a week. Quit your jibbah-jabbah and shut up! 1 keep hearing the talk about how the used- game business is stealing money out of the hands of developers, and | want to point something out: You can't count money you never had as money lost. When a used car gets sold, you don't see GM or Ford throw their arms up in the air and scream, "There goes another new car we could have sold!" A sale is not a sale until you have made it. There is no guarantee that the guy who bought that used game would have paid full price for it if he hadn't found it used. The simple solution is this: Make a great game, sell it at a reasonable price, and then the profits will roll in. | was especially interested in Robert Ashley's "The Opposite of Fun" (OPM #107, August 2006), not because of how much | said "Huz- гай!" to most of what he had to say, but because he forgot about Bubsy 3D. Look in awe at the less-than-stellar 3D graphics! So “less” that after | played this dumb, rushed mess of a game, | actually used the game for archery practice. PENNY-ARCADE.COM LZ Thanks Por letting 05 come 006 and вее the Set oP Transformers, director Michael Bay. Do you guys мож à lot oP lawns? What the P*** is this thing. Ти my new version, Optimus Prime 16 the John Deere Х7288Е Lawn Dominator. He dominates lawns. pam m BEHIND THE SCENES AND BEYOND THE PAGES OF THE OFFICIAL L.S: PLAYSTATION MAGAZINE raecioam.iup.com Hailed as the “best podcast on the planet” by Tom Byron, edi- tor-in-chief of Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine, RadiOPM con- tinues its glorious surge through the Interwaves. Recent chats include the demise of E3, the highs and lows of LocoRoco, the fuss around Blu-ray, and why GTA may be overrated. The fun happens every Thursday at radiopm.1up.com. Also, don’t forget to check out all the OPM editor blogs at орт.Тир.сот. The retail version of NCAA Football 07 on the PSP featured some glitches with spotting the ball that weren't present in the review build. As such, we’re adjusting the official score to a 7/10. That's not right. Optimus Prime 16 a bitching Megatron is a Semi truck. Pondue pot? Маше! But... Get a load oP à Baeh, thith ith а that brushguard, there. Didn't you always wish the TransPormers were other things? Like, you know, ©2006Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins you done? 16 DAIN cı ШӘП | / LET THEN MADNESS ВЕ = addarkkingdóm.com Je AVAILABLE NOVEMBER 2006. PLAYSTATION = PREVIEWS AND NEWS FROM THE UNEIIPEED ПЕ PLAYSTATION Ix DO YOU HATE EA? ELECTRONIC ARTS IS REINVENTING ITSELF - 22 BIG PICTURE The unbeatable PS2. zs PAUSE When you're not playing games. 28 OPM INTERVIEW Jade Raymond does the robot se CALENDAR Halloween = good times. aa BURNOUT 5 Rubbin' is racing. ав ARMY OF TIO Double the fun! ss LUMINATION Mizuguchi attacks! ss METAL БЕС A look at Portable Ops. 18 | OAM Остовее 2006 THE SHOW THE DEATH—AND EVENTUAL PERIE THOF ЕЗ A ou may have heard: E3 is dead. Well, maybe not completely dead, but the trade show that once served as the flagship for the gaming industry is no more. Publishers such as Electronic Arts, Sony CEA, and plenty of other companies had grown tired of the mounting costs of attending and pre- senting product at the Electronic Entertainment Expo—and getting little for it in return. As such, E3 is being reorganized into a smaller event that will include fewer companies and fewer people. But it’s not like this spells the end of videogame conventions. There are plenty of others waiting in the wings to grab all of the attention. Below are just a few. WHAT HAPPENED? Too many people and too much expense—E3 became less and less about the games and more and more about the competition between companies to see who could have the biggest booth or the most ridiculous booth babes. Heck, most of the high-profile games at E3 were shown by invitation only, essentially making the whole idea of a “convention” pointless. The official line from the Entertainment Software Association—the U.S. gaming-indus- try trade association and the organization behind E3—is that the “new” ЕЗ “will focus on press events and small meetings with media, retail, development, and other key sectors. While there will be opportunities for game demonstrations, E3 Expo 2007 will not feature the large trade-show environment of previous years.” LOCATION: TIME Much like the Game Developers Conference, the Austin Game Conference was created more for those involved on the business or technical sides of the indus- try 一 in AGC's case, specifi- cally massively multiplayer online games. Though the conference has grown in recent years, the show floor still reflects the industry audience, as hardware and development-technology companies are more promi- nent at AGC than other con- ventions. It's possible that the Austin Game Conference could become a new venue to show off games, but per- haps nothing too high pro- file in the early going—sim- ply because the transition would be way to jarring. Plus, outside of keynote speakers, the general crowd that attends now isn’t neces- sarily prepared to mingle with the press. It could be the new ЕЗ, but it’s going to take awhile for the convention managers to shift gears from the current format to a more media- friendly setup. CES was E3 before E3 was E3. The granddaddy of electronics trade shows was where all the big-name companies used to unveil hardware and brand-new games. Unfortunately, the organizers of the show weren't willing to promote the ever-growing gaming industry—and as a result, E3 was born. Out of any of the current conventions, CES has the best chance of being the new E3, simply because more and more compa- nies—including Sony—have been using CES as a venue for showcasing new, big- name products. And since games are big business these days, it seems like the CES organizers are more willing to give games the spotlight. CES has already been turn- ing back into a big venue for videogames, but they still have to share the stage with other types of consumer electronics at the event. But if any city can support a circus like that, though, it's Las Vegas. The Penny Arcade Expo originally started out in 2004 as a fan-oriented show where people could соте and play various video- games with each other and participate in tournaments. Since then, the show has grown tremendously and now includes high-profile speakers as well as promi- nent support from major videogame companies. As already stated, one of the major problems with E3 was the huge attendance numbers. If Penny Arcade were to become the Next Big Thing, then there's а good chance that it would no longer be as community- focused, as some of the fan-oriented portions would probably be squashed in favor of booth space for major companies. We actually like PAX the way it is. It's a great place for fans to go to talk about and check out games—if it were to turn into the next ЕЗ, that would pretty much defeat its original purpose. Ziff Davis’ own DigitalLife show can best be described as a much smaller version BETEEEE | There are plenty of other shows that have growing videogame segments. San Diego Comic- Con has become a great place for independent developers to show many of their games, but it's also been a great place for some bigger-name videogames that have huge fan communi- ties. Toy Fair, a major toy-indus- try trade show in New York City, has been dealing more with videogames in recent years. And the Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany, is also rapidly growing as an international event and could potentially take over the reins. So don't fret. Even though the old E3 is going diay, there аге still plenty of conventions ready to pick up of CES, but with a much the slack. more public-friendly slant. Из continued to grow in recent years, becoming a major point of interest for big companies due to the fact that it's a great oppor- tunity to show products before the holiday shopping season. While DigitalLife could defi- nitely become an even big- ger event now that E3 has “changed,” it doesn't quite have the perception that CES does in terms of being a venue for unveilings or major announcements. Plus, the show's going to need more room if Из gonna be the Next Big Thing. Digital Life has a pretty good shot since Из so simi- lar in concept to CES, but it has to do a lot of growing in a very short amount of time. It could happen, but prob- ably not fast enough to fill the massive void left by E3. сетот |19 二 AS As of press time, Sony CEA has yet to show any sort of packaging for the North American version of the PlayStation 3, so we've come up with a few of our own ideas that might help Sony's mega machine fly off store shelves. And you can participate, too: Simply visit opm.1UP.com after you read this article to vote for your favorite PlayStation 3 packaging. The winner will be revealed in the next issue—and, who knows, Sony may see who wins the vote and decide to pattern their packaging after it...or not! lm бюд, > BO» Reminiscent of the original PlayStation 2 packaging, this PlayStation 3 box is meant to be simple, yet elegant. Sure, some consum- ers may be confused by the symbols on the box, but we think that the logo in the upper right corner should help. BO» This package is designed after the PSP pack- aging and is meant to show off the sleek lines of the system as well as send a clear message that you are indeed buying a PS3 and not a toaster—or some kind of George Foreman grill. BO% It's Spider-Man! Whoa! No seriously, Sony seems so intent on using the Spider-Man font for the PlayStation 3 logo that it might as well go whole hog and just use the web slinger as a company spokesman. After all, Sony already enclosed a UMD of the first Spider- Man film with the first 1 million units of the PSP. Funny thing is, it almost works. ВО? What would апу PlayStation 3 story Бе without a reference to historically accurate crabs with weak points? | mean, соте оп! And then they could even sell these things in the Discovery Channel store next to the DVD stack of Dirty Jobs! 7 % BYTE-SIZED NEWS FEAR. your PS3. Vivendi plans to release the popular PC first-person shooter ЕЕА.В, on the PlayStation 3 sometime in 2007. The game is highly regarded for its Al and visceral gunplay. Now with Resistance, Half-Life 2, Turok, The Darkness, Unreal Tournament, and eventually Killzone, it seems like the PS3 will have no shortage of shooters... In other PS3 news, From Software has announced the cancellation of two RPGs for Sony's next-generation con- PLAYSTATION BITS sole and, while no specific reason was given, don't be surprised to see more companies streamline their production schedules given the cost of develop- ment... And what would any kind of videogame news be without something about politics? Cliff Stearns, a Republi- can congressman from Florida, is pro- posing a bill that basically charges the ESRB with making sure that the in-game content matches the ratings on the box. Wow! What a novel concept. “There's по doubt that EA has histori- cally bet more on [the] PSP. | think we were excited by the technology but the consumers have proven that actu- ally what they want is fun.” cutive vice pre: David Gardner, ent and COO Worldwide Studios tells U.K. publication MCV about ЕАз recent decision to focus on DS development o that for the PSP. Because ently, the DS makes games fun by default. 7 DEFY THE GODS ODIN THE ALL-FATHER HAS IMPRISIONED YOUR SOUL-THE SOUL OF A REBELLIOUS VALKYRIE ~ IN A HUMAN BODY. AWAKENED, IT IS TIME TO SEEK DIVINE VENGEANCE FOR TWO LIVES TAKEN AWAY, V РЕ? ` SILMERIA AVAILABLE SEPTEMBER 26 2 AVAILABLE МОМ CONTINUE THE EPIC ADVENTURE ON THE Ще ЙАШ PSP" PLAYSTATION PORTABLE) SYSTEM. АШАН PlayStation.e SQUARE ENIX. | www.square-enix.com Alcohol Reference Published by Square Enix, Inc. Fantasy Violence Mild Language © 1999, 2006 SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD. All Rights Reserved. Developed by tri-Ace Inc. Character design: | А PRODUCTION LG. Character illustration: KOUYOSHINARIYOUYOSHINAR VALKYRIE PROFILE, LENNETH, SILMERIA, Suggestive Themes чаа. SQUARE ENIX and the SQUARE ENIX logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Square Enix Co., п", “PS” Family logo and "PSP" аге registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment пс. Memory Stick Duo™ may be required (sold separately). The ratings icon is a trademark of the Entertainment Software Association. | НЫЕ KNOWLEDGE you agree? Send him your thoughts about A that and the general pricing of next-genera- tion gaming at opm@ ziffdavis.com. You'll be glad you did. WHY THE PSZ IS STILL THE MOST млешсте TANT PLAYSTATION Last time you endured my ramblings on these pages, | took a crack at exploring the benefits of episodic-gaming content on the PS3. After all, Sony's global-development übermensch Phil Harrison has been an outspoken proponent of the idea since the early PS2 days, so | thought | was onto something big. Since then, though, Гуе had the chance to speak to a number of big-time decision makers in the gaming industry and, for the most part, they have told me that the idea is essentially nonsense. As long as gaming publishers primarily sell boxes in stores, l'm told, we're unlikely to see much т the way of truly episodic content from the majors. Why? Because games cost so damn much to make. Yes, we'll see games with extra stuff to down- load, and | think we'll be spending the next couple of years arguing about the whole microtransaction thing (how much is too much for a new gun in Warhawk? Personally, | think they have some nerve even thinking of charging for things at that level, but that's something for a postlaunch editorial), but it's starting to look highly unlikely that the next Resident Evil or Syphon Filter will be released in chapters. The preproduction phase on games like these is such a big part of the development process—and such a humongous slice of the budget— that a publisher can't run the risk of your only wanting a $10 or $20 slice of it. What if you don't come back for more because you don't like it? They'd be screwed. Xbox 360 owners have been up in arms (and rightly so) lately about the decision to charge $59.99 for the platform's big holiday МЕ MAY SEE SOME OF THE МОРЕ DARING NEW IDEAS ON THE PSZ, RATHER THAN ON THE PS3, hope, Gears of War. Prior to the announcement, Microsoft's Peter Moore had spoken at length about the importance of "lowering the cost of ownership" in order to make gaming more mainstream. Games can be prohibitively expensive, he argued—and that was hindering growth. Microsoft even bought a company called Massive, which places advertisements into games, under the premise that savings would be passed along to the consumer. It was a sound argument in principle, but as development costs increase on games designed for systems with smaller audiences (there aren't that many 3605 in the world, and there will be fewer PS3s for the first few months) the difference has to be made up from somewhere. Guess what? Mountain Dew ads on billboards in racing games only go so far, so the rest of the bill has to be picked up by you. We need to get used to the idea of games costing $60 or $70, and then being charged more if we want cool extra stuff. Well, that's all quite grim, isn't it? How can we possibly think about videogames as being a "mainstream" activity when all this is going on? The answer, conveniently, is in something you already own: the PS2. There are 38 million of them in the United States alone right now, and whereas Microsoft pretty much turned its back on the Xbox when the 360 launched, the situation we face in the PlayStation world is quite different. Development for the PS2 is cheaper, and the poten- tial audience is bigger, so it's looking like we're going to see new PS2 games for many years to come. If this magazine's gigantic fall-pre- view feature last month is anything to go by, things aren't slowing down anytime soon and it seems safe to say that we may see some of the more daring new ideas on the PS2 rather than on the PS3. OMING OCTOBER 2006. TO THE PSP’ (PLAYSTATION’PORTABLE) SYSTEM RATING PENDING Visit www.esrb.org m سم‎ pU тр forupdated rating Е м R, information. PlayStation. Portable CONTENT RATED BY ESRB ® © 206 Rakstu Сом, Inc Re Cones eed, ete lot, lo, боз ТЫН e Gd lg е из eng lo a nas nosed lea cw oie Soa ис air а” ий rd "ISP" ch registered rodemorks of Sony Computer Entertoinment Inc. Memory Stick Duo™ may be required (sold separate). The ratings icon is o registered торий of һе Entetoinment Softwore Association. Al ather marks ond обет ore properties of their перне owners. U.S. AND FOREIGN PATENTS PENDING. A rights reserved. The content of this videogame Б purely fictional, ond is not intended to represent or depict су otal event, peso, or entity. Any зпдойу between оу depiction in this gome ond от actual event, person, or entity is purely coincidental. The makers ond publishers of this videogame do по in ony way endorse, condone or encourage engaging in олу conduct depicted în this videogame. 二 There's always one main problem with new console launches—when games are first shown, it's really difficult to get a good idea as to what the system can truly do. Part of that is because developers are just getting to know the system and what it can do, and, as time goes on, they discover new effects and features. In some cases, the entire project just gets totally revamped and ends up looking either completely different from or simply much better than what was previously shown. Below are a few examples of PS3 games that have progressed very nicely since their initial unveiling. | 4 ға UNTOLD LEGENDS: DARK KINGDONÌ по UNTOLD LEGENDS: DARK KINGDOM Остовее 2006 WHATS IN оше във? IT DOES MORE THAN PLAY GAMES еснаео LEMARCHAND Game director at Naughty Dog LocoRoco This game is sheer genius! Из an incredible piece of design, and has everything | love in a videogame: sim- plicity, depth, innovation, and charm MOVIES Ghostbusters 1 love the way that Ghostbusters com- bines fantasy, science fiction, and hor- GAME ENUY | DEAD RISING (XBOX 360) Do you love zombies? Of course you do. We all love the walking undead and their antics. Fortunately, Cap- com's Dead Rising for the Xbox 360 does such an excellent job of portray- ing these scamps in their element—a shopping mall out in the middle of nowhere. You see, you're a photo- journalist going on a trip Willamette, Colorado, because of some rumored goings-on in the area. When you get there, you discover that the Army has already arrived and has roped off the area to ground traffic, but from your ror with comedy—so original, and still incredibly fresh after all these years! MUSIC M.I.A. (Arular) It's more than a year old now, but М.А. $ punky electro-hip-hop insta- classic is still kickin' it large in my PSP. WEB boingboing.net Boing Boing is THE blog if you're interested in how wonderfully weird the modern world is helicopter you clearly see that some- thing is amiss. Eventually you таке it to Ше mall and essentially have to survive for 72 hours, during which you help those who have yet to join the zombie horde, interact with psychos that have apparently converged on the mall, and use every possible weapon you can think off to mash in zombie skulls. And just about every- thing can be used as weapon, ranging jewelry from one of the stores in the mall to the lawnmower in the outdoor plaza. Awesome!! INDULGE IN A NEW/ IDENTITY AVAILABLI ох 36| ER 5, 4 Language 1 sd Mild Violence З = @ са В PC = | m 2 [4 Ба PlayStation.2 Test Dive® Unlimited © 2006 Atari, пс. Al Rights Reserved, Atari and the Atari logo are trademarks owned by Atari Interactive, Ic МОЯТ and the м От logo are trademarks owned by Atari, Inc. Microsoft, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox Live, the Xbox logos, and the Xbox Live одо are either registered trademarks ог trademarks of Microsoft Corporation inthe US. and/or ‘other countries. “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, Aston Martin Vanguish S and the Aston Martin logo are trademarks owned and licensed by Aston Martin Lagonda © 2006 Aston Martin Lagonda. Ducati Motor Holding SpA. official licensed product. Ducati and related intellectual property is a registered trade mark of Ducati Motor Holding Ў.А. The trademarks Lamborghini and the copyright and design rights to the Gallardo vehicle is used under license from Lamborghini ArtiMarca Вр, Italy. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Ее и Marvel Comics This seven-issue series | (which has crossovers | into almost all the other Marvel books) centers around Congress pass- | ing an act requiring all | superpowered beings to | register their identities | with the federal govern- ment. This act divides the heroes, with Iron Man and his buddies being pro- registration and Captain America (!) heading up the antiregistration group. On top of the solid art | and writing are crazy plot | twists, like proregistration | Spider-Man unmasking | himself on national televi- sion! Do yourself a favor | and check out this inno- vative series. РЕВ име GAME / Harmony Gold Even though the recently released Robotech games | didn't turn out to be all that great, that hasn't less- | ened our love for one of the best, if not the best, Japanese animated series. Robotech has some of the coolest mech designs that have yet to be topped by any other sort of giant robot. You'll get to see them again in this upcoming movie, which features the voice talents of Mark Hamill, among others. Woo, go giant robots! Panos Dramitinos & Alkis Karaolis Since the $600 PlayStation 3 is | probably going to either bankrupt or | make people homeless, we figured | that this little contraption would | come in handy. Either that or it'd | make for an excellent new Trans- | former in the upcoming movie. Any- way, the Mobile Shelter provides all the necessities that a hobo could ask for, including a cart to haul a payload. Yes, we're bad people. RSID Studio | | Dear god, this machine looks like зоте sort of horrible осториз that could torture people 一 the “torctopus,” if you will. Actually, it's a surgical robot something or other that's supposed to perform all the simple surgeries that human doctors are supposed to perform, such as quadruple bypasses, brain transplants, and fingernail clipping. Technology is great! OPM's John Scalzi says, “These guys give The Darkness a run for the crown of Most Histrionic Band Since Queen.” Dana disagrees and thinks they sound kind of like Radiohead. And if you listen to the second track on their new album, Black Holes & Revelations, then you may think they sound like The Killers. With such a kaleidoscope of sounds, how could you resist? Anyway, give it a listen or Mr. Scalzi will kick a puppy. Who doesn't love Tom Petty? | mean, come on! His | folk-rock music is so soothing that it would calm | a pack of rabid hyenas. And not just normal rabid | hyenas. We're talking a pack of rabid hyenas with | machine guns and acidic saliva like the aliens from | those movies. His latest album will do the exact same thing. Plus, it has a monkey and a rocket ship on the cover—two great tastes that go together. Mmmmmmm...monkey rocket ships. 26 | OFM Остовее 2006 EVERYONE Ss,’ BANDAI NINTENDO "| МАМСО А> GAMECUBE SMART BOMB Games Mild Cartoon Violence ГЫ Иш | HADE IPAYMOND LUIRISOFT’S ОЕЕО KEEPER, GAME GEEK ен DAM Остове 2 2006 DCTOBER | If you don't know who Jade Raymond | DPM Is making games something you always wanted to do, ог is yet, you will soon. Working away in did you just stumble into it? the early days of her career as a pro- | JADE RAYMOND Actually, | had a pretty planned career the grammer at both Sony and Electronic whole time. Basically, I've been making games for eight years now. Arts, Jade's now a producer on one | started out as a programmer and always knew that | wanted to of Ubisoft's most high-profile games, get into the game industry. | thought | was going to be a program: Assassin's Creed, for the PlayStation mer for a lot longer than | was—l was one for about three years— 3 一 one of several games that really but | wanted to have more of an impact on the creative side. When seem to be pushing the next-generation | moved from Sony over to Electronic Arts, | originally had a tech- hardware. Not only that, but she also nical role, but then they moved me into the producer position. gets to work with one of the most tal- 1 guess | always wanted to get into the game industry—but ented development teams in the entire being a producer, | don't think | had that as a goal. | thought I industry—not bad for someone who would stay on the programming side of it. started with back-end server code. | ОРА What attracted you to programming? 1 JR Well, it's kind of the same thing that attracted me to the game industry. 1 played with computers and robots a lot when 1 was grow- ing up; | used to play with the Lego Mindstorms stuff and write pro- grams for them in Logo. My favorite subjects were math and art, so | was always into the creative side and technology in general—vid- eogames are [the perfect venue] for that [combination]. They com- bine the most cutting-edge technology, and most of the interesting advances in computer graphics are being reinvented in games. Also, as an entertainment medium or even just as an art form, it’s evolved the most. If you look at more traditional [media] like oil painting, ani- mation, or movies—a lot of the standards are in place. Whereas with videogames, every time we get a next generation of consoles, we're able to push the boundaries of what a game is and redefine them. І OPM What's preventing games from getting that same recogni- tion from the general population? | 2 Games require a huge time investment. | think, as gamemak- ers, we—and the industry in general—are starting to make games that are sophisticated and targeted toward adults. They take less time. An example is Nintendo's Brain Age for the Nintendo DS, which is hugely popular in Japan right now. But there aren't a lot of those kinds of rich, deep entertainment experiences that can also be experienced in short sequences. Not many adults or people who aren't super game fans are going to dedicate 20 hours to learning a game and finishing it. “| USED ТО PLAY WITH LEGO MINDSTORMS STUFF...” 