During a panel at Design Innovate Create Explore summit Blizzard’s president, Michael Morhaime, discussed the death of StarCraft Ghost – a title that has been on “indefinite hold” for the better part of a decade. Many of us have lost friends to World of Warcraft, some have lost their lives, and now we’ve lost StarCraft Ghost as well.

Last week, Morhaime mentioned that “They were working on StarCraft Ghost the same time we were working on World of Warcraft and StarCraft II” when “World of Warcraft exploded and we needed to make some resource decisions. It just wasn’t an environment in which a project like (StarCraft Ghost) could succeed.”

Back in the day, I was really looking forward to this. Of course, that was back when my Gamecube was shiny and new, but at least Blizzard is finally getting around to giving us an explanation. It just kind of sucks to hear that it’s because of the software equivalent of heroine.

Yesterday publisher Ubisoft announced that two of its most popular franchises will be getting re-released after they get HD makeovers. Both Prince of Persia and Splinter Cell will be arriving in stores on March 22 for $39.99. On top of remastered HD graphics, both collections will also feature stereoscopic 3D.

Each collection will contain three games. The Prince of Persia Classic Trilogy HD will include: The Sands of Time, Warrior Within, and The Two Thrones. Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Classic Trilogy HD includes Splinter Cell, Pandora Tomorrow, and Chaos Theory.
This news really shouldn’t come as that big of a surprise to astute gamers. The Prince of Persia series has already been remastered and released, albeit as downloadable titles off of the PlayStation Store. It was only a matter of time until Splinter Cell followed suit.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m actually kind of excited about these collections. I’ve never actually played any of these games all the way through. Now that each series is going to be in one box, I really don’t have any excuse to not go back and play through them.

What do you guys think about this? Are you excited to replay these games in HD or 3D? Do you think these last gen classics will hold up with just a fresh coat of paint? Let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.

Source: Shacknews.com

UPDATE: Today Sony confirmed that the Ico/Shadow of the Colossus bundle is in fact real and is slated to hit sometime Spring 2011. Confirmed features include: HD resolutions, PlayStation Network trophies,  support for 3D-o-vision, 30fps frame rate, and “extensive re-texturing.” The bundle will also include the European version of Ico, which had a different ending and a co-op mode.

Two days ago I wrote up a news story about a possible Ico/Shadow of the Colossus bundle hitting the PS3 sometime this Spring. Well, today it seems that this rumor has been confirmed… sort of.

According to the Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu, remastered, HD versions of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus will be released in Japan as individual titles, not bundled together. As of right now, no release date has been given for the Japanese releases.

While a North American bundle has yet to be announced, I think it would be a safe bet that non-Japanese gamers will be able to get their hands on these remastered games at some point. I mean, it’s a little far fetched to have a developer remaster two games so that they can sell them in Japan exclusively.

Also adding a bit more credibility to this rumor, German German retailer Webhallen added this professional looking box art to their bundle listing. Notice how similar it looks to the God of War Collection box art.

What do you guys think about this? Are you convinced that an Ico/Shadow of the Colossus bundle will hit sometime in the future? Let us know with a comment below.

Source: Shacknews.com

Over the weekend mega-retailer Walmart helped refuel rumors that Team Ico’s masterpieces, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, are headed to the PS3 by listing a Blu-ray Disc on its website bundling the two games together.

Over the past few years, numerous anonymous “industry sources” has told various media outlets that this bundle is indeed real and will hit stores around March or April 2011. These rumors also said that the bundle would cost $40, the price Walmart has the game listed for on their site.

The thing is, this bundle isn’t so far fetched considering Sony’s previous compilation releases, God of War Collection and The Sly Collection. If this rumor turns out to be true, let’s hope that Sony does the same sort of remastering seen in the God of War Collection.

I loved both Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, but I definitely thought they were held back by the limitations of the PS2. I’d often find myself losing my immersion in the game due to the crappy frame rates. Nothing pulls you out of a game like getting hit with 15 FPS and having a two second delay between you hitting a button on the controller and your character preforming an action. Hopefully these issues will be resolved if/when this bundle comes out.

What do you guys think? Would you drop $40 on getting these two games remastered on the PS3? If so, what kind of extras would you want to see? More importantly, do you think that this rumor is real? On a side note, which of these two games did you enjoy more? Let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.