3 © ,OP You also had а stint in TV with The Electric Playground. E How was that experience? | Of That's something that | never thought I'd do. | was asked to 0 give out awards at a Game Developers Conference awards сегето- \ | nya few years ago. The executive producer of the show saw me giv- ing out the awards and set up an interview with me to talk about the س‎ game | was producing at the time. At the end of ЕЗ, he asked me if | wanted a job—and for a long time, | said no, because I’m a program- mer, not an actor. | didn't feel like getting in front of the camera; | thought | was going to be crap. | said no for many months—then | realized the reason | was saying no was because | didn't want to photos by DARREN CURTIS Ш оок like an idiot in front of the camera. And then, finally, | thought that wasn't a good reason to not do something—to be scared that you're going to look like an idiot. | gave it a shot and probably looked like an idiot in my first few interviews, but it was a lot of fun, ` and it was really cool to push myself to do something outside my 5 За comfort zone and outside of what | ever thought | would be doing. > ) It's a пісе change outside дате development—to see the other side x of it and to interview other people making games. " > па Ab | DPM It seems like you have а broader perspective than most К х аре” game developers with that résumé. Does it help уои іп the game- development process? | Jl2 I'd like to think so. That's what's really important т a producer role, where you have people from all of these different backgrounds reporting to you, and you have all of these games that require so many different skill sets 一 people who are specialized in different areas. Even if | don't understand them all—and | couldn't possibly pretend to understand them as deeply as the experts оп my team—l still have a great appreciation for what everyone does. | OPM Do you find that there are decisions made based on your own personal experience as a programmer if, say, you have a huge task for the programming part of the team? 1.212 1 try and leave those decisions to the lead programmer or the people with more expertise or those with a better understanding. Where it comes in handy is that all of my leads and all of the people on the team don’t have to spend as much time explaining stuff to me, which is good. They can say they decided to do something for what- ever reason, and it makes sense to me, and | can say something intel- ligent instead of having no clue what they’re talking about. It helps me make better calls and saves time. | OPM Is there anything you imagined would be very different about the industry? | Зе Well, as for my experience being a programmer, | had a lot of fun at first, but what | found was that | ended up getting specialized in back-end server code for multiplayer games. At the time, multiplayer games were just starting, so there weren't a lot of people doing that kind of stuff. So | got stuck doing it. And when you're doing this stuff, one game ends up looking like a lot of other games—like you're solving the same low-end problems. | got bored. The reality with game devel- opment is that you don't have a lot of time to develop a game, so if you have someone who's good at something, you're not going to take the risk of shifting them to something they're not good at. Being a producer is different from company to company. My job at Ubisoft, being a producer here, is superfun. | think it's more fun than | would've imagined. It's a lot of long hours and stuff like that, but it's really, really rewarding. You get to work with all kinds of passionate people and think of new problems every day. You're making a game, and the goal is to make it fun—and it's fun to make things fun! [Laughs] зп OAM Остовее 2006 СТО MẸ, ж PRETTY CLEAR THAT THE.MOST ADDICTIJE GAMES еее ONES THAT HAYE A SOCIAL ASPECT.” 1 ОРАЛ Is there a dream game you've always wanted to create? 1.212 Yeah, | think—like everyone in the game industry or even any- one who likes games 一 | have probably 100 ideas of various game designs. | һауе а whole bunch of games I'd like to make. | guess one I'd be interested in making next returns to your first question of why games haven't gained necessarily the same status as an entertain- ment medium like movies. I'd like to figure out how to make а game that can be digested in smaller chunks but can also be edgy and culturally relevant, Games have done that really well for kids with stuff like Pokémon that's superaddictive and superfun, but we haven't found а мау to translate that experience into an [adult дате]. I OPM Do you mean episodic content, or something more self- contained than that? 1.212 Not necessarily episodic content, because that has Из own kind of issues if you miss an episode or other people get ahead of you. There are definitely going to be some interesting things going on with] [episodic content] in the future. | know a lot of people are thinking about it, and that there are also a lot of people that have tried it in the past and not really succeeded—that wouldn't necessarily be the approach | would take. THE CREED Jade's current project, Assassin's Creed, isn't just a great game to look at—it also fea- tures some of the most advanced crowd Al for а game of its type. Just looking at the way dif- ferent people respond to the assassin Altair and how he interacts with the crowd is pretty impressive. | OPM What trends are most exciting to you? 1.212 To me, it's pretty clear that the most addictive games are ones that have a social aspect. Online is already huge, and we've seen with games like World of WarCraft how many people can be obsessively playing a game that would normally be classified as "hardcore." | think that's pretty cool, and | think there's still a lot of room to evolve in that area. The biggest area where we're going to see differences in games coming up is in controls, and | think the approach Nintendo took is just the beginning. If you look what's been happening with us, we've been focusing on better graphics and Al—very technical stuff, but there hasn't been a lot of focus of what we can do with control- lers. That's what we're seeing with Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution, so we're getting there, but | think that’s going to be the key when we take the next step. | wis ых Stronger Fragrance! Р ВІСНТ ` get ітете get даяр. нее шаш ENDOIZ аве с THE MONTH AHEAD FOR YOU AND YOUR PLAYSTATION NEW GAMES хх, The first Hooters opens in 1983. A We're betting that % | ) today those breasts y inspire hoots of a 7 \ different kind. Roger Maris sets his 1961 record of 61 home runs in a season. As far as we're concerned, it still stands. f In 1982 Ronald Leif Erikson lands Г. к Reagan declares in Newfoundland f 4 the War on Drugs, in 1000; 1,006 years р } 3 К Cis for cookie, and starting the trend of down the road, 2 i O is for October, 4 wars that we can’t we're stuck with which happily hap- seem to finish. Celine Dion. Oh, pens to be National -一 一 n Canada.… Cookie Month. It might be Bring Your Teddy Bear to Work Day, but if = you do, people will Believe it or not, 4 probably decide to our favorite alien 4 j 777 Р celebrate National ass-kicker (sorry, i ТЕ! 2? Kick Butt Day two Ratchet) turns 57 Y | г NY. days late. Norway becomes Sarcasm Aware- It's Freedom from P independent from ness Month is Bullies at Work Sweden in 1905; almost over which Week. We say ] 101 years later, means in three Today is Internet whoever came up people still can’t days we won't Day, which totally with that holiday even recognize that reminds us that in should get a punch c we're cynical bas- 19 days we'll be in the face. Gotothe barand tards. able to connect to take your best г online networks in game—today is the a whole new way— NES's 21st Ameri- from our PS3! can birthday! NEW GAMES NEW FLICKS 32 | OAM Остовее 2006 · MIDGAR DIED... Раубгапоп.о Ф SQUARE ENIX. www.square-enix.com Published by Square Enix, Inc. © 2006 SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD. CHARACTER DESIGN: TETSUYA NOMURA. FINAL FANTASY isa registered trademark of Square Enix Co., Ltd. DIRGE OF CERBERUS, SQUARE ЕМІ and the SQUARE ENIX logo are trademarks of Square Enix Со. Ltd. 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 SOMETHING SURVIVED... = THE WORLD OF FINAL FANTASY’ VII IS ABOUT TO EXPLODE. A mysterious organization has emerged from Ше wreckage of the Meteor disaster. The enigmatic Vincent Valentine 4 may be the only one who can save this shattered world. Set after Ше events in FINAL FANTASY УП 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 unique = in dazzling 3D environments continuing the epic storyline allies in an all-new action adventure | | ^| наре PREVIEWS остовен? ЛЕ СО BEHIND THE CURTAIN AND LET DEVELOPERS SPEAK There are big game makers, such as EA Games. Then there are the teams who go it alone, forg- ing a sometimes difficult path n increasingly expensive world. We talked with corporate studios, like Criterion and EA Montreal, and independent teams, like Insomniac and Q Entertainment. So come along as we take a look at game making—and the titles that are the end products—from the developers’ perspective. TAHE ЕНЕМЕ ШЕ ES y With a yearly revenue of $3 billion, hundreds of games, more than 7,000 employees, and offices in 30 cities worldwide, EA can easily lay claim to being the largest third-party gamemaker in the universe. Who would fault you for thinking of the EA as a runaway success? After all, this is the house that built Madden football, the Need for Speed series, the Medal of Honor games, and a virtual mountain of gaming greats that go as far back as 1983's M.U.L.E. for the Atari 800. EA's road to dominance hasn't been wil ut its sinkholes. In recent years, EA bashing has become a sort of spectator sport on web forums, with accusations ranging from the company's fear of risk-taking and corporate arrogance to outright competi- tion-crushing monopoly. Recently we trolled the Internet to gather all the "claims" against EA and see what all the fuss was about—and then gave EA a chance to defend itself. Here are the top six charges (you can read the full version with all 10 on opm.1UP.com) and then see EA's defense. (ә ЕТЕ ее | 3? Ф | нерее РРЕЦЕЛЬ ЕА IS AFRAID 1 UATE DOESNT INN І “We've taken a lot of chances in а lot of ways. Majestic was a real risk for us in terms of trying to create a new kind of game, a new genre. We fell on our face a little bit there, but it was an incredible learning expe- for us. Sims Online was a big risk. At the time it seemed like a no-brainer, but hon estly, the company was delving іп and explor ing areas we had no busine in at that point. Godfather was a huge risk because we were venturing into the open world space, and other than Rockstar North, for whom we have tremendous respect, no one had really nailed the genre. That was а really tough and sometimes dark journey that | think has paid off for us now." rier s and no experi enci OFM Octosee 2006 ша N "I think the people а the NFL would agree that Madden innovates more every year than the actual sport does. Madden is a top seller year after year because it's different." | “[We аппоипсей! 5роге, а product by [Sims designer] Will Wright. The ana log swing that we initially got in the PS2 controller for Tiger Woods helped propel that into a mainstream product. Along with that we made a feature called Game Face which allows you to create yourself in real time, and leveraged that into Mob Face in Godfather. Analog controls in Fight Night. [...] There's a level of innovation that some times gets forgotten ща m 2 И A Ov | BZONN "Agreed. Everybody here agrees. About four or five months ago we locked down a policy that we need to change our portfolio to have le: licensed properties and a greater pe of our revenue on solely owned IPs. Last year about 30 percent of EA revenue came from wholly owned ideas, unlicensed. This year it's about 40 percent and the target is to get that over 50 percent within a year.” 1 1 "We're shooting to get half our portfolio based on EA-owned IP. Products like Spore, Sims, Medal of Honor, Army of Two (that is a really fresh take on action), Black, Burnout, Need for Speed, and Battlefield. We have a product we're doing at EA Redwood Shores that is an original from scratch that the former Bond team is working оп.” of a reliance on centage DLITDBmETP | “THE GAMES GET | RET TEI EVERY YEA, 7 THATS WHY PEOPLE BUY THEM ENEY YEA.” CHARGE и EA IS AROGANT “EA...killed all my favorite franchises, only to replace them with their own. Ultima, dead. Wing Commander, dead. Dungeon Keeper, dead. Populous, dead. System Shock, dead. Lands of Lore, dead. . .Апа Command & Conquer only lives on as a shell of its former self.” —OPM message boards | EAZL "I think there have been moments in our history where we came off as arrogant. But if you look at the company now, we have tremendous respect for our competition. We listen intently to our customers [and] retailers, we understand that while we have market leadership, we are nowhere near our growth potential and nowhere near our abil- ity to consistently deliver the best games we can deliver. “To answer the charge about not revitaliz- ing certain franchises, that’s actually not true. There are several unannounced franchises we are working on right now from that list that we are bringing back out. There are several that we are starting up again that we want to bring back to the fans. Sometimes it comes down to how loudly the market is screaming for something.” “Indeed, they continuously pump out medio- cre games, and they are the market leader for third parties right now. They simply are ‘riding the wave’ because they don't have to work to make а ВИ. “一 blog response | BZOWN “The games get better every year. And that’s why people keep buying them every year. That's why, whether it’s Madden or NBA Live or Need for Speed, the reason why these are [yearly] franchises is because people want them. Some will say Madden doesn't innovate, but 5 to 8 million people lay out cash for the thing because they think it does. Obviously we're doing something right.” | EARL "One measure to look at is our Metacritic.com average...because we can get great data on how our audience looks at our games vis-a-vis other games. If муе ге not the best in the industry, we’re certainly in the top three. My guess is that some of our key franchises that have had bad years or some of our licensed titles that have not done well stand out, but if you look out across the breadth of our products, you'll see we're very strong and consistent with quality." LHARGE PUSHES GAMES “NCAA Football 07 for PSP's touch-football glitch.” —OPM message boards | EARL "For every rushed games | can give you two we didn't for reasons of quality. [James Bond 007]: Everything or Nothing was the best-rated Bond game we ever shipped and we delayed that to after the holidays—and took a huge hit financially. The shareholders didn't like that, but ultimately, they understood as we did that the most important thing here is the quality. Godfather was also a pre-Christmas schedule [title] that we ended up shipping in March. It was a very painful thing to have to move financially as a public company, but it was the right thing to do for the franchise. Battlefield we delayed almost a year. There are many examples." | BZONN "Frequently software has bugs and some are worse than others. When you make sports games, your window is your sports season. You've got to be there at the start of the season. It makes no sense to ship Madden in January.” Ф | HPE_ => Едра еее йе OR BURNOUT 5 CRASHES INTO THE NEXT GENERATION Бу DANA JONGEWAARD 40 | OFT Ocrosee 2006 ОС ТОЕМЕЕЯ ING Dreamcast, PC) 2000 - PC) Dreamcast; Dreamcast, PC) (2001 - PS2) (2001 - PS2; 2002 - XB, GC) (2002 - PS2; 2003 - XB, GC) (2004 - PS2, XB) (2005 - PS2, XB; 2006 - 360) „| (2005 - PSP, DS) (2006 - PS2, XB) (2007 - PS3, 360) y Criterion Games is aiming for the world with Burnout 5, starting with your PlayStation 3. The company is taking its love of speed, explosions, and fire to the next generation in order to create some of the craziest and most beautiful crashes in gaming. After all, as one of the team members put it: "A f***ed-up car is a beautiful thing." a agras 2 emean zl "If you couldn't make a great game on the PlayStation 2, you can't make a good game on the PlayStation 3," says Alex Ward, the direc- tor of game design for Burnout 5. We're sitting in a conference room at Criterion's offices in Guildford, England, a suburb southwest of London. Criterion, which spun off from a research group at the European division of Canon (the Japanese electronics giant known mostly for its cameras) back in 1993, put out its first game back in 1996. It wasn't until 2001 that the company released a game on Sony hardware (the PS2 hoverboard title Airblade). And it wasn't until 2004 and the release of Burnout 3 (which earned OPM's Game of the Year title) that people really sat up апа took notice. While the previous Burnouts have all built on the technology of their predecessors, Burnout 5 is going back to page one. “For us, this is a total reset from one generation to the other,” says Ward. “One of our goals is to be truly ‘next generation,’ and that means starting from the ground ир.” One reason for that mind-set: This is Criterion’s first time around with the new system, and the team doesn’t want to make incorrect assumptions about its capabilities. Alex Fry, the game's technical director, explains: “The first thing you have to do when you get new hardware is learn it. Beating it into submission doesn't make sense; you have to work with it.” By the team’s estimate, just one of the machine's seven synergistic processing elements (SPEs) has more [m/z] power in it than the entire emotion engine of the PS2. But learning the technology is only part of the reason. “We know the audience is expecting a leap, and we don’t want to disappoint our audience,” Ward says. “И, the first time you see the cars wreck [in Burnout 5], you don't think, ‘That's why | bought the PlayStation 3; the next gen is here,—if you think, ‘Eh, it's a little better,’ or ‘It did that last time,'—then we haven't gotten there. So that's why the first thing we have to nail is the crashing." 1 Everyone marveled at the amazing results that Criterion's software got from the PS2, but it took some tough decisions to get there. If the team wanted to spend more of the computing power on graphics, “BEATING THE HARDWARE INTO SUBMISSION DOESNT MAKE SENSE.” they'd have to pull back in another area, such as audio. If they wanted to keep that sense of speed, the number of objects running physics might need to be dialed down. But not anymore. Thanks to the Cell processor, they're now able to truly get graphics, physics, and audio to work together as a team to create some of the most mind-blow- ing videogame effects ever seen. Executive producer Matt Webster explains: “Cell has lifted limitations, and those are the two areas that win—audio and physics. And, in particular, our own brand of how we use those.” Having physics in a game means that objects respond to contact with the environment as they would in the real world; doing that takes a lot of computing power. On the PS2, the car being driven might have been operating according to the laws of physics, but the other cars flying off to the side were simply running scripted respons- es, which meant that they were all behaving the same way. With the PS3, that's finally changed. “Now we don't ever have to walk the line on what's running physics and what's not," says producer Hamish Young. "It all is." The physics will have a lot more parts to work with as well. Whereas cars in Burnout Revenge were composed of 12 different parts, cars in Burnout 5 will now have 80 different pieces that can get blown off in a collision. But merely copying reality isn’t what Criterion wants to do. “We see a lot of teams trying for ‘real physics'—which we translate into ‘boring physics," Young continues. "But where we differ from them is that they try [to] get it accurate, whereas we're not trying to get it accurate—we're trying to get it believable and spectacular." That's why now you'll see much more spectacular crashes. Roofs сап be shorn off, and you'll be able to see cars де torn completely т half. Young beams, “A takedown’s going to be so much more reward- [ TEAM Several members of the development team, clad in their freshly delivered Burnout 5shirts. From left, Steve Uphill, art director; Paul Glancy, lead game designer; Nick Laviers, audio director; Alex Ward, director of game design; Yuta Nakamura, senior car modeler; Kiana Mohseni, online producer; Matt Webster, executive producer; Lewis James, sound designer; Hamish Young, producer; Gavin Rouse, programmer; John Twigg, lead audio engineer; and Emily Newton-Dunn, producer. ing—if you take a guy down and he hits a cross-traffic truck and blows into pieces, it’s such a bigger moment than when it hits a car and bounces off.” Al Ward adds: “Real physics don’t make for great gameplay all the time. If we want to blow the car up, we'll blow the car up. Like when they blew up the Death Star—there's no fire in space." Adding to the experience will be audio, which is taking a huge leap on the new hardware. Webster explains, "Audio was shortchanged ng av on the last generation, but the PS3 has lifted the restrictions. They had 32 voices on the PS2; on the PS3, they're getting 1,000. On the PS2, they had a couple of megabytes of RAM; now, they're getting 10 times that much.” Nick Laviers, the game's audio director, explains the goal of his team. “When you make sound for a film, you're always looking for that special sound that describes that moment,” he says. “It’s not just going to tell you that a car smashed into a wall; it’s also going to tell you, ‘Bloody hell—no one could possibly ever have survived that!’ You don't see human beings in Burnout—it's all about cars—so we're couldn't work out why going to use the audio to give а human aspect to it.” ey should be п They experimented with adding nontraditional sounds—such as a v game, but v panther's scream—to crashes in Burnout Revenge; this time, all the T NO crash audio is out of the ordinary. They play a sound sample of a ey shoula collision—complete with spine-tingling shrieking and jaw-tightening crunches—and then tell us that no metal was used to create it. "Going back to the idea that absolutely real is a bit boring, there's a lot of овт 1 ZI a сочеве STOIeY FE | While not having licensed cars is great for the Burnoutteam in some ways 一 for example, the way that lets you blow them up 一 it does present its own unique challenge. “If you show a fake car, it can be the most beauti- fully modeled thing in the world, but it’s still a fake car," Ward explains. "We haven't been as smart as we could have been in how we present them.” Enter the real world: The team has been looking places such as car magazines and TV shows to see how they can help build an emotional attachment to a vehicle by means of presentation. One thing they're explor- ing is displaying new cars in the game like they might appear in advertisements, while another is giving each individual car its own iconic song. audio in there that isn’t traditional,” Laviers says. Instead, the audio clip includes samples from trees, electricity, and apes in pain. What's also amazing about next-gen sound is that, instead of being canned, it'll be customized for each collision. “For the first time ever, we'll really be able to tailor the audio,” Laviers tells us. “What we're able to do is basically have crash Al, which will analyze what's happening and will decide which particular sounds to use for that moment." That means that the sounds you hear for every single crash will be different from the last. He concludes, "We want to put the player into the crash—not just watching it vicariously, not just feel like you're watching it on TV 一 and actually [make the player] feel really involved.” It's not just physics and audio that are getting more room to stretch out. In fact, the tracks are getting so much space that they're not “tracks” anymore—they’re an entire seamless world. “We could have done the world four years ago," Ward says, “but we didn't, because we would've had to compromise on other things like the speed." Right now, the world is still in the process of being constructed, and the team is currently working on the layout; once they've final- ized where everything is going to go and included all the layers and shortcuts, they'll start adding the stuff that makes the Burnout games all look so amazing. Right now, none of that’s there. But there’s a car БОРОО? and a world, so the team hands us the controller and sets us loose to explore. Richard Franke, the world designer, explains how they've gotten to this point: "We analyzed the layouts of some big American cities and cross-referenced those against the best tracks from previous Burnouts. We can't go actual size—we've had to be a little con- strained—but we're definitely bigger than any other open world in any other racing game." They estimate that it will take about five or six minutes driving uninterrupted at top speed to get from one side to the other. We're up МЕ NOT PLAYING THE GAME IS AS FUN | AS THE GAME, THEN WWE TE IN.” in the mountains to the west of the city at present, but, looking down, we can see the smokestacks and skyscrapers in the distance. Adding iconic landmarks is extremely important to the team, as they want you to be able to navigate by looking around rather than by having to continuously examine the map. "That's something we hate from some of the other open-world games—it kind of looks generic; there's repetition of areas, and that’s why you're always having to look to see where you are," says Ward. "It's ‘How good of a cab driver are you?’ It takes away the focus from the main experience." As in prior Burnouts, the city itself is made-up, but all of the sec- tions are based on real-life places—for example, the mountains have been lifted straight out of Montana, the downtown area is based on New York City, the docks are from Shanghai, and that dam you get to zip across is modeled after the Hoover Dam. The team will be visiting all of these locations in person to capture video footage so they can replicate the flavor of each area as closely as possible. As Ward watches us buzz around the world, he says, “That’s anoth- er barrier to break in next generation—where not playing the game is the game. To me, two games really turned me onto how powerful the whole open world could be for Burnout—one was Need for Speed Most Wanted, and the other was Mercenaries. What we're also aware of this time is that if not playing the game is as fun as the game, then we're in." "How do we make this arcade experience more realistic?" asks lead game designer Paul Glancy. "Obviously, the open world is part of it— instead of bouncing around the world and going in and out of menus, now you're all in one big world." In Criterion's offices, there's a board with fake driver's licenses for every team member, and the concept of a license is the mechanic that's going to drive Burnout 5. "Our progression is based on real- world driving offenses, and it's sort of real—but with a Burnout twist," explains Glancy. "An obvious one would be speeding, but in Burnout, you're speeding all the time, so that wouldn't be very difficult. So now it's about how long can you speed, how much over the speed limit you can go." Ward pulls out a sheet from the Missouri Driver's License Bureau listing various offenses; the team looked to this sheet for inspiration when coming up with offenses. And then there are the violations that receive their own unique Burnout twists. For example, players will again be able to chain boost like back in Burnout 2, except now it's called “driving under the influence of boost.” Oh, and although there are now traffic violations, there won't be cop cars running around enforcing the laws, à la Need for Speed Most Wanted. One concern was that players not be forced into the situation of having to "find the fun"—in other words, having to drive around until they stumble upon an event. To that end, each car will have 10 dif- ferent driving violations attached to it; one might be that you need to take a vehicle at top speed through opposing traffic for 20 miles. While this gives players goals that can be achieved anywhere, it also encourages them to make full use of every car that's available instead of sticking with one vehicle for most of the game. There'll also be location-specific events, too—in all, approximately 200 offenses will be attached to different locations throughout the world. In addition to the violations, you'll also be competing against 34 different rivals—and having a persistent world means that your rivals are a constant presence, rather than starting fresh at the beginning of Two tidbits about the controller: 1. The Burnout team is planning to make full use of the PS3 con- troller's tilt functionality within the game. One place you'll see it is in Crash mode: Through controller manipulation, you'll be able to control your car's —. Қа trajectory and flipping. And yes, z вот 4 the use of tilt will show up in И other parts of the game 一 but for now, the team is remaining mum on specifics. 2. Because the controller shape has evolved slightly and the R2 and L2 buttons have become more triggerlike, Burnout 5's controls have changed from those of previous games. Now R2 is the accelerator, L2 is the brake, and X is boost. However, the team plans to include the ability to remap the controls if you prefer the old layout. Н “| each race.“We're trying to make the online and offline components as close as we can to one another,” says Glancy. To help with that, the rivals’ Al will allow them to remember all of your interactions, and their behavior will follow accordingly. A few nasty encounters and they'll get more aggressive and start seeking you out. Beat them down a few more times, and they'll start to get scared of you. Eventually, when you've fully asserted your domi- nance, they'll start to flee when they see you. When they hit this point, you can chase them and catch them; this is how you add new cars to your stable. The team wanted to do away with menus, so while the world itself will offer objectives—and there will definitely be events—you won't be selecting them from a list. One mode that's getting a huge over- haul is Crash mode, which has been blown wide open. You can now initiate a crash at any point and from any angle—with just the press of a button, the experience begins. Instead of a time limit, now the crash event will continue as long as traffic is piling up. Crash modifi- ers—such as the x2 and Heartbreaker from Burnout 3—are also being brought back into the mode. This time, instead of just sitting loose on the road, they'll be attached to certain vehicles, which will bear some sort of signifier indicating what they could do for your total. And while you can trigger a crash at any point—even in the middle of an event—there also are 50 different crash black spots that you'll need to find, which can all be played and replayed like the traditional crash junctions of prior Burnouts. 45 | OFM Остовег 2006 The specifics of how all the other events will trigger is still being worked out, but you'll have control over what you're playing. “If all you dig is road rage, you can drive around starting that up," Ward promises. "We're not going to say, 'Now you must do a traffic attack, then you must do a single race, then you must do this.’ We want to say: ‘Here are all the things you can do; how you get there is up to you.” Oh, and one other thing: Every area of the world will be accessible from the beginning. Accumulating violations will unlock more oppor- tunities within the game, but no part of the city will ever be off-limits. ‘FALL VOU DIG IS PEOAD AGE, YOU сам оаче APOUND STARTING THAT LIP.” 4 "We always think it's funny in some of the other open-world games where the world is locked off,” says Ward. “Our world is open from the start. The number of rivals and events available will be gradually unlocked, but the whole bloody world is open.” The team is making some big changes for Burnout 5, but one of the areas they feel most compelled to reinvent is online play. “We think MLI- ОСТОВЕЕЕЗ | it's our duty to expand online gaming beyond this PC paradigm of frags, deathmatches, and who's No. 1 in the world.” Ward says. "We've played Burnout Revenge on Xbox Live, and we suck—I'm like 6,000th in the world. We get hosed at our own game." Young chimes in. "We've seen a lot of online games based on who's the best in the world, and that's incredibly niche because you can only have, by definition, a few people who can be the best in the world. We want to appeal to the mass consumer, in that most people are more interested in playing their friends and people at their level and beating up people online. If you have a focus on who's the best in the world, it's not very personal. So the real focus for us has been on getting away from who's No. 1." Kiana Mohseni, Burnout 5's online producer, explains the under lying concept for the team’s online plan. “Revenge 360 was the test bed for us; it was about tracking 1-on-1 relationships," she says "And so our whole vision for Burnout 5 online is based on tracking personal relationships." With Burnout Revenge on the 360, the team started exploring some ways to make this happen. For example, they took information that the game naturally tracks and used it to make introductions between people. Веуепде on Xbox Live also remembers whom gamers have played, reminds them of how many times they've already competed, and keeps track of the overall score between players. And the team's going to take this basic idea much further with Burnout 5. “One feature we're building is called ‘Marked Мап,” Mohseni The area where the Burnout 5 development team works is filled with boards covered in Post-it Notes, which, in essence, serve as the template for the game structure. "We're not like other developers in the sense that on our server there's not one single design document sitting there that's going to tell you the whole game from start to finish," Ward says. "There are a great many cool games made that way, and 1 almost wish we could do that. But we don't do it because it would be boring to write, we'd have a big argument about it anyway, and in the time it'd take to write, we could have built stuff." Another advantage to such a public meth- od of plotting the game design is that when changes get made everyone who needs to know can automatically see them. says. "When you play online, you often hear people telling you, 'Oh, I'm going to come and get you this time.’ So basically, we built that into the game, and people can ‘mark’ you." If you succeed, you get a snapshot of your opponent mid-takedown, which gets added to your trophy gallery. However, the team wants everyone to have a fighting chance. As Ward says, “If you turn up and get your ass handed to you, you don’t want to go back—it isn’t fun. If there’s somewhere you can go where you have a chance, then it's more interesting to me." And that’s why you'll have the opportunity to retaliate if you're marked, too. "That's what we call ‘Dirty Tricks," Mohseni explains. “А Dirty Trick is where | can mess with your steering wheel or your brakes or lock your boost permanently on. And it's basically a weapon that will help level the playing field for people of different skill levels.” When asked about downloadable content, the team confirms that, yes, it will be available, but Ward would only hint at what it might be: “All | can say is that what we've seen so far [of downloadable con tent] tends to be fluffy, and we believe modes are where it's at." There's а lot more in store, but we're not going to find out about it just yet. “We could tell you about five things that we're doing right now, but we can't tell you, because we might throw it away," Ward explains. “The greatest thing we've learned is that just because мие ме written it doesn't mean we can't delete it." We appreciate that kind of perfectionism—as long as it doesn't delay our chance to get our hands оп the finished game. ЛИЛ ы ARMY OF TWO by JOE RYBICKI 48 | DAIN Остовее 2006 In 2005, KBR made ап awful lot of money. According to the company’s website, the group posted revenues of almost 11 billion dollars. KBR does two things, and it does them very well: Its Energy and Chemicals division offers support to the energy industry through “engi- neering, procurement, construction, technology and services,” while its vastly more profitable Government and Infrastructure division offers support to the military through “logistics, con- struction and maintenance services for national governments as well as consulting and civil engineering services for local governments.” The 2005 year-end report of KBR’s parent corporation is a bit more explicit, calling the Government and Infrastructure division “one of the world’s leading defense-services providers,” providing "whenever and wherever’ support across the full military mission cycle—from on-base services to the largest deployments.” In other words, KBR draws most of its income from its function as a private military com- pany, or РМС. In fact, KBR's G&I division is so successful that in 2005, it provided nearly 40 percent of the revenue of its parent corpora- tion—nearly double the revenue of the next- biggest division. You may have heard of the parent corporation: It’s called Halliburton. cemLlp.com | 49 ниеге СОЦЕВ STUY Private military companies аге a growing force in the world. At their most innocuous, they provide civilian support for military action: build- ing roads, stringing wires, or providing or servicing vehicles. They can take much of the logistical load off of the traditional military through their specialized services, allowing the military to focus on more immediate demands. But at the other end of the spectrum, many pro- vide another military asset that’s not often talked about: professional soldiers. This function is the basis for EA Montreal’s ambitious co-op shooter, Army of Two. There are a lot of benefits to augmenting a public military with a private corporation. Lacking the bureaucracy of, for example, the U.S. military, a PMC can respond more quickly to changing conditions, with more agility than its publicly funded counterpart. And private soldiers are often both better equipped and more experienced than the tradi- tional military; the significantly higher pay—rumored to be more than $30,000 a day for particularly hairy assignments—tends to draw battle- hardened ex-military who may have gotten fed up with the mindless bureaucracy that permeates the life of a traditional soldier. But there are less innocent reasons for a government to contract a PMC. "You can do things in a PMC that the military either can't or won't do," says Corey May, scriptwriter for Army of Two. "There are a lot of things that may be considered unethical or illegal, but they still need to get done. Assassinations are a big thing. You're not supposed to assas- sinate people; it's against the Geneva Conventions. For a PMC to go in there and do it, Из not going to dirty the government's hands.” This is heavy, scary stuff. But the young team behind Army of Two isn't afraid of taking chances. "We're going one step beyond pure gam- ing, into the gray area," says Alain Tascan, vice president and general manager of EA Montreal. "Are these things possible? Do these things happen? You have things that happen today that, if a movie was made about them, you wouldn't believe it. "Between one-fourth and one-third of the budget from the Penta- gon is going into private corporations," Tascan continues. "This is the reality today. You're talking about 100 billion dollars. And think about a private company: What's your role? To make more money. And there NE IZE GOING ONE STEP BEYOND PUE GAMING, INTO THE OZAY AEA.” is so much going on in the world right now—| would be an investor in Halliburton or the Carlyle Group right now, because between every- thing going on, it's happy times [for them]. It is not in the corporate interest to have less trouble in the world." This is the central conflict that underlies the story of Army of Two: the conflict between doing the right thing and doing the profitable thing. Here you have two private soldiers—the older, battle-scarred Tyson Rios and the young upstart Elliot Salem—who go beyond the restrictions of legitimate military for very lucrative sums of money. But ME, WANT WHAT'S COMING ТО МЕ, THE WORLD CHICO, AND EVERYTHING IN TT. ^ THE WORLD IS YOURS Blood and Gore MATURE 1 Intense Violence Sexual Themes Strong Language mpnpngrg Use of Drugs SRB VIDEO GAME IN STORES 10/8 { ALL-NEW 2-DISC PLATINUM EDITION WITH DIGITALLY RESTORED AUDIO SCARFACEGAME, COM ALSO AVAILABLE £^ SIERRA RAD Ocar ENTERTAINMENT UNIVERSAL at some point, questions arise. “Later on in the game, they'll start facing these complicated situations,” May says, “and they'll start asking themselves, ‘Are we the good guys, or are we the bad guys?’ They start to notice that there are certain things under the surface that may not sit well with them. So they're going to have to make some decisions: How much do you want a new car, or clothes for your kid, or а bigger house—and at what price?" BUDDY SYSTEM But this daringly topical story line isn’t the biggest risk the Army of Two team is taking. That distinction belongs to the unorthodox gameplay mechanic that underlies the entire experience. Army of Two is a game based firmly in the idea of cooperation. You control one member of a two-man PMC team, and your partner is controlled either by a friend (in person or online) or by a very complex Al system the team is put- ting together. That may not sound terribly revolutionary, but that's probably because you're thinking of the type of Al-controlled, squad- based games that have plagued the industry in the past. Make no mistake: This two-man idea is absolutely integral to Army of Two. Everything in this game is done аз а team, so much so that it's led to plenty of jokes about just how close these two characters are (jokes that now seem embarrassingly glib in light of the game's fright- eningly plausible premise). This teamwork mechanic is the very reason for Army of Two's existence, and it's what the team is fervently hoping will differentiate the game from other shooters. | DL TDBEH upgrade weapon upgrade weapon upgrade weapon CHOOSE YOUle WEAPON my One big feature of Army of Two will be the weapon-customization feature. By - completing bonus objectives, you'll earn extra cash, which you can use to trick out your firearm. Among the many different features you can snap onto your piece: a shield, which deflects bullets but decreases accuracy; a pistol grip, which increases accuracy but decreases speed; a shotgun to clear out close quarters; and even a grenade launcher. You can even make changes to the gun's appearance, even going so far as to chrome-plate the entire thing. “It's not that we have this new laser gun, and big explosions, and stuff like that," says Tascan. “It's different on the design level. And it's not just like | push Button A and you push Button B—you can really interact together. It’s a window you open for the designer, to the game- maker, and to the storyteller: How is my partnership going to evolve as a result of what I’m doing? This new thing is going to open up tons of possibilities.” Lead designer Chris Ferriera elaborates: “In my opinion, every co-op game has been: ‘OK, here's a single-player map—have someone else play with you.’ And once in awhile, that second person becomes a key: You can use him to open this gate and get to this area. Our whole focus on the game design,” he tells us, “is that the two characters are inter- twined, and also interacting. These are two separate characters with different personalities who actually interact with the environment—and each other 一 in different ways. In terms of the gameplay, you're as responsible for my death as | am. Mission success—you are just as responsible as | am for getting that done. It's not like you just happened to be there. If we split off, we will never get through this area. We have to work together." Even at this early stage (the game is planned for release simply "some- time in 2007") Army of Two has plenty of interesting examples of team- 52 | OAM Остовее 2006 photos Бу Darren Си work-based segments. Consider this example: You start a level with а tandem parachute jump. You’re controlling the speed and direction of your parachute, while your partner, armed with a high-powered sniper rifle, does his best to dispatch as many enemies as possible from your landing zone. By the time you land, he's taken out a good percentage ofthe waiting enemies, but quite a few still remain. In the middle of the landing area, you go back-to-back with your partner, giving you a full 360 degrees of view and protecting your less-armored backs. Having cleaned out your landing zone, you move on to the next "THESE ARE ТІЛО SEPARATE снаедс- TERS WITH DIFFERENT PERSONALITIES.” | area, a large canyon, liberally populated by baddies, with high ledges on the side. You wait by the entrance while your partner sneaks up to one of the ledges with his sniper rifle. He takes a few of the enemies before the rest of the group notices him. They dash toward his sniper spot...allowing you to storm in and spray the (now more tightly packed) group of bad guys with machine gun fire. You finish off the enemy and move on to a warehouse sprinkled with crates, pallets, forklifts, and other equipment. You creep up behind a storage container with an enemy sentry posted on top. To get rid of ОС ТОВЕЕЕ ALAN TASCAN Vice President, General Manager 了 — THE TEAM Lto В: Marcus Fielding, development director; Francois Pelland, lead artist/level designer; Chris Ferriera, lead designer; Tascan; Caballero; Antoine Dodens, lead engineer, Steve Dupont, animation direc- tor; Reid Schneider, senior producer. A game as unorthodox as Army of Two requires an unorthodox develop- ment team and an unorthodox devel- opment process. And EA Montreal provides exactly that. Let that sink in a moment: an Electronic Arts studio as trendsetter? Iconoclasts within a company that built its house with nearly 17 years of Madden? Sequel-, franchise-, license- happy EA? Something has changed. As the first of EA's internal "bou- tique" studios, EA Montreal has been able to write a lot of its own rules. Vice president and general manager Alain Tascan seems almost befuddled when he talks about the lack of inva- sive meddling from the higher-ups at EA's corporate center. "They know the company needs to go in a differ- ent direction. They know they have to innovate more than they have. So they have given us a lot of freedom," he says. "We are able to hire the people we want...and our people are able to get the gear they need." Look around the office and you see top-of-the line...well, everything. Huge, dual-monitor setups; ergonom- ic chairs; a full-sized pool table; even a giant classroom for frequent train- ing sessions to keep all the employ- ees at the top of their fields. Getting—and keeping—top-tier employees is clearly a priority for Tascan. "If you drew lines between all the major universities in Montreal," he says, "you would get something like a triangle. We're at the center of that triangle." The purpose: to recruit young, fresh artists and designers interested in creating something dif- ferent, with the skills to do it and a minimum of cynicism about what is and is not possible in videogames. The result is a shockingly differ- ent approach to design in which the entire studio not only contributes ideas to the game, but also has the tools to illustrate those ideas. Game designer Vander Caballero explains: "The way we work is some- thing that's quite new at EA," he says. "As a designer, it's hard to figure out everything that's going to happen and write it down: what's going to hap- pen with the camera, what's going to happen with the physics, and so on. So we prototype our own design. Everyone goes off and figures out what works and what doesn't work." "The idea behind it," Tascan says, "is that describing design with words within one team, everyone would feel like they need to be efficient—so they would go with a sure bet. After one or two slaps in the face, they would be late on their schedule, and they would lower the risks they would take. By setting this up differently, we liberate them." The result is plenty of ideas that proved too odd or unwieldy even for this genre-pushing game (see page 55 for examples of ideas that didn't make it), but with this open-minded team, more ideas have made it past the drawing board than anyone expected. "It turns out they have a 50 percent adoption rate," Tascan says. It's clear, though, that this idea of | THE DNISION’S SOLE PURPOSE ‘(OME UP WITH AND Pie- [IS TI | ТОТУРЕ ПІ -THE-INALL IDEAS. is like describing music with words. You can describe some emotion, but if you want to say that to a musician, you need a score. It's the same thing with design. You can storyboard, but you have to feel it to know if it's fun. This unusual approach goes far beyond the tools, though: It's created a division within the Army of Two team, headed by Caballero, whose sole purpose is to come up with and prototype off-the-wall ideas, a team otherwise removed from the day-to-day schedule of game design. ^Having Vander outside of the sched- ule and the milestone plan enables him to be more free about what he's doing," continues Tascan, "and to bring up crazy stuff. It's very liberat- ing for his team. If everything were empowerment is a philosophy that drives the whole studio. One indicator of this is Tascan's insistence on not requiring his employees to sign non- compete clauses. He wants them to want to work there, not feel like they have to. He even penned an open let- ter to the head of Ubisoft Montreal in 2003, decrying Ubisoft's tradition of noncompete clauses. In the letter, which came in the wake of lawsuits alleging EA had poached some of Ubisoft's top employees, Tascan urged Ubisoft Montreal to "stop the illegitimate practice of forcing talented people to sign employment contracts that restrict their creative and economic freedom." This is indeed a new direc- tion for EA. Let's hope it continues. this guy, you boost your partner up to the top of the container, raising him only a little at a time with the analog stick to make sure the coast is clear before he climbs up. Turns out there's another guy up there you didn't see, so rather than climbing up, your partner rolls a grenade across the top of the container, and you hurriedly lower him back down. The grenade goes off—sending the sentries flying—and all hell breaks loose. So you dash over to a forklift and use it to lift up a machine-gun turret that's conveniently located on a pallet. Your partner hops on and starts blasting away while you use the forklift to maneuver him into prime firing position. During this exercise, your partner takes some pretty heavy fire, and once you lower him back down, he's unable to walk on his own. So he throws his arm around your shoulder and you carry him along to a safer spot—yet all the while, you both are able to fire with your free hands. And so on.... FRIENDSHIP ОЕ ONE All of this may sound like a complete blast to play with a friend...but what happens if you're not online and you don't have a friend handy to accompany you in your adventure? Is it even possible to create a com- puter-controlled character that will behave realistically in these kinds of conditions? Not only is it possible, the team says—it's all but a given. “We won't release it if it's not working," says lead engineer Antoine Dodens. "It would be like releasing it if it had a bug. We would fix it." It's clear that the developers are not just interested in creating an interesting co-op game, but in creating an interesting co-op game that can be played solo. "We talk about ‘next gen’ in a lot of different aspects," Tascan says, "but one of the dreams we had was interact- ing with the machine—and having the machine respond to you. It's this concept of the ‘friend in the box’ that is close to our heart. When you're only doing things yourself, it limits the emotion you can feel: If you die, you start again. If you have a partner, you start establishing a relationship, and now you care about not only what you're doing, but [also] what the other guy is doing. And if something happens to him, you have a new kind of feeling. | think /co started it with the princess, and that was a huge inspiration. Our aim is not only co-op in terms of gameplay, but in terms of feelings you can have throughout the game, because you care about somebody else." To this end, EA Montreal has an entire team devoted solely to mak- ing your Al partner behave in a lifelike fashion. Some of the ideas this team has come up with are revolutionary. "We need to give this partner Al а good memory,” says Dodens. “So we're keeping track of everything that happens. If you're using the AK-47, and 20 percent of the time you miss, the partner Al is going to be aware of that. So the next time you go to use the AK-47 in a fighting situation, the partner's going to say, ‘Oh, man—l don't agree with that. Change your weapon; you're no good with that one.' Imagine if you're playing and the guy says to you, ‘I don't think this is the right way to do this.’ He will FAMILIAIZ FACES EA Montreal may be relatively new, but the key talent behind Army of Two 15 well known: Most of them created the first Splinter Cell. Schneider, Dodens, Pelland, and Dupont all played key roles in launching that influen- tial franchise. нее COUER STORY | remember your failures, so the next time you replay the map he may say, ‘Last time we did that, it didn’t work.’ That's really simple to put into place, but nobody's done that before.” And that memory will extend to more personal elements. Other games with teammate Al will let you wantonly spray bullets into your partners with no negative effects aside from maybe a “Hey, quit it!” Not so with Army of Two. “You always want to cooperate,” says senior producer Reid Schneider, “but if you shoot your friend, he’s going to come after you.” He demonstrates by loading up a test level on the PS3 develop- ment kit, picking up a rifle, and shooting his partner in the leg. The partner immediately reacts, running up to Schneider's character and getting in his face. "| will drop you right here!” the computer-controlled partner yells. Schneider shoots him again. Instantly, his partner unleashes a strong right hook to the face, and Schneider's character goes down. “He's not happy,” Schneider observes, "and he's going to knock me over. He may even head-butt me. And now he’s going to be more angry with me; he'll still cooperate with me on moves, but he'll be really pissed.” Eventually, if you upset your partner enough, he will refuse certain opportunities for teamwork. “The idea here is that we can open up more or less co-op moves depending on what stage you're at in your за | DEBITI остовее 2006 cooperative mode," says Tascan. "He'll react to what | do; if l'm behav- ing like a jackass, he'll treat me like a jackass.” And the actions that affect your relationship with your partner go beyond the physical; if you do something he doesn't approve of—gunning down a civilian, for example—he may nurse a grudge...at least until the next time you pull his ass out of the fire. “But see, this stuff isn't going to happen in the middle of a gun- fight," Ferriera says. "We don't want to interrupt the player. But at moments where there's not much going on, it gives life to the game." “ЧЕ ІІМ BEHAVING LIKE А JACKASS, | HE'LL TIBEAT ME LIKE а JACKASS” And exploiting those generally empty moments is key to bringing life to an Al partner, the team says. "If you think about a shooter-type game," Schneider explains, "the moment-to-moment experience between gunfights is generally pretty boring. You're just waiting for the next encounter. But we thought we'd really make use of your partner, so now we think about how your partner will react to objects in the world. So imagine you're in someone's house, or whatever. Your part- ner may decide he wants to go in the fridge, and he passes you a beer. It's an awareness of you and an awareness of the environment." “Из an opportunity to be aware of the world," Tascan says, "and be more aware of yourself and what you're doing through your interac- tion with your partner. We feel like this is the ‘next-gen’ part. Forget the physics, forget the graphical aspect—it's being aware of more stuff, being involved in the experience." Schneider demonstrates by walking through a virtual house set up to illustrate these concepts. We see the computer-controlled partner turn on a stereo, rock out to the tunes, and trash the living room in a rock-star-style frenzy. We see him walk to the phone and call his wife. We see him root through the occupants' dresser. We see him urinate in the tenants' coffee pot...and then put it back on the burner. This is not your typical shooter. But making the Al behave in a lifelike fashion, Dodens says, is not the major obstacle. "I think the hard thing will be, if we make this cool co- op play that is really great to play with a human friend—how will you be able to play that with the Al? Because if you play with a human, the human can fail. You're fine with the fact that you lose the game if your human friend is failing,” he says, “but how are you going to feel if the computer fails and you die? That's the trickiest question we have to answer. How are we going to make the player OK with this kind of stuff happening? Because we need to have that. | know that once we get to where the player is fine with the Al failing, we will be successful.” It's this kind of unorthodox thinking that characterizes the approach the Army of Two team is taking. “We need to give people a new experi- ence,” says Schneider. “The genre is stale. Shooters will look better, they'll play better, the controls will be great—but it's inherently still so much of the same thing. That's why we want to create something new. We're not claiming to know 100 percent the path before us, but we need to innovate, we need to put something new into the marketplace. "Five years ago," he continues, "if you made something that looked good or looked more impressive than anything else, you would get noticed. Now we're at a point where every game is going to have great graphics—that's the price of entry. So you can't rely on that; now it's about the experience." "We feel that if we're not, in a meaningful way, trying to change things, games are going to be stale," Tascan says. "People are not waiting on new graphics, or even smarter Al, but being able to play differently. We're convinced that we need to push in this direction very hard, not for the sake of being different, but because we owe that to the game. We're trying to make things more exciting for us, and we hope that by making things more exciting for us we will make it more exciting for the people.” "And," Dodens says, “we will also have really nice graphics." “Do we know exactly where we're going?" continues Tascan. "Have we figured it out to the last level? Maybe not; it would be pretentious to say that. But there are some very exciting new things going оп.” [ | During our visit to ЕА Montreal, the team ‘demonstrated several of the unusual game- play mechanics that have come out of the studio's unorthodox design approach (see “Steering the Jug- gernaut,” page 52). Among these is the much-talked-about CPR segment, where one player performs CPR while the other runs away from “the light.” Another involves one player controlling the breathing of his char- acter in order to lower his heart rate so that, when the other player got in close to stick a tampon into a bullet wound, he wouldn't be sprayed in the eyes by spurting blood. With such outlandish elements making it into the game, we couldn't help but wonder what ideas had been rejected. So we asked game designer Vander Caballero for some examples of what didn't make the cut. “The camera travels with the arrow. If you hit a character, the camera goes inside the body, showing the damage you caused.” “You extract a bullet from your partner's body to save his life. My father was [shot] when | was a kid, and I've always had the fantasy of saving his life if | only could extract the bul- lets from his body.” “You [use] a full 3D interface to manage all your inventory and communication. | hate 20 HUD overlays; it is | old school. We can do | much better than this.” | In the end, all these ideas proved too awk- | ward, or would have | required too much estructuring of the | game engine. 