Source: Shacknews.com

[This month is officially Driver Month here on Gamer Limit. Join us as we embark on an exhaustive road trip in a series of retrospectives for the Driver franchise in the run-up to Driver: San Francisco.]

As the dust settled after the carnage that ensued from the colossal car crash that was Driv3r, the announcement of a new Driver game was met with tepid trepidation in contrast to the days where it would have been tremendously exciting news. I was naturally predicting that the next game would be called DrIVer however, so the news that it would carry the Parallel Lines subtitle instead created a lot of intrigue about the possible direction the series was heading in.

Things became even more interesting upon the knowledge that everyone’s favourite wheelman Tanner, the long-standing protagonist who was previously left for dead during the climax of Driv3r, had been replaced with an anonymous hippy youth donning a pair of slick sun glasses. It was all a sign that the franchise was about to undergo a significant overhaul: drastic repairs were needed if it was to be ever taken seriously again.

Founder Martin Edmonson subsequently left Reflections following the relentless backlash that Driv3r suffered, leading to the company being reformed in a deal with Ubisoft thus creating Ubisoft Reflections under the new leadership of Martin’s brother, Gareth Edmondson. But was the damage already done?

Well, for a start Reflections presumably hired more competent quality control personnel, as Parallel Lines was thankfully devoid of the long list of bugs and glitches that made Driv3r such an unnecessary hassle to play at times. Mercifully, those pesky lamp posts could also finally be dismembered.

Parallel Lines rightfully attempted to go back to the roots of the original game by placing the emphasis back on what has always mattered most: the driving. Retaining the renowned rigid handling model with a few new tweaks, this saw a rapid decrease of tedious on-foot action, which was a huge blessing for those who laughed at Tanner’s crab characteristics in Driv3r, although in saying that the animations in Parallel Lines were only marginally better at times.

Still, the on-foot sections were far less embarrassing than Tanner’s plodding performance, benefiting from improvements made to the AI and shooting dynamics by giving players a choice of lock-on and precision aiming. In fact, TK could also shoot and drive simultaneously, a feat that Tanner didn’t manage to pull off despite Driv3r’s misleading cover art.

The ability to shoot at your fleeing target added a new dimension to the game’s abundant car chases, making them all the more pulsating, but the auto-targeting system was sadly not as sharp as it could have been. The car chases were also further improved by a new felony system that based your traffic crimes on the vehicle you were seen in at the time, meaning your felony level would disappear as long as you abandoned your car once you lost sight of the fuzz.

The entire cast of characters we had grown accustomed to over the years were nowhere to be seen. Instead, you played as a rookie 18 year old crook simply known as The Kid who, predictably, worked as a getaway driver for bands of hoodlums with tall hair. While TK was certainly no substitute for Tanner, it brought an entirely new tone to the series as you were playing as a criminal rather than an undercover cop.

In keeping with the franchise’s origins, Parallel Lines was set in a 1970’s rendition of New York, a location that was last seen in the first Driver game back in 1999. Reflections has always had a knack for replicating real-life cities in video games, but they surely outdid themselves here – the towering scale of the Big Apple was rendered with astounding realism.

The only drawback was that the geography of Parallel Lines was restricted to just one city throughout its duration when previous Driver games typically included three or four cities, but this allowed them to focus on the finer details. The traffic, for example, saw a noticeable increase in density in order to accurately portray the grid-locked streets of the bustling New York traffic and the draw distance (a consistent blemish in Driver’s otherwise polished graphics engine) was refined so that no unwanted pop-up was evident. Until GTA IV, this was hands down the best portrayal of NYC you could find in a game.

In an unexpected and game changing twist, the semantics behind the Parallel Lines suffix suddenly became clear at the mid-point of the game. As TK becomes framed for kidnapping and remanded in prison, the plot abruptly fast forwarded from 1978 to his eventual release in 2006, evolving into a grisly tale of revenge. It soon becomes clear that the world is a very different place 28 years onwards – a scene in which TK struggles to grasp the remote of a modern widescreen TV is almost moving.

The transition was superbly executed and really helped to make the otherwise insipid plot and mission set much more invigorating. What’s more, the shift in decades had a profound effect on the gameplay aesthetics, as the once orange tinted scenery was replaced in favour of a more garish grey to depict the modern age.