令 |HmPE_PEEUENS THE МЛС MANY MUSIC-MINDED-MASHERS FROM MIZUGUCHI We'll fully admit y Buena Vista Games Q Entertainment November PSP LUMINES 1 won't reinvent the wheel, it will add a new layer to the already trippy visual aesthetic: actual music videos. So you'll still be clearing blocks to the background music beat, but you'll also have crazy-looking skins, some of which feature real people singing real songs. In addition to the traditional techno-based track list, the use of music videos lets Mizuguchi insert in songs that he likes, such as Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl,” “Star Guitar” by the Chemical Brothers, and New Order's “Regret.” Also, the videos aren't as distracting as you would think. The neatest thing, howev- er, is the video for "Heavenly Star," which Mizuguchi and his team actually conceptualized and produced (and then had Glamoove, a video production studio, animate). The song is a supercatchy pop number, and the video uses rotoscoping à la a-ha's video for "Take On Me" (one of Mizuguchi's favorite videos). y Namco Bandai Q Entertainment Е October PLAT PSP SCORE 3 ) GUNPEY 2810/0 LEVEL 4 a shooter that's missing an “r” in the title. It's a quirky puzzle game (which originated on the WonderSwan, a weird little Japan-only handheld released during the Game Boy Color days) named after the creator of the original Game Boy, Gunpei Yokoi. The game itself is just about connecting lines. That is, there's a large five-by-10 grid on the screen, and various shapes and bars fill those columns—all you have to do is shift the shapes around (you can only move them up and down in their individual columns) to form a continuous line from left and right, which then disappears. The puzzle strategy is to not only create lines, but also to move the shapes around to create intersecting lines for combo bonuses. This new version adds lots of techno tracks and crazy background images, like people going to work in an ancient Japanese village or weird animals raving it up at night. 4 ЕКЕУ Ex TEND EXTEA a bit unsure as to how to describe this game, but since some of us have played the odd PC freeware game Every Extend, we've provided a description for him: “suicide-bomb puz- zler." That is, you're a little, er, suicide bomb that blows himself up (and loses a life each time) in order to trigger other explosives— creating large chain reactions racks up points, which adds lives for you. Additionally, there are “Quickens” that accelerate the speed of the incoming debris, which helps in creating larger chain reactions by having the exploding items closer to each other. As expected, Mizuguchi's touch translates into extensive use of electronica for the music and crazy use of colors and shapes for visuals. We par- ticularly like the Versus mode, which is basically a suicide-bomb version of Ping-Pong: Two players trigger explosions to influence the movement of a giant asteroid in the middle of the screen. =) as Habe z ме а! fal дена LIT MATURE 17+ Blood Intense Violence > Suggestive Themes pI i e FERE | t ayStation. WWW.ATLUS.COM © 2006 Sony Computer 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 Atlus USA. The rating icons are trademarks of the Entertainment Software Association. SNAKE'S AUTOGRAPH While everyone loves to play as Snake, MGS: Portable Ops producer Noriaki Okamura actually gives us tactical, gameplay-related reasons for why you shouldn't play as Snake all the time. No really—read the interview! 4 UB. Konami DEV, Kojima Productions Iz ASE Winter L 1PSP VE TAL GEAR ш у PU TABLE PUT A SNAKE IN YOUR POCKET! T 58 | OFM Остовег 2006 OCTOBER | will have come out before the PSP gets a more “traditional” Metal Gear Solid title with the upcoming release of Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops. Series direc- tor Hideo Kojima is apparently way busy working on things like MGS4, but we got to talk with producer Noriaki Okamura (Metal Gear Acid 1 and 2) about what's going on with Portable Ops. 1 We've heard Койта comment that the genesis of Portable Ops was to have an action game where you recruited people via Wi-Fi (The Seven Samurai is specifically cited as the inspiration for said recruitment mechanic). Can you talk about the process of how that idea then evolved into Portable Ops? | We first started with the idea to put the next chapter of Metal Gear Solid on the PSP. Mr. Kojima had the idea to base the next game on the idea of recruiting comrades and integrat- ing that with Wi-Fi play. He said that because this game is on the PSP, we should not fit a PS2-style game on the portable system, but rather create a game that is designed specifically for it. Now, of course we borrow many things from the PS2 MGS titles as well, but because of the portable nature of the PSP, we knew this was a perfect opportunity to encourage play- ers to travel around their town (or the country) in search of unique characters. The game is called Portable Ops, meaning "portable operations," for a reason! І On that note, сап you elaborate оп the “recruitment via Wi-Fi” gameplay mechanic? INO In Portable Ops, players must first go to the recruiting mode in the game and fire up its menu. When you connect to a hot spot, you will receive a character unique to that specific hot “WHEN YOU CONNECT TO A HOT SPOT, YOU WILL RECEIE A CHARACTER UNIQUE то THAT SPECIFIC SPOT.” spot. [Konami America clarified that the IP address of the hot spot is used in some crazy algorithm that generates a new char- acter and his or her stats. —Ed.] If you want him or her, save the character to your memory stick and use them in single- or multiplayer modes! You needn't have to log on to апу hot spots, by the way; simply detecting the hot spot is enough to be able to recruit a new member off that Internet hot spot. There will be a variety of character types, from scientists, a variety of soldiers, and special characters—some you may гес- ognize from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. | 1 ОК, сап you talk а БИ more about the characters and their abilities? INO Most characters have unique abilities this time. One of your comrades may be highly skilled with handguns, or rifles, ог СОС [close-quarters combat]. And they'll also have negative attributes as well. For example, one of your soldiers may have a low handgun rating, causing him to have poor accuracy when he's trying to fire one. And we are not implementing the camo-index system; we are introducing a new system that is just as innovative. In single-player mode, you will be able to take a team of up to four people with you. Based on what uniform your enemy is wear- ing, you'll want to control one of your teammates who is wear- ing a similar type of uniform. If an enemy soldier spots your look-alike comrade, he won't shoot because he thinks that would be friendly fire. So you'll have to be very cunning in this game. And it's not always best to control Snake this time—he's easily spotted with that suit of his, and on top of that, he's a very famous character! Everybody in the game has heard of the legendary Big Boss! SESE ФИНЫРЕ PREVIEWS | І ОРА Since you just mentioned single-player, can you give us some details? Most of the press and MGS fans have only seen multiplayer gameplay so far.... І Including Snake, up to four friendly characters сап enter the battlefield. These comrades of yours are an essential ele- ment. Only one character can be controlled at one time, and each are first stationed at various parts of the map. Each com- rade has a unique ability and weapon, so it's up to you to tackle this big map using all four characters, swapping back and forth between them and familiarizing yourself with the map. Some parts in the game will be easier with a specific character, so there's a big strategy element there as well. For example, one character may have a high sniping skill, so you'll want to bring her to the area where Snake is getting sniped at by surrounding enemies. And of course, the rest of the game will play out like Metal Gear Solid, complete with Codec banter, cool cut-scenes, great drama, voice acting, et cetera. ГОРА In the single-player story line, you use Ashley Wood illustrations (accompanied with voiceovers) instead of tradi- tional MGS-style cut-scenes. Why? INO We really aimed to do something unique with this chap- ter of Metal Gear Solid, and Ashley Wood was a perfect fit. We really were impressed with his work on Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel, and it just seemed logical to ask him to contribute art for Portable Ops. His art really fits the MGS world, and I'm really excited about the art that he's preparing this time around. He is really knee-deep in the project and is churning out some really stunning art for the game. 1 Л So is this the same team that worked оп МСАТ and 2? "THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE WAS HOW то моек AROUND THE MISSING [2lGHT ANALOG STICK.” Can you talk about the background of the people working on this game? INO Yes, a lot of the MGA2 team is working on it. But since the completion of the Acid series, we've added so many new people to the team. I OPM So, were there any specific lessons that the team learned from MGA that they've now applied to Portable Ops? 1ND МСА was a very good game with an excellent 3D graph- ics system. So with Portable Ops, we're taking that even further. | really think it's amazing how far we're pushing the PSP hard- ware this time. And with the Acid series, we really wanted to include an infrastructure-mode multiplayer mode, so with this game, now's our chance to really dive deep into that and offer an expansive online mode. | OPM So in the end, how was the process of making ап action-oriented MGS game work on the PSP? Were there any particular challenges/difficulties in making an action-oriented Metal Gear for the PSP? IT The biggest challenge was how to work around the miss ing right analog stick. So we've developed a gameplay system that works very well despite the lack of the right stick. This includes the new sound indicator, which informs players of their surroundings based on sound. Because players can't simply pan the camera around using the PSP, the sound indicator responds based on the noises nearby enemies make. 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Available for Cingular and Sprint subscribers for Sniper Ops элуу $ | НУР PREVIEWS Оотра Att Team pose ен ‘At2Team pose center ALS Team pose right ы і МД Event pose 1 f 11 j SCC ii At5 Event pose 2 | aa HJE ў 26 es At6 Event pose 3 © ЕСА = Sonic Team Fall PS2 PHANTASY STAR UNNUEPSE FIVE MEN-CHILDREN' LOCKED UP IN A ROOM TOGETHER Rather than just tell you about PSU and its combination of single- and multiplayer, we just left a tape recorder on during our exclusive multiplayer session. This was an intermagazine effort, as we had senior editor Darren Gladstone from CGW (playing on Ше PC), executive editor Shane Bettenhausen and previews editor Bryan Intihar from ЕСМ (playing on the Xbox 360), and Team OPM, as represented by Scooter and Giancarlo. OPM Scooter: Okay, the CASTs (robots) look cool, but | gotta go with making a Beast, which seems to be some sort of space furry. Apparently, as a space furry, | can punch things better. OPM GV: | have to go with the CASTs on this one. That's all | used in PSO and I'll be damned if | change for the likes of you! Plus you can make cool robot ninjas. ЕСМ Bryan: I'll stick to doing humans. This way, | can keep up ту metrosexual look online as well. CGW Darren: There you have it, folks: Bryan sticks to doing humans. Me? I’m getting in touch with my fembot Real Doll side as a CAST. ЕСМ Shane: l'm sticking with a Newman...they make the best magic users. Plus, the chicks are smokin' hot. OPM Scooter: I’m not going to make my Beast hot. Besides messing with the hair and face stuff (typical in an RPG), l'm messing with the body width and height to turn her into a horrible Oompa-Loompa. CGW Darren: Man, this is tougher than | thought. Do 1 go with the soul patrol Afro or a Beckham fauxhawk on my robotic hottie? Hmmm.... ЕСМ Bryan: I'm totally going the Beckham look, but it's nice to see that | have options if one day | decide to go the way of a fatty. OPM GV: I'm going for the robot ninja look. Because robot ninjas will f*** you up! EGM Shane: Wow, PSU offers a lot more customization than PSO ever did...some of these hairstyles are truly evil. | think | could just sit here and whip up futuristic skanks all day long.... CGW Darren: This city sure looks nice on my PC. Not nearly as pixelated as...say, how many GB of RAM are on this machine and is it using one graphics card or two in SLI? Hello? Where'd everyone go? EGM Shane: This city area seems pretty large...having voice chat on the Xbox 360 version will make navigating this oversized mall mezzanine a hell of a lot easier. Sucks to be a PS2 gamer, Scooter. OPM Scooter: Yeah, while there are a variety of canned sayings that | сап use the shoulder buttons for, it looks like l'Il have to either plug in a keyboard or hit you guys up via three-way calling. Oh, looks like everyone is heading over to some big gate-looking thing. EGM Bryan: Yeah, we all gotta enter through there and then wait for the group leader to start the mission. ПОТ ост 2006 остовев | аз. ша me | M. | ТІЛІН OPM GV: While waiting, ГИ just keep spamming the “victory” pose while chasing Scooter around. ҮЛ! LJUST KILL THINGS IN DEIN ны ЕСМ Shane: | really like the changes they've made to the combat—it's more visceral, the combo strings are longer, and Forces now have mad technique points...l'm tossing spells with reckless abandon! Actually, | think I'll just scout ahead and gather some treasure for the party; every party needs a "banker"! OPM GV: Agreed. This is definitely an improvement on all fronts. The combos are really easy to execute and it just feels like there's more you can do in melee combat. Long-range stuff still needs a little work in terms of locking onto enemies. And yeah, remind me never to play this game with you ever again, EGM Shane. ЕСМ Bryan: I’m totally digging the ability to have a melee weapon in one hand and a gun in the other. CGW Darren: ! actually don't mind the controls on the PC. Combat works—if a little on the mindless button-mashing side... waaaait a sec! PSU supports a 360 controller on the PC? Not bad. OPM Scooter: Yeah, it's pretty easy to kill things no matter what platform you're playing on. As for your earlier point, GV, I think that the next time we do a session, we should set up loot rules to prevent dorks like Shane from ninja-ing everything while we actually, you know, fight things. ИЕ s oett cones coc sie I OPM Scooter: Hey, let's just run up to this slightly-bigger-than-the- other-enemies thing and hit it! CGW Darren: Time to make with the hack and the slash. As soon аз | write a macro, | will totally rule this game online. OPM GV: Ег, l'Il just keep on with the slashing and/or the hacking.... ЕСМ Shane: And l'Il keep picking up the loot that it drops! EGM Bryan: What a f***ing prick! EGM Bryan: OK, nuff of these wimpy characters—let's test out some level 30 characters and see what kind of damage they can do. CGW Darren: Is it just me or does my Beast character look a little like Skeletor's sidekick Beastman? EGM Shane: Man, | bet a lot of dudes are going to pick Beastmen characters because they can ‘roid out and change вһаре...! think I'll pass on that loser bandwagon. OPM GV: The Beastman thing was a bit of a surprise, especially since my character appears to be a little elf-looking girl, but it could be helpful since her default attacks seem to be a little weak. OPM Scooter: l'm now controlling some sort of saucy female CAST. Right now, I’m considered a “hunter,” which meant that т better with guns than melee weapons. Cool, | can now stand by while the rest of you clowns run up and get all Beasty with the monsters. HEY FOLKS! G E ¢ | ниве PREVIEWS [Расе _ Eyes Eyebrows Eyelashes Ears Head type A-skin color Proportions 4 Next setting Return ххх CGW Darren: Welcome to PSU Cribs! You like my fully pimped space joint? Aww, yeah! See that giant ‘shroom? Got that at a Dead show in 2076. One of a kind, man. OPM GV: Wait, what are you talking about? Get away from me Darren, and let me move my space shrub from one end of my apartment to the other in peace. EGM Bryan: Guys, you can’t forget to spend some QT with your new Partner Machinery. These things basically replace PSO's mags, and if evolved correctly, can join you on the battlefield as little Al robots. OPM Scooter: My little maid-shaped Partner Machine looks like she wants some attention, but I’m busy checking out my new threads. EGM Shane: Aw, | can't spend the money 1, er, collected for the group to get new outfits! OPM GV: Whoa, OK. I have a few different weapons here. These little dual dagger things are cool, but I think ГИ stick with the double sword setup for now, though I’m missing the CAST's rifle. ЕСМ Shane: Wow, check out all the new weapon types...and I’m guessing that the combo strings for these new types require different timing. Increased complexity! I’m in love. EGM Bryan: OK, will these monsters ever freakin' die? | hope not every single critter on the harder difficulties takes this long to slaughter, even with our buffed-up characters. CGW Darren: Since we're cheating, ІЛІ pretend that | actually earned half this cool gear. Compared to my CAST, this Beast has some very cool varieties of blades. Try dual-wielding daggers and using the combos. You'll thank me later. OPM Scooter: Hey, you can do zany combos with your "daggers" and “swords” all you want, but | like modifying my rifle to shoot freezing shots from afar, which help for crowd control as | freeze multiple baddies while you guys keep up with the stabbystab. ANE la COOL ABILITIES | bes iste CGW Darren: P-U-R-P-L-E R-A-G-E! Dude, nothing can stop me! ЕСМ Bryan: That's right—do your thing, Mr. Purple People Eater. OPM GV: For you newbies, Darren just used a “nanoblast,” which is fancy PSU-speak for “Beast Hulks out." When | use it, l'm some sort of big cheetah thing that flips and scratches and deals out mad damage. EGM Shane: Again, as | said earlier, | think this weird Hulk fantasy is going to get a lot of kids playing Beast characters, and I’m expressing my counterculture by playing a good ol’ fashion human. OPM Scooter: Hey, I’m using а CAST, which has the weirdly-named SUV attack. It's not a transformation à la the Beast, it's a nifty looking one-shot attack that delivers a ton of damage to pretty much all baddies within range. Plus my hot robogirl turns into a big gun, and I'd rather be Megatron than Beastmaster. АЛІ: ION TH THE BOSS OPM Scooter: Oh crap, this thing flies. | guess since I’m a hunter | should be using my guns. I'll try my trusty freezing shot rifle; | don't think the boss will be frozen, but at least | can still stay far away and do decent damage. EGM Bryan: Yeah, switching to a first-person perspective (which is new to the series) helps you shoot with pinpoint accuracy. | quickly made that thing's wings look like Swiss cheese. CGW Darren: First person is nice, true, but | think it's a little weak. You're stuck in one place and aim with the left stick? Everyone is used to aiming with the right analog stick by now. Hell, why not let you just play the whole game in that mode if you want? ЕСМ Shane: You guys keep bickering; I'll keep looting! OPM GV: Whatever, Shane. And wait a second—! remember this boss from the original Phantasy Star Online! Oh well, fighting big dragons is cool anyway. And we're out. KTHXBYE! INTEIPPLAT- FORMV LOVE Ex4 | OFM Остовее 2006 了 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 е 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: е PROFILE: Update your current contact information, personal details, and more е 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 ЕТМЕ GAMER ADVISORY PANEL. rofile, AN increase your chances of being X я пас, Naughty ‚ GO EVEN DEEPE With a complete тет! to join the el е Invitations to participate in beta te: тег Advisory Panel. G.A.P. members get: t 8А sessions with game developers from Inson Dog, Zipper and others е The спапс епа E? (the\Electronic Entertainment Expo) in Los Angeles * Invites to special press conferen ind other exclüsive events • Advance purchase tickets for concerts and sporting events е The opportunity to work in th PlayStation booth at hot happenings across the country (Dew? Action Sports Tour, Vans Warped Tour,” Ozzfest and many more) • PLUS the chance to use your knowledge ant influence to help «еШ: of the industry. | а MAXIMIZE YOUR MEMBERSHIP AND COMPLETE YOUR ONLINE PROFILE TODAY! PUB. Sony CEA DEV. Insomniac RELEASE PS3 Launch PLATFORM PS3 [Р керы] TANCE: FALL WE CAN'T RESIST ANSWERING YOUR QUESTIONS 66 | OEM Остовее 2006 OCTOBER | TILT TIME The fine folks at Insomniac are busy polishing up Resistance for its PS3 launch debut, so while we couldn't dig up a whole lot of new info on it, we can give you a primer on what's known to date: It's not World War Il. Yeah, it takes place just a few years after the conflict ended (in 1951 Great Britain), but remember, in Resistance's universe, there was no WWII. It's about a contingent of U.S. and U.K. soldiers putting up a last-ditch defense against a species known as the Chimera. We noticed that the E3 trailer explained that the Chimera invasion started in Russia and expanded westward throughout Europe, which leads us to think that maybe the Chimera are part of the Tunguska event (a mysterious explosion in Siberia in 1908). Anyhow, this weird alternate-universe set- ting allows for a little bit of WWII, but also a little bit of technology that's technically anachronistic— but allowable due to the whole "alien invasion of alternate Earth" story line. Assuming the Chimera are indeed aliens. Everyone assumes the Chimera are aliens, but we also noticed that the folks at Insomniac kind of duck the question when we ask them outright. For you folks who missed the lec- ture on weird mythological monsters, a chimera is the result of jamming a lion, a snake, and a goat into a single creature. Its weird mash-up charac- teristics also makes it a metaphor for the idea of combining disparate elements into a single whole, such as research into genetics. So the Chimera might be straight-up aliens, or maybe they're botched experiments from combining humans with, er, something else. Whatever they are, their technology is wacky, and it allows for zany weap- ons to stand alongside traditional ones. We're kind of conflicted, as we like both the Bullseye (with its crazy homing bullets), and the Augur (which either bores its way through enemies or does the complete opposite by creat- ing a strong barrier to shield yourself with). So far, we've also heard about standby weapons with a twist, like the rocket launcher where you can stop the rocket in midair and manually guide it to your target. Finally, we haven't seen the "explosive goop gun" in action, but we still like it. How does 40-person objective-based multiplayer sound? That's where masses of players use team- work to hold onto specific node points on a map. For those of you who hate other people and just want to spend your time in an antisocial manner, there's always deathmatch. as seen Seeing a big nasty spider-mech- Chimera thing jump out and take up our screen, roar at us, and then spew explosive goop onto us. a m [жалгы На] ® ниве РРЕЦЕЛЬ SE Fall PLATFORM PS2 Well, no one can die in Bully, which makes that the first fact that disproves the Columbine simulation theory. In fact, Bully is rated “Т for Teen,” and one of the stated features is “lighthearted mischief,” which means that the worst that can happen is that a character is knocked out. Furthermore, there aren't any guns. The “weapons” include things like slingshots, water balloons, and, at most, firecrackers. Bully is a story about a boy named Jimmy Hopkins who goes to Bullworth Academy and defends weaker children from bullies, and is a far cry from being a game about plotting and executing a murderous shooting spree. 2 Bi Нес t г rted at -Chemistry class (a button-pushing rhythm game a la dance minigames in GTA: San Andreas) -English class (a word jumble where you're given a pool of let- ters and must generate as many words as you can out of them) -Lock picking (whenever you break into someone's locker, you just twist around the analog stick to open the lock) -Detention (repetitive activities like mowing the lawn outside of Bullworth Academy that are designed to be no fun) а Nerds, Jocks, Greasers, Dropouts, апа Preppies 4 Us our knowl f combat, puzzles, story, and cliques, les r nissior Jimmy is minding his own business when one of the nerds tells him that Randall, another nerd, was last spotted in the toolshed (where shop class is held) and hasn't been seen since. Jimmy goes to investigate only to see a random bully beating up on Randall. Jimmy, using a combat system that has its roots in brawler games like The Warriors, steps in to defend Randall. Besides using punches and holds, Jimmy can also perform humiliation moves like Indian burns and dead arms to finish off the bully. When Jimmy dispatches the bully, Randall thanks him and not only does Jimmy have more influence with the nerds, but he's also earned a skateboard as a mission reward. Afterward, Jimmy must try to make it to class on time, or else be captured by a prefect for truancy. mission that may or may not involve comic mis Jimmy runs into a gym teacher outside of an adult novelty store (while most of Bully takes place within Bullworth Academy, Jimmy can venture into the town surrounding Bullworth at times), and said teacher gives Jimmy a mission: retrieve five pairs of panties from the girls' dormitory. To do so, Jimmy has GTA METER То wait until after curfew, sneak around campus without getting Si B caught by patrolling prefects, find a way into the girls’ dorm, and then search for and grab the undergarments without being caught. This mission is modeled after classic panty raid scenes of various movies. also i ential Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Rushmore, The Breakfast Club Extra credit: The Catcher in the Rye WHEN THE CLOCK IS TICKING, PRAY HE FINDS YOU FIRST. 4 I T. < > +. AUR * * — ПА ال фаневе PeEUENS‏ Games DEV. Rockstar Leeds/Rockstar North ctober PLATFORM PSP BAND THEFT AUTO: YEE OT? = THE HAULIN’ ASS WITH HALL & OATES IN YOUR POCKET y OK, we know you don't have a lot of time in your day to read a droning story about the next GTA title for the PSP, so we broke this preview down into a quick-reading cheat sheet, which is best read with "Karma Chameleon" blasting in the background. Remember that guy who gets clipped during a drug deal with Tommy Vercetti during the beginning of GTA: Vice City? That happens to be Victor Vance—who shares Lance's (your buddy from GTA: Vice City) last name due to being his brother. Victor is a 28-year-old marine, which is interesting because he's the first GTA main character to not have a criminal background (the GTA3 guy just got out of jail, Tommy Vercetti was part of the Forelli family, CJ was part of the Grove Street Families gang, and Toni Cipriani was a Leone family capo). Rockstar is mum on details, but we can guess that Lance initiates Vic into crime. Vic is stationed at Vice City while waiting for his trans- fer to Guantanamo Bay. The physical size of Vice City makes it twice as large as the version of Liberty City featured in GTA: Liberty City Stories. Along with being bigger, it'll look much bet- ter, as the developers have a better handle on PSP technology and have been able to significantly increase the draw distance for Vice City Stories. + GTA: Vice City took place їп 1986, and much like how Liberty City Stories was a prequel to GTA3, Vice City Stories will VICTOR VANCE в THE FIPST PENE LIFE GTA MAIN CHARACTER T NOT НАМЕ А CRIMINAL BACK- GIZOUND... also be a prequel to its PS2 counterpart, taking place in 1984. Rockstar hasn't finalized a track list, but we totally want to cruise around and cause trouble to the sounds of “When Doves Cry,” “Footloose,” or at least “99 Luftballons.” Since it takes place in 1984, assume that a few buildings from GTA: Vice City are going to be “works-in-progress” in Vice City Stories’ version of town. ^: GTA: Vice City is often mentioned as the fan-favorite GTA title, which is probably due to a combination of its '80s nostalgia and pastel-heavy visuals. So it makes sense for Rockstar to take what it learned from Liberty City Stories (which the developers cite as a "total rookie first-gen PSP title") and apply it to Vice City. Vast improvements over Liberty City Stories include increased draw distance, smoother animations, and less "clumping" (when а bunch of the same character model shows up in one place). НОЛЕ Expect it to play much like Liberty City Stories—at first. Rockstar has made the missions feel less like “go from point A to point B" affairs, instead designing them to use various skills. One has Vic being a stuntman for a movie; he had to first zip around on a Jet Ski (a new addition) before hopping off and performing a crazy car chase. Another had Vic flying a helicopter (new to PSP versions of GTA) while Lance manned the guns during an attack on a biker gang. We'll get some hands-on time later. Ф нтве PIEUIEUVS PUB, Ubisoft DEV. Ubisoft RELEASE 2007 PLATFORM PS3 A и ails ieee 72 | OFM Пставег 2006 DCTOBER | y )out being criminals, much less assassins, are pretty much old hat. Sure, they may stir the ire of politicians, but they don't surprise or shock us that much anymore. What makes the premise of Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed more surprising than most isn't just that you play an assassin, but that you play as an assassin in the middle of a very volatile time period that still has resonance today. Namely, the Third Crusade in the 12th century, where Christian Crusaders led by Richard the Lionheart attempt- ed to reclaim the holy city of Jerusalem from the Muslim Saracens led by Saladin. Additionally, since the assassins in the game are based on the historical Hashshashin, a secretive Muslim sect of assassins, one might get the impression that the game features a Muslim killing Christians. Uh-oh. After hearing about the overall theme of AC, however, we see that Ubisoft Montreal is treating the subject matter similarly to how Ridley Scott did in his 2005 film Kingdom of Heaven. That is, quite even-handedly and with nary a pro-/anti- Islamic/ Christian message. Instead Assassin's Creed focuses on a larger, more universal message that is belief-free. In fact, the game's message is "stop fighting." AC's scriptwriter, Corey May, elabo- rates on this: "As the Saracens and Crusaders battle one anoth- er for control, the assassins are working to find a way to end the hostilities. They see the war as pointless. There is no reason Crusaders and Saracens should not coexist in peace. The assas- sins are not allied with either side of the conflict, nor are they driven by a desire for profit or power. They are also not inter- ested in furthering a religious agenda. In fact, they are generally opposed to most forms of organized religion. [As mentioned earlier, the assassins in the game were inspired by the real-life Hashshashin, but creative license means that they don't have to be strict believers like the historical assassins. —Ed.] This means that the Crusaders (and the Saracens) are not the assassins' true enemy. War is—as are those who exploit it. So to sum up: The assassins are fighting to end the Third Crusade. Along the way, they will discover a mysterious group that stands to gain a great deal by prolonging and intensifying the war. Once this enemy is discovered, it will be up to Altair [the main character] and his assassin brothers to stop them." ASSASSINS севво FOCUSES ON А LAGE, MORE UNIVERSAL MESSAGE THAT IS BELIEF -FIZEE. Where does Altair fit in? He starts off the game as a “dis- graced master assassin” (May's words) who is assigned the aforementioned hefty task of ending the Third Crusade. To do so, Altair will focus on eliminating high-profile leaders—gen- erals and strategists on both sides who are prolonging the conflict. As Altair continues to search for, assess, and then flawlessly execute—in public—each target, he'll also encounter elements of the counterconspiracy who want the Third Crusade to continue. Our guess is that since producer Jade Raymond herself told us that the Altair’s quest has ramifications that affect us to this very day, the counterconspiracy is probably a group of weird Illuminati types who have lasted from the Crusades until today. In fact, there’s a popular theory floating around the Internet that you play as Altair's descendent who's using "genetic memory" to experience Altair's exploits as a master assassin in order to take on these mysterious counterconspiracy fellows in the present day. This same theory also explains that the "computer offline" message that comes up when Altair dies is an homage to the Prince of Persia's "misremembering" his story whenever he dies in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Whichever of these theories is true (or even if neither theory is true), it seems like Assassin's Creed is trying to duck unneeded controversy and focus on creating a worthy next-gen game—not a game mired by critics who think it's about a fundamentalist killing other fundamentalists. FACTION FUN KNIGHT BEGGAI2 illustration by Nate VanDykl 74 | OAIN Остовее 2006 NPS жЕ DA FOR THESE DEVELOPERS, THE PRICE OF FREEDOM IS WORTH IT y The phrase "independent development studio" might conjure up an image of a few guys working together in a garage, banging out a game. But the reality is that independent development covers a wide range of realities. One thing they all share, however, is a desire to make games. We talked with several of the top independent studios to find out what it's like being on their own. "Independence was the main thing | was looking for when I left my job at a publisher," says Tim Schafer, the founder of Double Fine Productions. “I was tired of not being able to build a team the way | wanted to, treat them like | thought they should be treated, and then hang on to them for the next game." Ryan Geithman, president of Snowblind Studios, was in a similar position. "[Brian Sostrom and |] weren't happy for various reasons at the companies we had worked at previously and decided it was time to head out on our own," he says. Other teams just ended up on their own by accident. Julian Eggebrecht, president and creative director of Factor 5, says, "Factor 5 started as a hobby in the late '80s in Germany, never intentionally try- ing to make a living with it. When our first games were received well and sold a lot, we had to make the decision—continue as a hobby and eventually stop making games or plunge headfirst into the risk." Regardless of how they got to where they are, everyone feels that their situation lends them a certain advantage. Ted Price, CEO and president of Insomniac Games, says, "Certainly | know many people at Insomniac came here because we are independent—we, not a corporate parent, decide what games we're going to make. We all dis- cuss and collaborate on the things we do." Pandemic Studios CEO Andrew Goldman agrees. "Pandemic can build a culture that is purely focused on fostering the creative spirit," he says. "You're also a bit of an underdog in the industry, and you have to be scrappy to survive." "The benefit is a team that is much more cohesive and much more like a family," says Schafer, then asks, "Is that cheesy? Isn't it always the cheesy boss who says, 'We're just like a family here.'?" However, there is a real world to deal with outside of the family. Publishers are a necessary part of bringing a game to life, and it's understandable that, since they have a financial stake in the success of à title, they will want to be part of the creative process. And that can sometimes lead to friction. Geithman says, "Some developers with owners that are wealthy are able to push things a bit and gain more control, but for most developers out there this is a tough business to be in if you want total creative freedom. Having said that, I think it's possible, over time, to put your studio in a better and better position." It's key for a publisher and developer to be able to communicate clearly. "Even if you may not have full control of the destiny of the con- tent, there must be a level of understanding to where things can ben- efit both sides of the party," explains Tetsuya Mizuguchi, chief creative officer at O Entertainment. "Taking that initiative is what's important." And having a successful title on the shelf gives independent studios a solid piece of evidence to help them defend their creative choices. Johan Kristiansson, CEO of Starbreeze Studios, says, "Since our success with The Chronicles of Riddick in 2004, we have been fortunate enough to have several different options for new potential projects, which means that we have been given a great deal of cre- тнатъ WHAT WE WANT TOO.” SPLUIBLISHERS NANT HIT GAMES, вит | ative freedom. We have also felt that our publishers have more faith in our ideas during our current Darkness production. Ultimately, it's important to remember that everyone is working toward the same goal. "Publishers just want to make hit games, but that's what we independent game developers want to do, too," Schafer says. "We just want to do it creatively. So the two desires are not in opposition to each other. But you have to find a publishing partner who is interested in innovation, and you have to work hard to explain why your game is going to be such a big hit, even if it is not a GTA clone with a movie license attached." Studios also have to be able to convince publishers why they are the right fit for a specific title. For example, if a studio has primarily made racing games, then it can be difficult for it to convince a com- pany to fund the production of a genre outside of racing. Factor 5, whose résumé includes the Star Wars: Rogue Squadron series, dealt with that by building on its experience. "When we moved away from Star Wars, we consciously focused on our strengths when we did the early designs for Lair," Eggebrecht says. "In the end, the theme of the game really was a natural fit for what we did best, so there never was a creative clash." Julian Eggebrecht, President and Creative Director Ted Price, CEO and President Andrew Goldman, СЕО Another way that а team can buy itself more creative freedom is to hang on to the ownership rights of an intellectual property. Price says, “One great thing about retaining the rights to a successful IP is that it creates tangible value for the company. If anything ever goes wrong, you have something you can cash in.” But it can be difficult for developers to retain those rights. It’s com- mon for publishers to assume the majority of the financial risk and therefore retain the ownership of the intellectual property as their payoff for the gamble. This makes it harder for studios to become more financially independent, as they don’t actually own the rights to make any sequels to a successful game. “IP is everything,” Geithman says. “Popular intellectual properties add huge value to your company. Publishers know this, and it's becom- ing more and more difficult to retain ownership of anything you create. It isn't in the publisher's best interest to pay a developer to create and own an original IP, and then lose control if the IP becomes popular.” It's not always that way, however. Recently, Pandemic struck a deal with Elevation Partners, a venture capitalist company that pro- vides funding to Pandemic and partner developer BioWare. Goldman explains, "We've structured our deal with Elevation so that we can control our destiny and focus on doing what is best for the properties that we're developing. If the publisher and developer have competing goals, it can be really hard. Because we're independent, we can take as long as it takes to develop the best possible games." Eggebrecht points to the Elevation partnership as an excellent new alternative method of securing funding for games. "There is a lot of outside capital interested in games and that is an option for control of your destiny," he says. "Having said that, even working within the tra- ditional publishing model, there is а lot of freedom to be had—l cer- tainly can't complain about our creative freedom working with Sony." Kristiansson agrees that developers can still benefit from the cur- rent model. "I actually feel that it has been valuable to have external partners that we need to justify our creative decisions for," he says. Even if a studio doesn't have the financial wherewithal to fund itself, it doesn't mean that it won't be an option at some point. “I think most developers are one big hit away from having the clout to be able to create and own their own IP," Geithman says. "Of course, they are also one flop away from going out of business—so it's a mixed bag." And even the studios that seem to have it made aren't immune to money concerns. "Remaining independent comes with a price tag," Goldman says. "We need financial resources to do it alone. When games require a large budget, we're taking a large financial risk. In the end it's all worth it, but it can be difficult." Johan Kristiansson, CEO Tim Schafer, Founder Ryan Geithman, President nentially more expensive to make. "With games, we still have to make everything up from scratch," Schafer explains. "Games are built by hand. So it's going to stay expensive as long as it's so labor-intensive.” Another hurdle to overcome is the constantly updating hardware. "As long as we have new consoles emerging every six or seven years we'll all continue to spend lots of time and money recreating our pipelines and technology," Price says. Eggebrecht agrees. “1 am hoping for longer hardware cycles so that we can leverage more technology over a longer period," he says. "Nintendo is doing exactly that by essentially repackaging the GameCube but adding key features in the right spots [for the Wii]. It's a gutsy move and one | admire a lot." Even if things get financially tough, most developers agree that being able to operate on their own terms is what matters. “I’m not sure if there is a 'right' offer from a publisher—we're not interested in being part of one," Price says. Geithman challenges that statement: “| think anyone that isn't independently wealthy wouldn't be being Part of the problem for studios is that games continue to grow expo- Tetsuya Mizuguchi, Chief Creative Officer, SREMAINING INDEPENDENT С [WITH A PRICE TAG” honest if they said they didn’t have a price that would make them seriously think about it.” So what lies ahead? Geithman is pragmatic. “Life for some. Death for the others. In short, the usual cycle that has been going on for years,” he predicts. “I do think that the next big shakeout will be more extreme just because the costs of developing games have risen so much and the sales numbers on most games just don't justify it.” Mizuguchi feels more optimistic. "We may see more independent game developers in the future—don't you think? Funding, invest- ments, networking, and collaborations are some of the ways that can trigger things in that direction." Kristiansson agrees. "The last few years there has been a trend to do more in-house productions, but I think this trend will soon be reversed," he says. "Large companies are not ideal for creative production." Of course, what all the studios hope for, in both the short term and the long run, is what everyone wants—that big hit, that commercial success. When asked what he sees for the future, Schafer jokes, "Lots of money and fast cars and good times. | see that future all the time," he laughs. "I find those positive visualization sessions motivating." | BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! The developers we talked to had a lot more to say that we didn't have room for here—for the full interviews, go check out орт.1ир.сот. 7 DAIN Остовее 2006 got game? Get Tickets NOW 50% off with promotional code: at www.digitallife.com rock it live it each adult ticket is only $6.00! tear it pe ] try it 由 it presenting tournament sponsors: sponsors: BELKIN. 5 THOMSON Compete in DigitalLife's ALIENVWARE $9 Play the latest, unreleased games at the РС & console arcades and get your hands on the 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! october 12-15, 2006 javits convention center * new york city digitallite the ultimate consumer technology, gaming and entertainment event ос Logitech SIERRA www.digitallife.com “Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Play as if You were to die tomorrow: -Ben Franklin ` эр пл A ли ЕЕ ЕЕЕ = 2Фсгой 57 оссе сопел | ІНЕПТЕЛІШІГЛІ BEGIN! MEDIA WWW. VGXPO.con сот нА ЕЙ бАМЕ 220 ШР (2109) JOBS (DOENE 0 «se^ Qom ER) ба My VIDEOGAME.NET s ODLLECTOR- Conference DCTORER | БЕСЕ Ш MAKING THE лого А BETTE PLACE, ONE GAME AT а TIME zya 4 RATING KEY 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 a 0.5? Well...at least they're fun to rip apart. Ir TELE N 口 < А 15 на Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria ME ва os UEM LM ва Zatch Bell! Mamodo Fury 三 Ш ENTE The New Wave > ы (GAME OF THE MONTH аз IGPX: Immortal Grand Prix 50 Cent: Bull f S SLI 1 a5 The King of Fighters 2006 U S вв Lego Star Wars Il: М: 2H МЕГ? 4 The Original Trilogy пере ssi Monster House ші Miami Vice The Game в? МН. 07 az Micro Machines V4 в? NASCAR 07 az MTX: Mototrax вв One Piece: Pirates’ Carnival а Hed ш Сапрреап: вв Overthe Hedge ва апа eet А 25 Rule of Rose авг Rengoku Il: The Stairway to | Psp ] вэ Samurai Warriors 2 HEAVENS 87 Super Monkey Ball сосогосо en [一 ; 17 f Ке [ < | | سے‎ GAME OF THE MONTH Ш HEUIELLIES PSZ Amusement Vi TAKING А PIDE то 11-ТПІЛІМ An example of a “Heat action” during combat. Sure, Kazuma’s glowing head is kind of goofy, but that doesn't make the uppercut look any less painful. 4 Yakuza is, simply put, a role-playing game. It's an atypical RPG— instead of a blue-haired boy or a cool magic kid, you play a formidable, middle-aged yakuza enforcer—but it's an RPG nonetheless. A very glib way to describe Yakuza in terms of other games would be to say that it's Shenmue done right. Yakuza has Shenmue*'s attention to world- building and combat mechanics, but it eliminates Shenmue’s reliance on a day/night cycle and inane dialogue (remember "Do you know where | can find some sailors?" or "I used to be Chinese!"?). A bet- ter past-game-as-yardstick is River City Ransom—that is, a game that mixes RPG and brawler mechanics, then drops said mixture into a well- defined and focused setting. Yakuza feels like the logical next step for the plot-driven adventure games of old, and it actually tells a pretty good crime story. Spanning 13 chapters and filled with a multitude of characters and subplots, it opens with you playing Kazuma Kiryu—a rising star in his yakuza clan—performing a routine money pickup. As you get acclimated to the yakuza culture, things start to get crazy when your best friend kills your family lieutenant...and you take the fall (and the accompanying 10-year sentence). After serving your sentence, you emerge from prison and return to a vastly changed underworld where much has happened within the harsh politics of the yakuza clan during your absence. Just as you're getting comfortable with the changes, the story reaches its first major beat by introducing the sudden loss of a large sum of money (10 billion yen, about $87 million)—timed with the appearance of an innocent 10- year-old girl. It's Kazuma's investigation of the state of yakuza politics, the search for the missing money, and his impromptu Léon: The Pro- fessional-esque adoption of the girl that the story focuses on. If any- thing, the main problem with this grand story is that the pacing is a bit uneven—it goes from moving briskly to slowing down for the sake of lengthening the game (which took me about 20 hours to get through). One thing the gaming press was worried about was the transla- tion, as Yakuza is, as expected, steeped deeply in Japanese culture. Textwise, the translation seems fine, as long as you don't mind the F-bomb being dropped every three syllables or so; listening to Yakuza's many cut-scenes feels like listening to Scarface but with Japanese characters. The somewhat bizarre insults (which are all too profane for publication here) aren't the fault of the American translators trying too hard to be hip and edgy—it actually does sound like the quirky way that Japanese youth combine profanity, hip-hop slang, and odd syntax in their speech. Voicewise, the cast is actually very good (especially Darryl Kurylo, who plays Kazuma), with the expected exception of Michael Madsen, who basically plays himself. Like in any RPG, the story is wrapped up inside combat. Yakuza contains random battles, but the story's explanation for why they're happening actually makes sense—they're fools who're trying to mug you. As Kazuma wanders around town, shady characters (while they technically range from common street thugs to rival yakuza members to debt collectors, they're all basically the same people with slightly different clothes) all vie for your funds. The fights basically go like this: Combat starts, Kazuma completely takes his opponent down, and then there's a scene of the thug giving him back his money. Just the use of context turns what would normally be an annoying game mechanic into something enjoyable and satisfying. What also helps is that Yakuza has some of the most exhilarating and wince-inducing combat seen in a brawler yet. You have standard For those of you who. thrill at the marvel of ogling seminude Japa- nese women, you can go to any convenience store and flip through а copy of Sabra on the. magazine rack. Sabra is a real magazine, and is kind of like the Japa- nese Maxim or FHM. No full nudity here! DECTOBER workhorse combos that deal basic damage and help build up your Heat gauge (ог, as | like to term it, your “Badass Yakuza Who Throws Down” meter). When the gauge fills up, Kazuma glows blue and can then pull off moves (by pressing certain buttons when a particular kanji appears onscreen) like slamming opponents into walls, cracking skulls on guardrails, stomping on faces with his snakeskin boots, or choking people with aluminum baseball bats. To top it off, these visuals are often accompanied by painful-sounding crunches that indicate the frac- turing (or outright snapping) of bones. Just as you're getting a handle on your Heat gauge, you learn extra moves from a homeless martial-arts master (don’t ask) that add а new layer of counters and dodges on top of the punch/kick/wield/Heat gauge combat system. Which means that the combat evolves from just using the Square and Triangle buttons to pull off a basic three-punch- two-kick combo to doing things like dodging to the side and shoving your knee into a thug's solar plexus, blocking a punch and instantly retorting with a stinging and humiliating slap to the face, pulling off a Giant Swing (the pro wrestling favorite), and even jumping on top of a baddie and pounding his face into the ground. This evolution trans- forms the combat from that of a simple brawler into something much more raw, visceral, and primal. It's a shame that such raw combat is hampered by technical issues like a camera that has a hard time keeping track of both you and your opponents. Also, the quirky lock-on-but-not-quite mechanic allows you to focus on a dude in front of you, but he can shake you pretty easily. Most annoying are the times where you're locked in a five-hit combo but your opponent evades on the second hit—you're locked into the animation for the combo, which makes you vulnerable to a counterattack. Besides the plot progression and brawling, Yakuza has its fair share of quirky side activities. You can choose to go after a purse-snatcher, Aoshima LOADE! One thing that can divide Yakuza play- ers is the loading time when you move from area to area Essentially, whenever the camera angle changes, there is a slight 1-3 second load time, which builds up over time. This load time is really annoying, but | eventually just interject on a gelato shopkeeper's behalf when he's being extorted, or got used to it. go on a quest to find dog food. You can hit up the batting cages to use your bat in a way that doesn't involve face smashing. You can dig for toys at the arcade or go to a casino for games of baccarat, dice rolling, or simple slots. If you just love to fight, you can duke it out in an under- ground pit-fighting arena. There's a bizarre massage-parlor minigame. There's also a hostess bar, where you can go woo a hostess with drink, food, and good conversation (and get the resultant text messages, DB AS | CALL IT, YOUR “BADASS | VAKUZA WHO тнаолв DONN” METER. complete with wacky emoticons, afterward). You can even go to a bar and order real, licensed brands of alcohol (both Japanese and other countries' products), complete with logos. It's too bad that a game with so much has its share of problems that slowly build up, such as the noncontrollable camera (for some reason, the right analog stick is used for the minimap, not the camera), some annoying boss fights and stealth sequences, a linear story that lessens the game's replay value, and combat that gets repetitive due to much reuse of both enemy characters and animations. Ultimately, though, Yakuza is a damn good, er, yakuza RPG. | Thierry Nguyen WEEDICT A true yakuza RPG, complete with near-flawless combat, a “| ripping crime yarn, and hostess-bar minigames. 