Vehicles transformed from monstrous muscle cars to luxury saloons, the pedestrian’s sense of fashion became less eccentric and even TK’s walking animation visibly changed from a hippy groove to a more subdued stroll. Parallel Lines was also the first Driver game to feature a licensed soundtrack that played like a radio station during gameplay – to reflect the changing times, the likes of David Bowie were replaced by the monotone mumblings of the Kaiser Chiefs. If nothing else, it served as a depressing reminder of how much the music industry has slumped in so little time.

Despite the improvements however, to me Parallel Lines didn’t feel like a true Driver game for the most part. Of course the absence of Tanner was a primary factor, but the tweaks made to the gameplay in an effort to revitalise the franchise consequently diminished Driver’s soul.

This was most evident in the adopting of a new free roaming mechanic that was largely akin to GTA. Whereas before missions were solely undertaken in the Undercover mode leaving leisurely drives to Take a Ride, here everything was implemented into a seamless open world. On paper it may have sounded promising, but in practice it just didn’t fit into the established Driver world and felt distinctly out of place.

Additional mini games could also be found scattered around the expansive map, but they again lacked the convenience of the instant access found in previous Driver games. Speaking of feeling out of place, one mini game revolved around dedicated track racing which was previously uncharted territory for the Wheelman. It was easy to see why though, since Driver’s city driving physics felt considerably unsuitable when placed in a track racing scenario.

But that wasn’t the biggest crime that Parallel Lines committed, because it removed my most cherished Driver trademark that always kept me playing for hours: the Film Director. Being able to cobble together your own rendition of Hollywood car chase films has always been a hallmark of the series, so it was a massive disappointment for hardcore fans to see it omitted. It was reportedly removed in order to improve the performance of the game however, which turned out to be a profitable sacrifice considering how much better the frame rate was.

All in all, Parallel Lines made a good conscious effort to revitalise the stuttering series, but the end result amounted to a game that lost some of its personality in the process by trying too hard to mimic GTA’s conventions, consequently adding itself to the piling list of failed GTA clones. Martin Edmondson had nothing to do with the project following his departure, and it showed. Then again, you could say that this direction was a natural and necessary evolution.

Parallel Lines also spawned a PSP prequel known as Driver 76, which essentially ran on the engine from Parallel Lines with a new storyline set in 1976. For a PSP game it was technically proficient, but as a new entry in the Driver series it was lacking in innovation if you had already played Parallel Lines.

And so, after following the trail of tyre marks engraved by the Wheelman across the globe, we have reached the end of our road trip right back where we started in San Francisco. Driver: San Francisco is currently set for release early next year after an unfortunate delay, marking the first entry for the series on next generation consoles. Martin Edmondson is now firmly back in the driving seat as well, meaning you can forget that Parallel Lines ever existed – move along TK, Tanner is back in town.

Since its debut at E3 2010, San Francisco has already made a name for itself thanks largely to its innovative Shift mechanic that allows you to switch instantaneously between cars without ever leaving your vehicle on-foot. It seems to have divided the fans however, with some scathing at the removal of out of the car action while others have applauded Shift’s execution and ease of use.

The fact remains that the original Driver was never about being out of the car and excelled in what it set out to do. The series went into decline as soon as they introduced the on-foot mechanic which made it lose focus, so it’s natural that Reflections want to revert back to the glory days. Shift therefore sounds like a fair compromise, but my only reservation is the way in which it has been woven into the plot concerning Tanner’s coma. It just sounds too supernatural and preposterous, but its full context remains to be seen.

From the gameplay footage seen so far, my personal gripe lies with the vehicle selection, which now includes licensed cars for the first time. For a game set in San Francisco, there is a strange abundance of European cars populating the streets including Abaths and Alfa Romeos, along with rare supercars such as the McLaren SLR and Pagina Zonda Cinque – only five of these were made in reality so its placement as a civilian car is glaringly unrealistic. So far, the car list would seem more appropriate in Test Drive Unlimited than Driver, but I can only hope for a better balance in the final game, particularly as Reflections has always ensured the car selection is spot-on in accordance to the location before.

With the Wheelman now hopefully on the road to recovery, the anticipation for this belated series reboot is mounting. I wholeheartedly cannot wait for Driver‘s next generation revival – let’s just hope history doesn’t repeat itself from the bleaker days of the past. My only worry is that, due to the level of competition over the years, the expectations for a game of this genre are far higher than they were 10 years ago, meaning that the back to basics approach may not cut it in today’s industry.