4 4 5С02Е сет! ст | Hl ш ВЕЧЕШЕ STOCK No random encounters means the party's leader has to be carefully maneuvered into combat. Attacking from behind gives the party a round of cheap shots. 4 Ше LITTLE SENOSAGA HAS FINALLY GOWN LIP... рив. Namco Bandai реч. Monolith Soft eses Т р $49.99 Xenosaga Episode l: Der Wille zur Macht was an exceptionally intel- ligent newcomer to the RPG crowd, but it droned on and used words no one else knew. It showed a lot of promise, but it was really hard to put up with. Episode Il: Jenseits von Gut und Bose gave up on trying to show people how intelligent it was—in fact, it seemed like it just gave up altogether. Twenty hours or so of prettied-up playtime and characters who played like cookie cutters made it clear that if people didn't like Xenosaga being smart and ugly, it could be stupid and pretty with the best. After going through all those growing pains, the question remains, "Is the kid all right?" Xenosaga Episode Ill: Also Sprach Zara- thustra is more than all right—it's near perfect. The depth of ideas presented here matches and exceeds the ambi- tions of any of the other games of the series, let alone most other games. Episode lll covers topics including the responsibility of the creator to the created, the shared nature of duty and honor, the neces- sity and difficulty of maintaining one's humanity in the face of war and its horrors, and man's place in the cosmos. But Episode lll soars where Episode | coasted. In Episode ІІІ, the ideas are there because the characters are acting on them, not because a villain is cackling about them. As we find out the truths of the series, characters act, react, learn and, god bless them, emote. If Episode | seemed a curmudgeon, Episode ІІІ has grown into a skilled philosopher; it teaches through action, not lecture. Action is finally as a big a draw for the game as the story of the Gnosis, U-DO, and KOS-MOS is. With unique skill trees for each char- acter, each of which is composed of two main branches to pursue that offer very different benefits, the characters are once again interesting to level up and play with. Level advancement proceeds perfectly against the game's difficulty level, making every combat situation easily won— but only if you fight without error. You can win virtually every boss fight on the first attempt, but you will feel like each is desperate and could all go wrong at any moment until you finally see the enemy's body hit the ground. The only real problem with the combat is that robot maps are so rare, because the spectacular power of piloting giant robots is as cathartic as anything. The Xenosaga series was originally slated to have six episodes, but the decision was made to have Episode III be the final installment. Presumably, the original schedule for the last three episodes had them each at Episode's II's 20-25 hour mark, because squeezing all that story line into a single game means that Episode IlI clocks in at "huge." Huge hours long. Before you get into the awesomely Lemmings-like puzzle minigames or try to find all the secret doors and keys, plan on a mini- mum of 40 hours just to make it through the story. Unrepentantly intel- ligent, epic, and approachable, this is one of the best RPGs available today and the Rubedo of the Xenosaga series. | Patrick Joynt THIS IS THE END An excellent conclusion for fans of the series, and the best way for newcomers to jump into the game. SAY WHAT ? Newcomers are welcome—Episode Ils in-game encyclo- pedia provides not just detailed information on what you've learned but succinct summations of the first two games as well, But there are still a lot of obscure refer- ences. Even with the in-game texts, | had to Google Yeshua, Lemege- ton, and Merkabah. (Those are, respectively, a member of the party, a computer program, and a spaceship.) 2 Be | ОП пстовег 2006 И Ж ЖР. IGPX: IMMORTAL GRAND PRIX HAND-TO-HAND AT 350 MPH їрив. Namco Bandai оғ“. Sting в E10+ $39.99 ИҰ‏ کے and Bandai has done nothing to ebb the flow of mundane anime- based fighting games coming to the PlaySta- tion 2 (case in point: See the other reviews on this page). /GPX is a bit better than the usual Namco Bandai/Cartoon Network fare, though, if only because it's not simply two big-eyed freaks facing off in a static arena while firing the same two moves over and over again. It seems the publisher doesn't want to stray too far from what it knows, however, since /GPX is still basically a simple fighting game. As your team of three mechs screams around the track at upward of 350 mph, the goal is to beat the metallic snot out of the other team of three mechs before racing to the finish line. The combat is decent. The game is built around a simplistic combo system that uti- lizes most of the face buttons on the PS2 pad, along with the ability to give basic orders to your teammates 一 tell them to rally to you, play defense, go man-to-man, or concentrate on the enemy with the low- est amount of health. The action tends to degenerate into a button-mashing brawl more often than not, but it's still a pretty good time. The racing aspect is tacked on, though. All but a little of the acceleration is done automatically, as is most of the steering. Think of it as a fighting game in a fast-mov- ing arena. A few track obstacles on later courses mix things up a bit, but you still won't be worrying about the running order until the last few hundred feet of a race, where you'll use all of your accumulated boost to reach the finish line before what- ever other mechs may still be in the race. While /GPX isn't quite as shallow as previous anime offerings from Namco Ban- dai, only hardcore fans of the series will find themselves playing much past a few hours. Still, | give developer Sting credit for turning such a difficult license into some- thing more than another Twisted Metal clone. JEDICT An interesting take on the combat-racing genre that's mostly combat, not so much racing. 7 DOMES TI оечеве IGPX began Ше as five ; separate five-minute episodes aired on Car- } toon Network in 2003. ; Execs liked the shorts so much that they worked with creators Production 1.6 (Ghost in the Shell, Kill Bill's j animated segments) i to flesh it out into a į full-length series. That makes it Cartoon Net- work's first completely original anime A Giant robots aren't the only ones who can float around on noth- ing, claiming some kind | of “universal energy.” Solar and hydrogen sails, Dyson spheres, and mere rings around ; a sun—science fic- tion has come up with plenty of ways to move with no clear source of power. But Eureka Seven lets its giant robots fly around on surfboards. EUREKA SEVEN VOL. 1: THE NEW WAVE ROBOTS GOOD, HUMANS BAD! 1Pus. Namco Bandai Deu. BEC ев Т м=р $39.99 کک کک کک کے‎ The New Wave has some great potential—and some built-in problems. The source (the anime Eureka Seven) is a fantastically well thought-out universe full of monsters and giant robots, as humans and giant robots alike surf through the air on their ref boards. That's right—surf! However, the'anime's tightly paced story doesn’t leave much time for its characters to have side adventures. The constricted time frame of the story certainly doesn't lend itself to a videogame (and its probable sequels), and quite frankly, the show's main characters would make terrible videogame characters. So, The New Wave is set a few years before the anime, with an almost entirely new cast of characters. That's nice in theory, but the problems start when you realize that while your char- acter and the story are technically impor- tant to the setting, they're poor shadows of the show. It's understandable that Eureka, Renton, and their story aren't the main parts of the game, but their replacements don't measure up in terms of charm or personality. Even if The New Wave's story were as good as the show's (it's not), it's delivered through a graphics engine that looks like it wasn't finished before the game shipped. Humans, walls, floors, and anything else other than the giant robots look like refuse from a junior college 3D-modeling class. In addition to being ugly, playing as the humans isn't a satisfying representation of the genre being aped—RPGs for the on-foot portions, skateboarding for ref-board parts. However, the giant robot parts are so fast- paced and so easy to pick up and play—and look so good—that | found myself nearly forgetting the rest of the game's frustra- tions. You can even customize your robo midcombat, making every encounter as dif- ferent as you want it to be. Sadly, great robots aren't enough to sal- vage this game. ШРЕКА A nifty bit of backstory for Eureka Seven fans and really fun robot combat. ЗЕНА SQUAD Anything not a robot looks bad and plays awfully. SCORE 77 0 остова | ZATCH BELL! MAMODO FURY JAPANESE FOR “BORING” 1 Namco Вапда! Mechanic Arms T $39.99 | Chris Kohler нешеше PSZ TRENT S Use an item. ¥ Effect on allies Р All © Effect on enemies No effect HF # Items Much of the exploration in Valkyrie Profile 2 relies on your ability to freeze enemies in crystal, which then enables you to jump on them to find hidden loot. У is ча 3219 суа” Кола ar “ wr 2900 Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria's predecessor was just one of "those" games. You know, games that are released to little or no fanfare, save for a few praising reviews and chatter from the few customers who bought them. But somehow, as the years go by, the fame of these games grow—as do their prices on eBay, creating a somewhat artifi- cially inflated sense of popularity. OK, maybe Valkyrie Profile doesn't totally fit into that categorization because it was actually a good game, but there doesn't seem to be any question that Valkyrie Profile 2's exis- tence has much to do with the aforementioned process. With that in mind, it seems like tri-Ace went out of its way not to seriously mess with the Valkyrie Profile formula so that people who didn't play the first game 一 either because they just never heard of it or couldn't afford its ridiculous price on eBay (around $150)—would get a chance to know what all the fuss was about. So, essentially what you're getting here is a remake of the original game but with an assortment of expected updates to take advantage of the PS2's extra horsepower. What that means is this: You explore towns the same way, in that you're walking on a 2D plane and prompted to move in different direc- tions when walking past certain doors or passageways. The same applies to the Silmeria's many dungeons, except that with the dun- geons, there's the added element of crystal platforming—another fea- ture brought from the original game—that lets you freeze enemies in а block of crystal, enabling you to jump on top of them to reach previ- ously inaccessible areas. It feels very old school and familiar to fans of the original game, but it also feels very restrictive and mundane. What makes it even worse is that much of the game looks amazing, aside from the dreary dungeons—and you want to explore it, but you can't! Plus, you have to deal with the fact that while map movement takes place on a 2D plane, battles take place in full 3D—the transition is a little more than jarring at first, but you'll grow accustomed to it rather quickly. In fact, the battle system is one of Silmeria's finer points. So much of how well you do in battle is dependant on which characters you have in your party and how you combine their attacks to make combinations. If you do everything right, you can pretty much obliter- ate everything within a few minutes, but if you're missing attacks, not positioning yourself out of harm's way, or simply trying to strong-arm enemies, then Silmeria proves to be a very, very difficult game. It's also worth pointing out that the camera and an important dash move—the single most important move you can use to get out of an enemy's range of attack—are both a little spotty in terms of control, making battles even more difficult as a result. Still, it's fun to come up with different strategies for battle, and if you find that one combination of characters and moves don't work, you can always try another. It's just too bad that such an intricate—albeit slightly flawed—game is covered in a beautiful wrapper that you can't explore beyond a 2D plane. | Giancarlo Varanini CRAZY GALS Much like the raving derelicts we get to deal with every day on the streets of San Francisco, Silmeria's lead character, Alicia, frequently talks to herself. Of course, part of that has to do with the fact that she's "possessed," making it hard to get behind her аз а main character. A 205 Beautiful game, combat system is deep and requires exce! lent use of strategy, story does its job CONS Camera and dash move cause problems in battle, game may prove to be a little too hard for casual RPG fans SCORE RVOUKUSANNG! en 1001 VAGAN >» 700 777? ТНЕ KING OF FIGHTERS 2006 3D DONE RIGHT SNK Playmore T $29.99 AAA is somewhat misleading, The King of Fighters 2006 is the sequel to KOF: Maximum Impact, the first KOF redone in 3D graphics. Despite its fancy visuals, | refused to embrace M/ with open arms: Wrought with BS combos and BS tactics, gaudy stage designs and stifled gameplay, Maximum Impact felt like a rushed job, unfit for even the most ardent fan. KOF 2006 marks a major improvement. The character roster, doubled in size from its predecessor, carries an impressive weight of 38 fighters. Not only did the roster size increase, but also the number of back- grounds jumped from 11 to 16. The stages are prettier, too, appearing as though SNK learned from its mistakes and took some time crafting visually impressive milieux. Visuals aren't everything, though. If КОЕ 2006 suffered from the mistakes of the past, then the face-lift wouldn't mean much—it would just be pretty garbage. Fortunately for fans, KOF 2006 disposed of all the crap- piness of MI by restructuring the game system. In Maximum Impact, you're pretty much screwed if you're knocked off your feet, as the opponent can combo the crap out of you when you're on the ground. KOF 2006, on the other hand, implements more precautions to stop excessive ground com- bos: Getting up from the ground is quicker and easier, and if a ground combo gets out of hand, the combo counter will stop, thus allowing the person on floor to get up freely. Despite the limitations, KOF 2006 remains а very combo-friendly game. Each charac- ter has many attack strings, each of which requires a specific combination of buttons and directional inputs. Adding more fuel to the combo engine is the inclusion of “super cancels,” in which you can cancel ап enemy's “super move" and supplant it with your own. And, once you amalgamate the two, combos are deadly, damaging, and, above all, impressive. Cheers to you, SNK Playmore, for clean- ing out the garbage and giving 3D КОЕ a fresh start! SNK Playmore i Same great KOF fighting for- mula, repackaged with fancy 3D visuals, fast gameplay, and an extensive combo dm SCORE SAMURAI WARRIORS 2 HOW CAN КОЕ! FAIL TO MEET ITS OWN STANDARDS? 1 PUB. Koei Omega Force esee T $39.99 КУУУ УУУ ИИ ИИ ИИИ ИИИ УЛИ Се УР wouldn't have looked зо bad if it had come out before Dynasty Warriors 4. Before DWA4, Koei created an atmosphere of such low expectations for the sequels in Из Warriors series that the meager set of changes and additions from Samurai Warriors to Samurai Warriors 2 would meet par. But then DW4 included a great strategic level of combat letting you chart the course of provinces and really feel like a mighty warlord. This means that Затига! Warriors 2 一 which also includes a brutally unpleasant Monopoly-esque version of the ancient Japanese board game sugoroku—just doesn't cut the mus- tard anymore. Some changes do fix issues from the first game nicely. Characters can now advance to |еме! 50, and the skill system's complete reworking lets you take advan- tage of all those levels. You дат some skills as you level up, but most you have to purchase or gain randomly from defeated enemy officers. The new characters are all fun to see as Warriors personas, particularly evil ninja Kotaro Fuma. Castle stages are still hard to play in, but they’re now part of full battlefields instead of their own levels. Unfortunately, those changes fail to address the key issues of a camera that's way too close to see what's going on or enemies appearing out of nowhere because of short draw distances. Expect to fail mis- sions until you map out the one acceptable route to reach every objective in time, just like in the original game. And though there's a "special stance" set of attacks, it doesn't change the core tactic of tapping normal attack until your thumb breaks. Samurai Warriors 2 doesn't introduce any new problems to the series and cor- tects a few of the glaring inadequacies of the first game. Nevertheless, it fails to add enough to the series to justify being a full- priced sequel. Maybe 3 will have something that compares to DW4's strategy mode, but this is strictly a cash-in. һ The same stuff we've seen before, including most of the flaws. If you like the stuff, it's nice cau Чо have more. SCORE ; Are the English voice { actors for Samurai Warriors 2 insane, or is it a deliberate ploy to i keep you off balance? + Could it be actual historical accuracy? Did that many į Japanese warlords actually sound like Casey Kasem? OCTOBER | SISTERHOOD OF THE MURDERING PANTS Atlus Software M I Punchline $49.99 | Robert Coffey сәті сет | 85 C u вешеше PSZ LEGO PIZEOUEL HAS TAUGHT YOU WELL ie о а >. Now there are a whole lot more vehicles to zip around in for Lego Star Wars. Landspeeders, tauntauns, and even X-Wings are all there. 4 While the media saw Lego Star Wars and politely nodded at its cute- ness early on, not many people realized how much fun the game would be in its four-hour playthrough, nor how much better it told the prequels’ story than the actual trilogy of films did. With Lego Star Wars 11, not only does the game itself provide a general improvement over the previous release, but it also reinforces just how much better the original (which, technically, is the sequel) Star Wars trilogy is. LSW2 is a superior title over LSW in nearly every way. LSW too short? Now in LSW2, there are not only more levels, but each one takes longer to get through, so the core game takes about 10 hours or so— and then you can add the time it takes to obtain all the unlockables. Didn't like how the vehicle levels were locked on rails? Now when you take part in famous vehicular moments such as the Death Star attack, the Battle of Endor, or the ever-popular Hoth level, you can actually fly your ship around freely. Thought there could be a bit more laughs and zaniness? Now there are amusing little side jokes and random areas that have nothing to do with Star Wars; even the cut-scenes have an extra bit of silliness injected into them. The news isn't all good, however. LSW2 provides an interesting example of something that is simultaneously better and worse than its predecessor: cooperative puzzles. Stretching beyond the "two charac- ters pull a switch at the same time" mechanic of the first game, two players now work together to push blocks and create platforms for each other or travel along parallel paths, destroying obstacles for each other. Many boss fights involve one character fighting the boss and the other messing around with the environment to help. The focus on cooperation is encouraging, until you realize that it makes the single-player really annoying if you happen to be some sort of friendless misanthrope. Frequently, you'll find yourself knowing exactly what to do, but your Al buddies won't. Sure, they eventually understand, but it can be tiresome to switch back and forth between characters just to get them to line up and hit a bunch of buttons. Additionally, enemies only focus on whatever character you're controlling. Since l've already mentioned that your buddy Legos don't really do much (other than need a helping hand to solve puzzles, they also can't even damage enemies, unless you're specifically controlling them), you can imagine the annoying situations where you have a hard time completing puzzles because you're trying to build a Lego bike or use the Force to make a bridge, but you get interrupted by all the baddies shooting you while your fellow Legos just kind of twiddle their nonexistent thumbs. About 80 percent of the time, LSW2 is an absolute joy—a sort of digi- tal sunshine in a bottle. But the very same cooperation mechanic that is generally lauded and improved is the one that drags the game to a grinding halt at times. Then again, this is another case of the game echo- ing the original movies—it's kind of similar to how some people think that Return of the Jedi is pretty damn good overall...except for those silly Ewoks. LEGO CRAZY Lego Star Wars teaches us that comedic mis- chief involving bathing stormtroopers is much funnier when done in Lego form. We know that Lego has done Harry Potter, Spider- Man, and Batman— and we wish there were Lego games for those, too. "нам SHOOTS Е {Нап in LSW. НГ = Т Pretty much everything is better in LSW2 == .except for the co-op-heavy nature of the game, which makes the single-player grating at times. SCORE Пиј REALITY CROSS-CHECK 1 3. EA Sports EA Canada E10+ $29.99 VB BB you've been hear- ing about NHL 07 and its revolutionary right-analog-stick риск control; that fancy- schmancy stuff is strictly on the Xbox 360. this year. The PS2 version does things a tiny bit differently. In NHL 07, all passing of little rubber discs is done using the right analog stick on the DualShock 2. Wanna pass to the winger streaking up Ше ice to your right? Flick the stick to the right. Want to dump the puck into the offensive zone and send another forward chasing after it? Waggle the stick forward. It takes a bit of getting used to at first, but the game really opens up once you master it. No more screwing up your momentum to make a cross-ice pass, no more arcane button combos to drop the puck back. Из fantastic. The puck physics in this year’s NHL game are much improved as well. I've yet to see the puck actually pass through the goalie or another player, or snap into some canned animation. It actually seems to bounce around pretty realistically, making for some spectacular saves and even better rebounds. NHL 07 still suffers from some of the standard issues, though. Players still tend to skate away from the puck in order to play their assigned positions unless you take control and steer them in the right direction. And a massive jumble of bodies is com- mon when the play becomes heated in front of the net. The collision detection on the players still looks right to me, but the mass chaos looks pretty stupid. EA has finally made some headway with the latest NHL. The series has been well on its way to reclaiming its past glory for a few years now, and 07 continues the trend. This feels way more like real hockey than the arcadey, gimmicky junk we've had to swal- low in the past. Just a few more tweaks here and there, and EA's NHL will be the coolest game on ice once again. EA continues to improve the NHL | franchise by adding features that are actually practical and innovative. The best PS2 ver- sion of the series thus far. SCORE жшн ¦ It's hard to believe that i ЕА NHL series is 15 i years old this year. The + first NHL Hockey hit the : Genesis back in 1991 : It lacked real players, ; but it had all the NHL ; teams and was, hands i down, the greatest : hockey game ever made at that point. NASCAR fans will notice one major omission in 075 ros- ter—Carl Edwards’ No. 99 Ford Fusion. The flamboyant young driver, who performs a backflip whenever he wins a race, is nowhere to be seen in NASCAR 07, thanks to contract issues that he and EA just couldn't get resolved in time for the ship date. EA is hoping to have him back on the driver- select screen for NASCAR 08. NASCAR 07 DRIVE IT LIKE Y! р ЕА Sports ze м: =a 99 کے‎ , but looking back a year, | think | may have been a bit too easy on NASCAR 06. While the game itself was pretty sweet there was a nasty handling issue in Ше upper series where the cars were almost impossible to control on old tires. It might have been more realistic, but was it ever hard to play. NASCAR 07 fixes that problem, however. If you decide to run 100 laps at Bristol on thel same set of tires in your Cup car, you'll still be slippin' and slidin' through the turns, but on the whole, it's way more forgiving. That's the bit that makes me so happy about this year's game. Otherwise, this is mostly a roster update, along with a few new features thrown in for good measure. The new adrenaline meter takes last year’s hero/villain points a bit further by having their accumulation during the race actually affect your driver's stats. The whole thing feels really transparent dur- ing the actual race, though, so it's not really worth getting excited about. | can live with a simple roster update, though, since last year's game was pretty fantastic from a racing fan's perspective. What | have trouble with, though, is the framerate. | like to drive with my rearview mirror on, but the game defaults to “off” for this feature. Why, you may ask? It’s a sneaky way of trying to hide that turning on the rearview drops the framerate something awful on certain tracks. It’s very distracting at best, and it can actually affect your per- formance at worst. So if you can live with relying on your spotter (that's the dude оп the radio who tells you when someone's trying to pass you) more than your mirrors, you're good to go. If not, well—hit up a previous year. NASCAR 07 is a good last hurrah on the PS2. | can live with this while | wait one more year for the real, next-gen NASCAR on the PlayStation 3. EA Tiburon Г Slightly more than a roster update; but not by much. Can't wait to play the inevitable PS3 version. SCORE OCTOBER | SUPER MONKEY BALL ADVENTUR WHO LET ТЕ MONKEYS IN НЕВЕ? B. Sega of America DEY. Traveller's Tales зев Е 5 ص‎ | Giancarlo Varanini сет іс=от| 87 C ly FEWEWS KIDS KID ROUNDUP Illustration: Karen Chu MONSTER HOUSE RESIDENT EVIL 4 KIDZ 1 pue. THO oe. Artificial Mind and Movement eses E10+ msep $39.99 کک If you're gonna steal, steal from the best. Monster House has a big, sticky crush on Resident Evil 4. From the camera viewpoint (over the right shoulders of the preteen protagonists) to the dramatic boss battles and their quick-time events, you'll have a serious case of déja zombie as you plod through the titular house's linear series of haunted hallways. The shooting (with water pistols, natch) can get a bit clunky at times, but it's cool how the puzzle-solv- ing is simplified so that even the young ones can figure out how to navigate the house's tricky traps. Monstrous creations that are just scary enough for third-graders make this a good substitute for gro- tesque grown-up survival horror. BARNYARD THE SIMS, BOVINE-STYLE 1PUE.THQ beu. Blue Tongue езген Е10+ msep $39.99 ЖАРУУ УИ ИУ ИИ ИИ ИИ ИИИ ИИИ УИ УИ ИУ ИИИ ИИИ ИИИ ИИ ИИИ УИ ИИИ, I'm not sure how Barnyard got slapped with the 10-and-over rating, because it's geared toward the second-grade gamer set. Rather than craft a generic beat-em-up that follows the plot of the film, THQ has created sort of a kiddie version of The Sims. Create your own personalized cow, then hang out in the barnyard with the characters from the film. As you wander through the meadows, animals will give you missions, usually in the form of simple fetch quests and minigames. As you accumulate cash for accomplishing all this, you can buy new furniture to trick out the barn. There’s a day-night cycle, but impatient kids can skip the clock ahead. One warn- ing: There's a lot of reading required. SCORE SCORE OVER THE HEDGE IS WHERE YOU SHOULD THROW THIS ірин. Activision окы. Edge of Reality езен Е10+ мер $39.99 ІІ Z Games based on kids' movies are getting somewhat better, but Over the Hedge reverts to the same old beat-up-a-bunch-of-bad-guys formula. In this case, you run through a parade of identical-looking back- yards and suburban streets as you lay into a horde of giant rats by slamming on the Square button. It's clear that some work went into this; for exam- ple, the camera is entirely computercontrolled and it works great. But it's all just boring: When the back of the box advertises "destructible environments" and you can't smash the picnic table (much less the house), that's approaching false advertising. And don't get us started on the crappy "soundalike" voice actors who never stop yammering. ONE PIECE: PIRATES' CARNIVAL TOTAL PARTY KILLER рив. Namco Bandai реч. Hand ESCB Е мзер $39.99 There's one thing that would make One Ргесе: Pirates’ Carnival both more authentic and more fun, but unfortunately you have to be 21 to drink it, which leaves out the target audience. Even if you have a Multitap and can thus play this with four real human beings, it's a poor party game. The idea is simple: Flip over cards on a big game board in the attempt to steal your friends’ cards by surrounding them а la Othello. More often than not, а card will trigger a four-player minigame in which everyone battles for control of that space. But the minigames are so confusing, frustrating, and clunky that you might just as well put everyone's name in a hat and pick a winner. score 4 4 Want to hear what our editors are excited about before your next issue arrives? И Tune in to 1UP Radio where the editors of 1UP, Electronic ( нео 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 à our podcasts to your MP3 player - then you can take us on the road with you! 2 ш HELIELLIE PSP Level design is one of LocoRocos strongest suits. Each world, for example, has a level that takes place inside a giant creature...complete with squishy sur- faces, and ending in a giant pool. Think about it. 4 l've never had a gaming experience turn so dramatically sour, shifting from a joyful experience of childlike play to a drudging, slogging, hell- hole of miserable frustration. Perhaps that's a bit strong. But my initial time with LocoRoco was such a giddy experience that when it took such a sharp turn for the worse, it felt like being punched in the gut. Here's the problem: At the start, this game is just freakin’ wonderful. It's this delicious mashup of music and ultrastylized art, with simplistic, addictive gameplay and some really clever, unusual level design. Designed as part pinball machine, part platformer, the levels are almost always both entertain- ing and surprising, and guiding your little LocoRoco through them is just pure fun. And then...it's not. See, at the end of every level, you get a tally of how many of the various collectibles you've picked up. And you start to see that your tally is generally a very, very small percentage of the available items. So you start looking around for things you've missed. Half an hour later, you're ready to rip the UMD out of your PSP, grind it into jagged bits, stir them into a milkshake, and serve it to whoever the hell thought one second was a long enough time to recover the little LocoRoco that go flying whenever you get hit with something spiky. Yes, you see, LocoRoco has a sinister dual nature: On the surface, it's one of the most accessible and delightful games on the PSP...but lurking beneath is a fiendish, brutal collect-a-thon that will infuriate even the most hardcore platform fan. The problem is that you're con- trolling your LocoRoco with the forces of gravity, momentum, elasticity, and luck. None of these are quantifiable enough to allow for any kind of precision when attempting difficult jumps. That wouldn't be such a problem if the basic game were not so sim- ple. If you're just coasting along, looking for the exit, it's entirely pos- sible it'll take you just a couple of minutes to beat each of the 40 levels. But hunting for extras can take a good 10 or 20 infuriating minutes per level. The only real middle ground is half-heartedly looking around for hidden areas, but that doesn't get you much. (Speaking of which, your rewards for your hours of arduous collecting are fairly slim: three minigames and a bunch of parts for your Loco House, a momentarily diverting nongame that felt like it should offer so much more.) Artistically, LocoRoco has few peers. It looks beautifully weird, and almost all of the (mostly) excellent songs—complete with vocal parts that change depending on which of the LocoRoco friends you're play- ing as—wedged themselves deep into my consciousness for days on end. And | still find the basic gameplay extremely entertaining...as long as l'm just coasting through a level. But it would be irresponsible of me not to prepare you for the frustration that likely awaits you should you choose to look beneath the surface of this superficially delightful game. Consider yourself warned. | Joe Rybicki U CT Like your hot, psycho ex-girlfriend, the game is just so incredibly sweet... at first. 4 PlayStation. GAMEOERAPHY According to Mobygames.com, Tsutomu Kouno, game designer for LocoRoco, was a planner and background artist for Ico. 90 | OFM Остовее 2006 OCTOBER PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHES SAVE YOUR BOOTY Грув. Buena Vista Games реч. Amaze Entertainment esee Т мзер $39.99 کے The funny thing about this game version of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is that it's on the verge of being a good action game. At the very least, it attempts to create more than just the typical button- mashing action game where you could get by with just repeatedly pressing one of the face buttons without even looking at the screen. No, here you actually have to pay attention since enemies are equipped with different weapons that require different attacks to defeat. Unfortunately, this all kind of falls apart because of bad controls and some weird ani- mation that occasionally makes it difficult to tell if you're hitting an enemy. Oh, and a spe- cial note to the developers: When someone walks into a river of molten Java, very rarely will they say “ouch” and then automatically walk back into said river and repeat. It's very annoying, and it often makes Jack Sparrow look like a total buffoon. As for the puzzle parts of the game— well, come on, they're pirate puzzles, so that fact alone makes them good. Most of the problems with them stem from a drab color palette that makes it a little difficult to determine where you're sup- posed to go and what you're supposed to do 一 particularly if it's an environmental puzzle that requires vine swinging or some other act of derring-do. The camera often becomes troublesome as well since it’s not particularly easy to see all of the elements that are supposedly encompassed in the puzzle you're solving. Nevertheless you have some decent “get the special item from point A to point B using other puzzle mechanics” action. It also looks great for a PSP game and, since it borrows music from the movie, it sounds pretty nice as well—though a lot of that seems to drop off in the middle of the game and you're left instead with some ambient grunts and chirps. Ultimately, it’s a good, pirate-heavy distraction but, thanks to the game's repetitiveness, it won't do much to keep your attention past the first few levels. | Giancarlo Varanini = PROS Not a total disaster but it's а little too monotonous CONS Camera is pretty bad and the Johnny Depp stand-in needs to go. c 4 Е E 10 4 +3 win: 92/200 50 CENT: BULLETPROOF G-UNIT EDITION PLUG NICKEL 1 ров, Vivendi Universal peu. High Voltage Software esee М mser 539.99 ИИИ ИИИ ИИИ ИРИ ИУ УИ УИ,‏ کے Dear Mr, Cent, After playing through your recent PSP game, | have come to an inescapable con- clusion: You are a big fat crybaby. You were shot nine times? Boo-hoo, good sir, boo- hoo. There are half-naked enemies in your game that can withstand repeated shotgun blasts to the head without wincing, let alone dying. Nine little bullets almost killed you? In the world of your game, that makes you Lord King Wussy of the Universe. In pink hot pants. But you know that already; that's why you use your potty mouth and the N-word so much. You poor dear, it breaks my heart to see you struggle like this. You try—you really, really try—to seem all hard and street-tough, but your heart's not in it. There's no other way to explain how dull and rote the gunslinging is in Bulletproof. Oh sure, the little execution and disarm ani- mations are pretty violent, but if your heart were truly in it, | bet you would have made sure the controls were responsive enough to let players pull them off more easily. | bet what you really want to do is make movies, right? That's why the cut-scenes run almost longer than the five hours of gameplay. It's a nice try and full of flair, but all those over-the-top and clichéd characters tell me you're just itching to do something deeper, like Connie Dixon: Not Without Му Malignant Daughter for Lifetime. Frankly, Mr. Cent, | think you're going to need another near-death experience to rees- tablish your street cred, because this game makes you seem more like a junior college marketing major than a thug. How else can you explain the countless unlockable songs, videos, and officially licensed G-Unit clothing? It's a pretty relentless lesson in branding. You might need to pull a Rasputin апа get poisoned, shot, апа drowned before anyone sees you as scary again. | wish you luck reclaiming your former toughness. In the future, | suggest you stick to advising all shorties to “Go” and leave the videogaming to professionals. Sincerely, | Robert Coffey "UERDICT If you think of Bulletproof as a Greatest Hits UMD and not a game, it's tolerable. |. SCORE 0 | ІП HEARTBREAK Once upon a time in an alternate universe, Don Johnson dated Barbra Streisand and decided to record an album. A music video was made and actually put into heavy rota- tion on this nightmare world’s version of MTV. Perhaps sensing the listening public's likely ; reaction, the chorus featured the line “Tell me what you feel now without the heartbeat.” There are no accurate records of how many people were killed when Don Johnson stopped their hearts. 4 1 NAME THIS Should Mr. Cent decide о pursue a career in weepy television mov- ies for weepy women, he should visit the Lifetime movie title generator at www. redcrumbs.com/life- j time-movie-title-gen- erator for inspiration, It won't top Mother, May 1 Sleep with Danger?, but it'll come close. MIAMI VICE THE GAME DUMB COP, BAD COP Грув. Sierra реч, Rebellion esee M mser $39.99 ب‎ А Miami Vice the TV show was responsible for so many things: half-assed stubbly beards, pastel T-shirts, wearing shoes with- out socks, and slow-motion nighttime shc of neon-bathed convertibles accompanie by the cutting-edge sounds of the nebi lously musical and definitively gnomish Phil Collins. It did all that and still found the time to foster the insane notion that Gle Frey somehow belonged on network televi- sion. Miami Vice the Game, to its credit, isn't so creatively bankrupt that it tries to cash in on that long-gone show; instead, it is so creatively bankrupt that it tries to | cash in on the movie that is so creatively bankrupt that it tries to cash in on that lon: gone show. The result is even less than you'd expect. . While you can choose to Бу this person shooter as either Crockett or Ti your choice of cop makes no difference terms of gameplay—it really boils down | to determining just whose head you want. obscuring your view while Al enemies | unload their shotguns in your skull. Do you want Crockett's greasy semimullet making lining up your single-pixel crosshair impos- sible while you yell at the game for not - allowing you to move and shoot simultane- ously? Or would you prefer Tubbs' tidier "do blotting out the screen while you curse the “take cover" game mechanic that lethally sticks your character behind the wrong wall for the umpteenth time? The game box promises a GTA-like experience, with you earning "rep" to go - undercover and deal with drug kingpins. | But you don't. Instead, you endure a hand- ful of duck-and-cover shooting-gallery mis sions, gathering drugs to sell for clothing | and gun upgrades, then occasionally suf- | fering through diplomatic minigames wl you sell drugs to said kingpins. There's als an incredibly unpleasant computer-hacking. minigame that does a great job re-creating а poor man’s Tron and tons of frustration. You can play Miami Vice co-operatively with a friend—but not if you value said friendship. Other than that, Miami Vice is the most unremarkable eight hours you'll spend en route to a lousy conclusion this - year! ! Robert Coffey As much fun as listening to "Smuggler's Blues" for eight hours straight. F 1 g БЕСЛЕШ PSP v Worhines VA MICRO MACHINES V4 THE WORLD'S CHEAPEST GARAGE 1 PUB. Codemasters реч. Supersonic Software зов Е мер $29.99 ېل‎ MTX: MOTOTRAX A SOLID MIDPACKER 1 PUB. Activision DEV. Left Field Productions esee Т msep $29.99 RENGOKY Il: THE STAIRWAY TO H.E.A.V.E.N. DUMB COP, BAD COP 1 PUB. Konami реч. Hudson Soft esee Т мзер $39.99 ” You һауе to wonder why Копаті would bother green-lighting this sequel. The origi- па! Вепдоки, also on the PSP took Из title quite literally: The Tower of Purgatory. The supercool customization aspect—where you could attach just about any weapon to any of your avatar's appendages—was overshadowed by the tired "run to a locked room, fight an enemy, run to the next locked room" play mechanics. a sequel that accomplishes the exact same thing all over again. Your ADAM (Autono- mous Dueling Armed Machine...seriously, the silly acronyms need to stop already) can be outfitted with a number of differ- ent weapons on his arms, legs, torso, and even his head. A forehead-mounted chainsaw makes a head-butt lethal, while a leg-mounted machine gun...well, that just sounds sort of lame no matter what. Still, it’s a very nice feature. But you know there's a catch. As you struggle your way through the game's handful of boxed-in fighting arenas and long corridors, lose one duel and you'll be teleported back to the first floor of the tower. Not so bad, right? After all, you can just warp back to whatever floor you happened to be on during your untimely demise. Of course, you'll do so armed with nothing but your fists and a prayer, since every time you lose, you drop all of your hard-earned weapons. As if the monotonous gameplay weren't enough, the whole dropping-weapons thing makes the experience downright sadistic. Rengoku's battle system is clunky at the best of times (read: when you're armed to the teeth), but when you're fighting hand to hand, it's pretty much useless. So this makes it official: The Rengoku series is stillborn. And please, we don't need a Rengoku Ill (Shot Through the H.E.A.R.T.? ). If you already played the first game, you're getting more of the same here. If you never played the first game— well, congratulations. | Greg Sewart A sorry sequel that does nothing to atone for the sins of the first game. [E CE) virtues. ы Из hard to write а review for МТХ: Moto- trax, Not because it was painful to play. Not because I'm at а loss for words. And not even because | couldn't find the char- ger for my PSP. No, an MTX: Mototrax review is hard to write because the game is so spectacularly average. It doesn’t do anything particularly wrong—though there are some definite ruts in the track here and there—nor does it do anything that helps it stand out from the already overcrowded pack of racing titles on the PSP. It just kind of...i Оп Ше plus side, MTX features a goodly amount of racing and alternative events. The trick mode is kind of fun, the freeride sections have a vaguely Tony Hawk-ish feel to them, and the straight racing is about as good as you'll find on two wheels for the PSP. The graphics are passable, and the framerate is solid at all times. You can even get a bit of wireless multiplayer action going (ad hoc only). But a lot of the game's good is undone by poor design choices and other random weirdness out on the track. The biggest problem in this old racer's eyes is the ridiculous rider limit. Each event only features four competitors, including you, making the track feel basically empty. Which is very wrong—motocross racing is all about the congestion and action all over the place. The second major gripe | have is with the Al and how completely inconsistent it can be. During some races, you'll be battling tooth and пай every dirt-covered step of the way just to finish in the top three. Then there are other times where you swear you're running on the Special Olympics setting; you'll be a good half-lap ahead of your competition before you even complete the first circuit. Mototrax starts out with the holeshot thanks to the solid gameplay, but it man- ages to take a spill before ever reaching the finish line. | Greg Sewart "UEIPDICT An otherwise solid racer that manages to be disappointing despite its SCORE ESI FAST та Older gamers will remember Micro Machines as the smaller-than-anything toys fast-talkin' pitch- man John Moschitta used to pimp on us every Saturday morn- ing. Old-school nerds will also remember him as the voice of the superirritating Trans- Dur OF LEFT FIELD A bit of trivia for you virtual dirt-trackers: The first motocross } game ever released by MTX developer Left Field Productions was i the critically acclaimed y Excitebike 64 on the Nintendo 64 console. Micro Machines V4 has one thing going for it—major creativity. Everything from the unique weapons you can attach to your miniscule machines to tracks that seem like they were lifted directly from the mind of a 4-year-old (апа | mean that in а good way) keep the game true to the product. After all, Micro Machines are made for an audience that's too young to drive, but too old to swallow one and choke to death. Or some- thing like that. The irritating part is that, judging Бу the degree of difficulty most players will have with simply running midpack during most events, the game is actually aimed at a much older crowd. There's absolutely no way your average youngster is going to get very far in this game when the level of precision shown by the AI cars is at the superhuman level near the very beginning of the career mode. The rewards aren't nearly worth the effort, either. While there are literally hundreds of Micro Machines to find and collect within the game, the simplistic visu- als—along with the fact that, hey, you're collecting Micro Machines—mean it's ultimately something that no one but the most die-hard toddler is going to actually care about. It's too bad, too, because the multiplayer mode, where you get to bet pink slips, would be зо much cooler if you actually gave a damn about your collection of minuscule cars. It should be noted, too, that V4 on the PSP features the same single- controller multiplayer modes found in the console versions, where two players can actually compete on the same PSP at the same time with no extra peripherals or copies of the дате. The Micro Machines games have stayed the same over the last decade for the most part, so fans of the series will have a general idea of what they're getting into here. Newcomers can consider themselves warned. | Greg Sewart "UE DICT The exact same game as the recent PlayStation 2 version, with all the same great features and irritating problems. —{11 SCORE 92 | DAM Остовее 2006 казак. ONE OF THE TOP FIVE GAME-DEGREE PROGRAMIS - Electronic Gaming Monthly The PSP-exclusive end-to-end minigame prompts you to turn your PSP 90 degrees. counterclockwise, pick teams, and then return kickoffs. Stringing together combos to get in the end zone gives you the juice to unlock historical teams and music tracks. At least we don’t have to pay for those. Yet. Student Artwork | rts реч. ЕА Tiburon eses Е mser $39.99 Francisco Cruz | a PSS D у 29 THIS МЕЙ, THEY DID IT BIGHT 4 il | £ У — O OT A V Á % If you spent much time playing Madden's unbearably Favre and the Packers. | found myself enjoying the Py slow-loading PSP debut a year ago, you likely had less important games (lame Lions, party-boat Vikings) LL 231 ® а theory of your own as to when the game would on the PSP, but then | would save the Bears game at 2 H crash—after interceptions, after saving Week 2 in fran- Lambeau Field for the PS2 and a bigger screen. One Real World Education chise mode, if it was raining on a Tuesday. Thankfully, thing surprising is that Madden doesn't have that FAQ that horror now lives in the past. button on the menu screen (like in NCAA) helping to The same tight controls introduced by EA Tiburon differentiate between PSP and console controls. School of in NCAA Football PSP—L button used with face but- It's become almost redundant to talk about EA tons in lieu of a right analog—plus the revolutionary Sports games looking good on the PSP, but Madden Lead Block feature, which allows you to take control well replicates the helmet shine, plus wear and tear of a fullback or offensive lineman prior to the snap, on the field seen on the PS2. Some might see it as give PSP players a greatly improved football experi- scaled down because of no funky Superstar mode, ence versus last year's debut. An advanced set of jukes but with a Franchise Mode and the PS2 link, you'll be (using the Triangle button to trigger moves) tailored engaged in the NFL on your PSP well into the new to the skill/style of the runner more accurately depicts year. the NFL ground game. The running issue/glitch that plagued NCAA Football's debut on the PSP—where - the ball was spotted incorrectly on run plays, always іп Шал нэш == Же Tore ИОА favor of the defense—has been remedied. and time zone having more of an impact on the + players and their performances. Madden PSP serves as the perfect companion Қ gra ЭА; Каза Е Ec 4 3300 University Boulevard to Madden оп Ше PS2 (especially if you use public "SCORE = қ В er Park, FL 32792 transportation). The PS2 link lets you take your fran- 5-4 ПЕ Wint 3. School of chise anywhere your PSP can go. | started one with Е Н 1 Financial aid available to those who qualif future Hall of Famer and interception machine Brett 1 у Career development assistance Accredited College, ACCSCT зи ЕСШЕ ШЕ МОЧЕ IN мемогем __ United 93 has the dubious distinction of being the first major stu- dio film to look at the events of 9/11, which means that it's the film nobody thought they wanted; it was widely reported that, when previews of the film were screened in New York City, people shouted, “Too soon!” at the screen. It’s a fair argument whether or not five years really is too soon to start depicting 9/11 on film, but what I think people were recoiling from was the idea of the stark events of 9/11 being turned into Hollywood melodrama. This scar on the national psyche deserves better than to be an excuse for emo- tional exploitation. Luckily, United 93 director Paul Greengrass felt exactly the same way. And because of this, Greengrass handles the story of this doomed flight astonishingly well. He does it by offering a version of the story almost entirely untouched by big-movie artifice—Green- grass is best known to us here in the U.S. for handling a big budget in The Bourne Supremacy, but he cut his directorial teeth on inti- mate, tightly focused dramas in the U.K., armed with handheld cam- eras and а verite style. That training shows here: United 93 unspools almost like a docu- mentary, following the events on the plane and the events in the air traffic controller command rooms. None of the actors are familiar names or faces; some of the air traffic controllers were real control- lers who were working on that fateful day. There's almost nothing between the events of the day and the viewer; it genuinely hurts the heart to see the movie move toward its tragic, heroic conclusion. | can't tell you if United 93 is a great film. But | will say that United 93.15 the right film. It's the only possible way to tell this story. See it. CURIOUS GEORGE Will Ferrell, Drew Barrymore As far as | can tell, there are two demograph- ics for this movie: kids under five years of age, and college kids absolutely baked out of their minds. The movie will work for both more orless forthe same reasons: bright primary colors, a simple and silly plot, an inoffensive soundtrack by Jack Johnson, and, of course, the fact that George is, like, totally a happy monkey. How can a child/stoned philosophy major not like that? Everyone else: eh. SCOPE A %% DOWN IN THE VALLEY Edward Norton, Evan Rachel Wood Edward Norton plays a creep in that way that only Edward Norton can play a creep, which is to say you know he’s a creep but you still really, really want to like him. Adding to his creepiness this time around is his relationship with a too-young girl who is fascinated by him, or at the very least by the image he proj- ects, and doesn’t quite realize what a threat he might represent. Hope your own (future) teen- age daughter never meets someone like him. SCORE THE LAKE HOUSE Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock Two lovelorn folks become pen pals thanks to a magic mailbox that allows them to write to each other even though they are separated in time by a few years. Yeah, it's a pretty dippy idea, and since the players here are Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock, you can't count on the acting to carry it over either. But you know what? It pretty much works. Look, it's a date film. You could use a date, no? Well, OK, then. SCORE D УУ LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN Josh Hartnett, Lucy Liu Another one of those gangster films that wants you to admire how clever it is, largely by pointing out how clever it is at most avail- able opportunities. Well, fine: It's clever. But clever isn’t the same as good. Good doesn't have to wink and nod at you to get you to appreciate it. When you're done with this film, you'll know you've been in the company of talented folk, but you'll have to take their word for it. The movie is just sort of there. ТЕ PAGE Gretchen Mol, Lili Taylor Back іп the day when you couldn't type the word “goatse” into Google and see pornog- raphy that would mentally scar you, gals like Bettie Page were considered racy because they dressed up in leather and brandished cute little whips. Ah, those were the innocent days, and as this film hints, Page herself was something of an innocent—who happened to take dirty pictures. Surprisingly sweet and sad. (PS. Really, доп? type “goatse” into Google.) ҰЯ DCTOBER | ТОКҮО ОВ STAY ALIVE Sophia Bush, Jon Foster It's not just movies based оп videogames that are irretrievably stupid. Movies in which vid- eogames are major plot points are also irre- trievably stupid. Case in point: Stay Alive, in which dumb teens are offed in the real world in ways similar to how they are offed т а particular videogame. Which leads you think: How did they beta test this game? It will also lead you to think: No videogame in the world is as moronic as this. It should, anyway. THE WILD Kiefer Sutherland, Eddie Izzard Another example of why Disney so desperately needed to buy Pixar and let its people run Disney's animation department, this flick is so derivative of Madagascar that it's a miracle DreamWorks Animation honcho Jeffrey Katzen- berg didn’t sue Disney—again!—for his share of the profits. The animals in The Wild are somewhat more realistic looking than the Mad- agascar animals, which makes the film creepy. Creepy and derivative! Not good adjectives. AE Lucas Black, Sung Kang THE FAST (шыт, THE FURIOUS: In Tokyo Drift, the Fast and the Furious fran- chise has devolved to the point where not only is Vin Diesel unnecessary, so is Paul Walker. You don’t even deserve Paul Walker, people. Is that contempt? Or merely a determi- nation that all you really want are shiny cars going fast, and who cares about humans? In which case, why not just see Cars? The big deal in this particular film is that it's no longer enough for the cars in question to go fast; now they “drift,” doing that slippy, slidey sideways thing that can’t be good for the tires. The film takes place in Tokyo for no discernible reason. One expects the next film in the series will be called Paris Retreat, in which all the driving is done backward. | can wait for that a long time. МОЧЕ RELEASE Septembe: United 93 September 12 | Lucky Number Slevin The Wild Curious George Down in the Valley The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift The Lake House The Notorious Bettie Page cemiUR.zom 95 The боге Reviews & News Compilation Site. We keep tabs on everything gaming. 24 hours a day, so you don’t have to. www.gametab.com NETWORK Part of the 1UP Network. ЕЕЕ НЫН: EVNING UP THE PLAYSTATION WAYBACK MACHINE | Yeah, the PSP plays games and movies—but are you aware of all the other fancy tricks it performs these days? К BACK AT SONY'S ILL-FATED ALL-IN-ONE DEVICE 4 Some notable tunes from the Madden NFL 07 soundtrack. See how the three major survival-horror franchises stack up against one another. Look back to when game characters discovered their voices...and we discovered the joys of the mute button. WS Ions HAST | TT ^ r | в WHAT EYER HAPPENED HE Б, SONWS ALL-IN-ONE ENTERTAINMENT CENTER? АМО WILL ІТ HAUNT THE PS3? Imagine a single device at the center of your home theater, doing | ; everything. One box to rule them. all! It's the dream of hardcore nkies—and t the occasional lazy bastard who wire a | ‘billion uc together. Imagine it, Y for the billionth сори гуа just. | doesn't wi though. Jamming | оп Guitar Нек You suddenly remembei "Oh, ‘episode of The Venture Bros.” No problem—just open. л апа set your PlayStation to record the show. hat. was the ‘promise bel ind the PSX. р Я р : THE PSHAARAARAR? GG Gs Don't remember the PSX? We don't blame you. It never even hit store shelves here in the United States. The short version: This pimped-out PS2 housed a web browser, DVD recorder, and DVR. The long version reads like a geek's wet dream. The PSX was a game console—that's a given. It also attempted to be a central media hub for your home. It promised progressive-scan DVD output, better than the native PS2 playback, and a 250GB hard drive for storing shows recorded through the built-in TV tuner. Plug in your Handycam and start editing video on the PSX. Create slideshows with music and photos stored on the hard drive. Upload recordings and music to a PSP. So what happened? “In certain ways, the PSX was ahead of its time in terms of AV convergence," says Daichi Yamafuji, Sony Corporation's associate manager of corporate communications. That's one way of putting it. b For all the things b d to do right, a number of problems plagued the supersystem from the'start. $ In December of 2003, Sony released this überbox іп Japan for the low, low price of 99,800 yen. That’s roughly $900. A slightly more price-conscious version sold for about $720. Still, though: Oooofff! No matter how you slice it, that’s a lot of money. The reason it was so expensive was a simple matter of cramming so much bleeding-edge hardware into a single device. “The idea -JE PSK INAS AHEAD MIS OF AU CONVERGENCE was there,” says gaming-industry analyst David Cole, “but probably the biggest problem is that all the components that went into the PSX—the DVD recorder, DVR, you name it—have all come down in price.” Cole quickly points to the DVD player. When they first came out, a box cost over $1,000. Now, you can buy one in your grocery store for 50 bucks. Because of the high price of entry, only the core early adopter bought into the PSX. “But,” says Cole, “it didn’t catch on with the mass consumer market—Sony’s true target demographic. As opposed ا Ат A ве РРР РРР Ж в COO нинин THANKS FOR THE MENMOEIES а LOOK BACK AT SOME OF SONY'S BIGGER FORMAT SUCCESSES—AND FLOPS EBETAMA: The infamous videotape-format wars of the early 1980s left Sony with stacks of unsold players. Betamax tapes, while superior to VHS tapes, were pricey, and only Sony made the expensive playback decks. §3.5-INCH FLOPPY DISKS: Remember those little things you used to insert into the computer? Little plastic squares that held a whole 1.44МВ of data...oh, who are we kidding? You barely remember CD-ROMs. Young punk: BUIDEOS: When Sony sold the first Handycam in 1985, it created a smaller tape to fit the tiny camcorder—and gave birth to a popular format. WVINIDISC: While popular among the DJ set before MP3 players hit the BDUD: That's right. Not many realize this, but Sony and Philips jointly devel- oped this now-ubiquitous technology. MEMORY STICK: Cameras, camcorders, PDAs, the PSP—even some TVs have the company-sanctioned slot. If Sony really wanted to push the for- mat, though, why didn't it make it the standard memory card for the PS2 when the console launched? BATAC ATACE: Sony excreted this draconian copy-protected digital audio format. Sure, it sounds good. However, it locks down audio files on your computer and stubbornly refuses to work with Apple’s AAC audio (iTunes, anyone?) or MP3s. Sony's SonicStage software lets you convert ? WLINIJEIPSAL MEDIA DISC (UMD): Y'know, for something to be universal, it needs to work on more devices than just the PSP. Do we need to make any jokes about how much Hollywood loves the UMD format right now? BLU-RAY DISCS (BD): Blu-ray, HD-DVD: Welcome to the Terrordome! The new format wars are about to begin, and Sony is pushing the BD tech- nology into the PS3. Technically, Blu-ray discs are superior—but, as with Betamax, the decks to play them cost a lot more. The significant distinction: Sony isn't the only company making BD players. 1 А ААА EN | MINIDISC Омо to the 100-plus million people who made the previous two PlaySta- tion systems so popular, Sony was catering to high-end users.” It takes more than dollars...er...yen to scare some people away. A few technical issues made it even tougher to sell everyone on the all-in-one box. For starters, it wouldn't support CD-R discs or MP3s. That may not seem like a big deal, but the PSX only played Sony's proprietary ATRAC audio format. So, basically, if you owned an iPod or a stack of MP3 CDs, the show was over. Video nerds turned off to the lack of DivX/XviD support. Sadly, that was nothing new for Sony. From the beginning, the company has always taken pretty significant chances on new proprietary audio and video formats. Some suc- ceed—some don't. (Check out our handy field guide to Sony's elec- tronic-elephant graveyard, above.) Sony's hopes of selling the PSX dried up. Even though Sony denies it ("The target audience for the PSX was the Japanese mar- ket, because of space constraints in the typical Japanese home," says Yamafuji), alleged plans to ship the PSX internationally in late 2004 crept into 2005. Then, nothing. Clearly, the poor sales in Japan weren't encouraging signs for the rest of the world. Nevertheless, though the PSX failed, it did spark a few ideas within Sony R&D. The PSX's command-bar interface, which you've since seen on the PSP (and some new high-end Sony TVs), is being adopted companywide—it's how you'll navigate the PS3. The "Sony Online" Internet service introduced in Japan for the PSX allows users to download videos, music, and various bits to E enhance the consoles video-editing capabilities. While Sony hasn't revealed its online strategy for the PS3, some speculation is pointing to the PSX-based service as a first step. Heck, there's even some wild 006 ф севвес © OE eee с совево Ф. (9 пое ci €: © «ежееҙе-ө: Ж е № овое O; вен? е ` eie: speculation that the PSX will work in tandem with the PS3—but at press time, Sony spokespeople have neither confirmed nor denied this rumor. Still, though, Sony insists on courting the high-end consumer. By far the biggest gamble is including a Blu-ray disc (BD) player in the PS3. This alone jacks up the price of the machine—most dedicated BD players coming to store shelves sell for around $1,000. It makes the PS3 the most affordable Blu-ray player for the early adopters, sure, but it effectively prices out the mainstream consumer. Cole agrees: "[The] PSX should cause [Sony] to focus. The gaming and Blu-ray markets are two very separate markets right now." But before you start worrying that the PS3 will go the way of the PSX, remember: The PS2 was a significant force in the widespread adoption of DVDs. While the format was launched in 1997, by 2000— before the PS2 launched with its built-in DVD player—worldwide DVD sales had just barely hit the 300 million mark; by 2001 sales had more than doubled to 625 million. And, according to Sony, 46 percent of PS2 owners say the PS2 was the first DVD player they owned. In fact, according to the research companies Screen Digest and IDC, before / / the launch of the PS2, industry analysts were seriously questioning whether the DVD format would ever take off. Sound familiar? Trying to be something for everybody, the PSX became the master of none. Some electronic Boot Hill houses landfills of similar failed experiments and all-in-one home theater wannabes. Whether it’s a convertible console (the Coleco Adam) or a multimedia machine (Panasonic's ЗОО), the perfect mix of form and function has yet to be found. The PSX joins that big scrap heap in the sky of also-rans. However, it makes you wonder if companies can learn from their @ mistakes—and if maybe, one day, there can be a single solution to everyone's needs. Will it be the PS3? | Darren Gladstone SLA KN ЕА құла Ee THINES YOU DIDNT KNOW ABOUT VOL PSP E THAN JL! 102 | OFM Остовее 2006 1 1 PSP MEDIA MANAGER SOFTWARE One of the coolest things about the PSP is its ability to play full-motion video—in particular, video that you've downloaded from the Web (both naughty and nice). But an arcane folder system and specialized file for- mats that need to go on your memory stick can be a real pain in the ass. Enter the PSP Media Manager. With this software package from Sony, all you need to do is connect your PSP to your PC with the included USB cable, then drag and drop any type of music, photo, or video file to your PSP. The program does the rest, reencoding the file to the proper format and placing it in the correct folder so that your PSP can access the content with no problems. What bet- ter way to catch episodes of The ТОР Show or the latest radiOPM podcast while on the go? Or, if you’ve got one of the bigger memory sticks, you can rip video files from your DVD collection and use Media Manager to convert them for viewing on your PSP. Another nice perk—the Media Manager can be set up to auto- matically create a PC backup of your memory stick every time you connect your PSP. UMD MOVIES If you prefer hard copies of your PSP movie collection, there are scads of big-name movies out on the propri- etary UMD format. Even better, the format has been pretty much deemed an utter failure at this point. How is that good news? Well, although you probably won't see any brand-spankin' new movies being released on UMD from now on, the dozens of titles that were released сап be found all over the place 一 | EB Games to Best Buy—and some of them are going at fire-sale prices. We're talking $10 or less for some titles. On top of that, EB and some other retailers sell used copies of movies as well. 3 MEMORY STICK DUO ENTERTAINMENT PACKS Keeping on the subject of movies, Sony Pictures and Sony Electronics are putting out yet another product soon that will help you with your movie watching needs. The 1GB and 2GB Memory Stick Duo Enter- tainment Packs will come complete with a memory stick and a DVD that houses one of four PSP-optimized movies: Hitch, S.W.A.T., The Grudge, or xXx: State of the Union. Honestly, the movies included aren't all that exciting. The nice part is the 1GB and 2GB sticks that are included. All that space for $60 or $100, respectively, is a decent deal. LOCATIONFIPEE TU The ultimate multimedia functions of your PSP can be connected to a LocationFree Base Station ($279.99). With this funky little unit, you can access your home network from just about anywhere via Wi-Fi and stream just about any kind of media you want, from a live broadcast of Lost right from your cable box to all those MP3s you've got sitting on your PC at home. This is the toy for the boys with lots of cash to burn. INTERNET веолъмса If a cheap, wireless router is more your speed for all of your home networking needs, the PSP has you covered there, too. The constantly evolving PSP web browser has slowly become a respectable way to surf the Net. Tabs, bookmarks, and other fairly standard features on PC browsers have recently been joined by Macromedia Flash compatibility, as well as support foi (255 FEEDS This is one of the best functions Sony ever added to the PSP. Now, just like you can do with an iPod, you can set your PSP to check various RSS feeds for audio and video podcasts every time you connect to your network. One of the most recent system firmware updates actually modified the RSS support a bit, allowing you to save audio and video content directly to your memory card rather than having to stay connected to the network while you listen to your favorite podcast. 2 немлавее UPGRADES Speaking of firmware upgrades, that’s something else you should constantly be checking for while con- nected to a network. Sony frequently updates the operating system for tl PSP, adding all-new features, new functionality, or even changing the overall look and feel of the interface. A lot of the stuff is pretty trans- parent, though, so don't expect each new update to move worlds or anything. For instance, one of the features in the recent 2.80 firmware update was that the system now dis- plays video at the correct resolution when an external tuner is selected in LocationFree TV. Riveting. 3 CHEAP GAMES Enough of this multimedia junk. You bought your PSP to play games, right? And now it's cheaper than ever to do so, thanks to Sony's extend- ing the Greatest Hits program to the PlayStation Portable. As of late July, five games have been added to the Greatest Hits list: Ape Escape: On the Loose, ATV Offroad Fury: Blazin' Trails, Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee, Twisted Metal: Head- On, and Wipeout Pure. Take it from us: Hot Shots and Wipeout are two of the best games on PSP. At $19.99 a pop, you'd be crazy not to buy them. FREE GAME OK, we're not talking about free games in the strictest sense of the term here, but Sony has started offer- ing a lot of downloadable demos for the PSP lately. Check out LocoRoco, Go! Sudoku, or World Tour Soccer. Hopefully, every major PSP release will start getting a decent free demo a month or so before its street date. Oh, and you don't need a wireless network to get these demos, either. Just plug your PSP into your PC and use your wired connection to down- load and transfer the files you need. МОРЕ FEE STUFF! Recently, Sony started awarding folks who downloaded and played through the LocoRoco demo. Folks with demo version 1.01 got a password at the end of the level, which they could then input at the PlayStation.com site for rewards such as free back- grounds, sound files, and so on. Free stuff rocks—and hopefully, Sony will continue to dole out rewards just for. playing PSP games. | G л Ts | к==р oam. 1 ЕЗ—огп 103 (a : THE MUSIC ПЕ MADDEN In an ever-expanding quest to break new music in unexpected places, EA Sports is squeezing a ton of unreleased tracks into Madden NFL 07. Most of the exclusive tracks are from albums that will release well after the game does.. Б here are five notable releases you can buy right now. ra ID d VWOLFAOTHER CARTEL: СНО KEANE: LINDE THE My general rule about an ггом SEA branch of punk, even the denatured version of pop-p! that exists today, is that it shouldn't be performed by a band that sounds like my 7-year-old daughter could totally kick its collective candy ass. On Chroma, Cartel is that band: decent tunes and harmo- nies but a total lack of threat and bite, and a lead singer who's probably too sweet for emo. This is rock by stuffed animals: plushie pop-punk. My kid's opening a can of whup ass, boys. [Т1 Остовее 2006 От HERE Re омовеоатн: DEFINE: THE GI2EAT LINE On Line, Underoath trie: aven the paint-peeling sonic ack of hardcore screamy ith occasional stabs and, you know, es it work? After once, | thought ent listening has me, although fully pretentious he spoken-word of "Salmarnir"). atter what, however, this i is a pretty dark and heavy affair all the way through. So if you're all about the dark and heavy, enjoy. _ 2ш ОС ТОВЕЕЕ? HEAO TO HE E THE BIG THREE OF SUPUINAL ногесе IN А HALLOWEEN SMACKDOWN BY 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 Жж. Ld Once upon a time, videogame characters were quiet fellows, con- tent to stomp evil mushrooms or collect shiny golden rings with mute determination. Then along came the optical-media revolution. Suddenly, everything changed. Suddenly, the heroes had access to the deadliest weapon of all: vocal cords. And they weren't afraid to use them. In fact, some of them refused to stop. For gamers who had come to think of their onscreen avatars as : : obedient drones ready to take orders with a minimum of sass, the PlayStation marked a new era of mouthiness that was off-putting PRESIDENT FATI SILENT in both its volume and its complete lack of quality. Granted, Sony's was hardly the first system to feature chatty У characters, but jabbering mascots had previously been rarities [сш City, F Сад thanks to the strict memory limits imposed by the cartridge format SETTING ЩЩ Е The scenic resort of older syst (And— ifully in th f h mustache- residences in я г Fatal Frame ystems (агне по сазы о пошу goons twirling Umbrella | Japan town of Silent Hill like Bubsy the Bobcat—easily ignored rarities at that.) Neither was Corporation the PlayStation the first system to support optical media, a format that made possible all manner of virtual verbal spew. CD-i, ЗОО, Sega CD, Turbo CD, even the primitive LaserActive: They all beat Sony to the punch with shiny little high-capacity data platters that ENEMIES FONS ШЫП Silent Hill offered a hundred times the capacity of most carts. Once memory nightmares 9 conservation ceased їо be an issue, developers got a little carried away, drunk with the power of laserdiscs and CD-ROMs. Creatures from eae HE PLAYSTATION MARKE Cops (and a cop's Waifish Japanese ^ and/or girls, just sister) giris like you—only 1221 "ате EIN) Ea MOLITHINESS. more delusional --4 “Jil hereisa That was a dark time for gaming, an unhappy age of pain called lockpick. It might “Huh, Radio. "Siliwood." Ill-conceived stories were given horrible scripts, acted NEMVIOGEAELE ШШДЕ ИИ "Doooon't be What's going an Resident Evil out poorly by disinterested actors. A hint of sub-Pong interactivity the master of Scaaaaared!” ‚ Т і ili i QUOTE А with that radio?” was shoehorned into the works later. Siliwood-style full-motion wath you. аке videogames patterned themselves after Dragon’s Lair and its ilk, 2 except that they featured grainy footage of real washed-up actors MOST ETT [zl mI Silent Hill 2: on real cheap sets instead of lush Don Bluth animation. Transla- DISTURBING Dogs. Windows. Laughing girl atop Pyramid Kendis Silent Hill tion: They really sucked. MOMENT 73711217 pile of corpses ee 8 ИЕ Luckily, gamers are rarely content to wallow т someone else’s Sudvimonstets filth, and by the time the PlayStation rolled around, Siliwood had des run its course. FMV was still around, but it had been relegated to Finding the crest 3 | зегуе as ап expensive bookend to something тоге like real video- MEST to open the door Realizing you're a Beating the game games. Meanwhile, voice acting gained an even more prominent FEUSTPEATING PIOLO pussy who can't andstillhavingno a) Frame role, often being dubbed atop actual honest-to-god gameplay... MOMENT that goes into play with the clue what the hell СЕВ the statue that lights out thi d 9те just һаррепе 7 2 т 5 opens... See, while the quality of video content seen on the PlayStation was a marked improvement over the likes of Night Trap and Mad Dog McCree, the quality of the acting generally wasn’t. Developers MOST The chainsaw— got it half right in realizing that multimedia content worked best as DESIZABLE ТҮШ Exit door ‘oh god, yes, the Silent Hill an enhancement for gameplay rather than a replacement. But they (BEST ҮҮ chainsaw were somehow much slower to catch on to the fact that jarring, awkward voice acting is far worse than no voice acting at all. The mangled dialogue in games like Resident Evil, Castlevania: COULD BE Е i i Releasing an Setting future Telling us what Symphony of the Night and Mega Man 8 are pretty much the stuff мегочво аа tat games in "he hell just Fatal Fi of legend these days. Gaming made enormous strides toward е Е just atal Frame а Фа BY... doesnt suck happened becoming a respected art form during the 32-bit age, but all that U.S.A. USA! stilted narration surely set the cause back а few years. "^| hope this is not...Chris' blood!" Barry Burton intoned wood- enly in his Raccoon City debut. No worries, Barry. That pool of WINNER ЕА | Al blood was from our tortured eardrums, abused by one too many of the PlayStation's miserable piles of vocal tracks. | 乡 7 7 7 И я 2 7 7 7 В 7 % 7 7 7 Z 7 2 7 7 2 A 7 7 7 2 7 7 > 7 7 % 1 B 7 7 и 7 7 7 | 7 7 7 Е гУВСК attended his first E3 in 1997. It was in Atlanta, it was damn hot, and it was like nothing he'd ever seen. You never forget your first time. Send your thoughts on the death of E3 to opm@2ziffdavis.com t. DEAD SHON WALKING --- Вог some unknown reason, my clearest memory of my first Electronic invigorated, excited for the future, like some sort of tent-revival vid- Entertainment Expo is of a two-story tall model of Croc. Most of you eogame baptism. But the last few years, those feelings of excitement —- A probably don't remember this mascot from the competent, but utterly were overshadowed more and more by the frustrations inherent in an unremarkable platformer of the same name. And that's OK, because event on the scale that E3 had reached. The masses of people made it there's absolutely no reason why you should. challenging for us to get hands-on time with the games that captured But unfathomably, the image of this huge, cartoony crocodile loom- our interest—if we even had time to hunt them down. And the publish- ing over a sea of sweaty game geeks sticks with me. | remember walk- егѕ seemed to exert stricter and stricter controls on what was shown. ing into this mass of game-obsessed humanity and thinking, "What. An event that was once about seeking out diamonds in the rough The. Hell." The size, the noise, the spectacle—it was overwhelming. It became a jewelry-store display: You can look at the pretty, shiny things, wasn't long before | started trying to calculate how much all this stuff but you can't touch—at least, not without prior approval, and only cost. | lost count after the first million. > under the watchful eye of security. That was almost 10 years ago, and in that time, those costs have We'll see if this new, "intimate" format improves that. One thing is unquestionably skyrocketed. So, while it came as a shock to learn that certain: E3 as we know it is, at least for now, dead. But don't think that ЕЗ is basically dead, it really shouldn't have. Publishers have been you, the fan, will lose out in this deal. The removal of this monolithic dropping literally millions of dollars to put together these elaborate centerpiece of gaming news will undoubtedly lead publishers to show booths, set them up, staff them, take ‘em down, and feed and house a product throughout the year. Yes, even in the summer. So while new staff of dozens for a week in L.A. We should have realized that, sooner games will emerge without the spectacle of this grand event, we'll all or later, they would start to question exactly how much of a return they be getting more substance out of the deal. were getting on that investment. The other big benefit to fans is the fact that other gaming and So the Entertainment Software Association has opted to reformat consumer-tech events—like Penny Arcade's PAX and Ziff's own Digi- ЕЗ as a "more intimate" show, with attendees numbering in the thou- talLife—will undoubtedly grow to pick up some of the ЕЗ slack. And sands rather than the tens of thousands. It's an interesting move, and a unlike ЕЗ, these events are open to the public. You don't have to be an fthe industry continues to show up in force. industry insider to get in; you just have to buy a ticket. For me, it's bittersweet. E3, in its best moments, allowed us to dive So don't be alarmed by E3's demise. It's the end of an era, to be headfirst into the very essence of gaming and come out energized and sure...but there's no ending without a new beginning. | Atari www.atari.com 25 Atlus Software www.atlus.com 57 Blistex Corporation— Stridex www:stridex.com 15 DC Comics А dccomics сот 69 Full Sail Real World Education wwwfullsailcom 93 Game Crazy www .gamecrazycom 107 The Gillette Company www gillettecom 31 Koei Corporation www.koei.com 108 Midway Games, Inc. www.midway.com 13, 82a-b Namco Hometek www.namco.com 11,27 Sega of America www-sega.com 45 Sony Computer Entertainment America www.scea.com 23 Sony Online Entertainment www.sonyonline.com 7 Square Enix U.S.A., Inc. www.square-enix-usa.com 21, 33, 34-35 Take 2 Interactive www.take2games.com 23 Ubisoft Entertainment www.ubisoft.com 67 Vivendi Universal Games www.vugames.com 50a-b ZED USA Corporation www.zed.com 61 Guess who preordered? You know when it drops. You know you want it. Preorder at Game Crazy and we’ll comp you a free Hollywood rental. Don’t get left out in the cold. LARGEST SELECTION BEST DEAL ON TRADES TRY BEFORE YOU BUY 222 “шщ, 7 № ©2006 Hollywood Entertainment Corporation | 4 | ‘Game стаг We understand. Produced by "Force www.koei.com A HEAVENLY SLICE OF CHINA E 4 ta " а" Ancient China's greatest warriors have rocked the foundations of heaven and earth for over 2,000 years. Now the Warriors Worth a Thousand return in the sequel that eclipses the original. ® Гог the first time, multiplayer combat with Battle Royal for up to 4 players (ad hoc). e Includes the complete pantheon of all 48 Dynasty Warriors® with branching story paths for each kingdom. е Unleash Double Musou attacks with your officers. е Own a stable of up to 8 horses and elephants that gain experience during battle. е Musou, Multiplayer, Free, and Camp modes. е Over 50 stages and 31 maps. Coming Soon Violence Dynasty Warriors and the КОЕ! logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of КОЕ! Сол Lid. ©2006 KOE! Co., Ltd. All rights reserved. "PlayStation", "PS" Family logo, апо "PSP" are registered tradem Sony, Compu iment’Inc, Memory Stick Duo™ may be required (sold separately). The ratings icon BA Association, А ys as AN е Р үч \\ 4 WAY Made with love Бу