Driver: San Francsco will therefore be an important milestone in the series history, as no Driver sequel has managed to fully capture the spark of the original so far. This is your last chance for redemption, Reflections.

That’s it for Driver Month! I hope you have enjoyed the ride. Drive recklessly.

[This month is officially Driver Month here on Gamer Limit. Join us as we embark on an exhaustive road trip in a series of retrospectives for the Driver franchise in the run-up to Driver: San Francisco.]

It would take four long years before another Driver game would burst onto the scene in an intoxicating cloud of smoke, ready to serve its pining fans after Driver 2. To help quench this thirst, Reflections introduced Stuntman in 2002, a game that that played on Driver’s affinity with cinematic car chases by starring you as a charmless Hollywood stunt driver on fictional film sets. In Stuntman, you were required to perform death-defying car stunts in a series of stringently timed scenes for some upcoming action movies.

While the obvious film parodies were fun to watch, the game ultimately pushed the limits of trial and error by constantly demanding precision driving and was, above all else, infuriatingly difficult. As Reflections’ debut for the next generation of consoles however, it served as an effective appetiser that showed great promise for what was to come in the Wheelman’s next outing.

With the avalanche success of Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City, it’s fair to say that the next generation of Driver had an awful lot of catching up to do. Expectations were running high, especially with the impending release of San Andreas the same year just to add to the pressure. As a result, many were hoping that the third instalment would be everything that Driver 2 should have been, given the advantage of the extra graphical muscle thanks to next generation hardware. Instead, what we were given is widely regarded as one of the most disappointing game sequels in the whole of video game history.

Suspicions of the game’s fate were aroused by merely reading the title. It would have been logical, you would have thought, to simply name the third Driver game as “Driver 3,” perhaps including a subtitle for added effect, but instead the developers went down a ruined road and came up with the most unforgiveable of gimmicks. “I know!” someone in a last minute meeting exclaimed excitedly, “let’s jazz it up a bit by replacing the ‘e’ with a ‘3.’” “Mmm,” the boss responded, “what a splendid idea. Driv3r! It appeals to the current l33t speaking youths, so they’ll love it. If Wip3out can do it then so can we!”

This decision was met with significantly less enthusiasm on my part. What were they thinking? Driv3r. Go on, try to say it. “Driv-three-er” – that is how I always pronounce it, and I still loathe that name to this day. And yet initial promotional material referred to the game as “Driver 3,” so the late name change was hard to fathom. This tragic typography coupled with the woeful box art depicting Tanner shooting out of a car window (a false statement considering this was not possible in the final game) set amidst a yellow sea of empty space set the tone for the game. Something was radically wrong.

Now don’t get me wrong – as a devoted Driver fan there was plenty to admire, as Driv3r did a lot of things right even if elementary spelling wasn’t one of them. Watching the initial announcement trailer back in 2003 made me tingle with the same childish excitement that I felt with the original video for the first game.

The said trailer commenced with a huge semi-trailer truck filling the screen, which for the time was a captivating prospect because no sandbox game had allowed you to drive a truck with trailer before. This theme of showing the game’s newfound vehicle variety continued with a brief glimpse of Tanner riding a motorcycle: unfamiliar territory for Driver but common ground for GTA: Vice City. Even boats were featured.

Fears that Driver had forgotten its roots soon subsided after the belated arrival of a Mustang-esque muscle car taking center stage and sliding about all over the place, reinforcing the franchise’s flair for exaggerated cinematic handling. Mercifully, this remained true in the final game, resulting in the largest roster of vehicles to date that were a joy to drive with distinctly different handling characteristics. It simply wouldn’t be a Driver game without the trademark soggy suspension and heavy handling.

The punishment you could subject your car to saw similar advancements, with improved damage effects including visible crumple zones, shattering windows, and detachable bumpers, doors and bonnets. Impressively, bullet holes would remain precisely indented on the bodywork for the first time in a game, and vehicles would now explode after too much abuse, with the frame of the car splitting into several fragments rather than a solid burnt-out shell.

The choice of locations was also spot-on once again, this time reverting back to the beaches of Miami from the original game along with the previously unexplored locales of Nice and Istanbul. Each city shone with new lighting techniques that provided unique and distinctive colour palettes, along with intricately detailed architecture and the usual array of destructible scenery. Oh, and you could finally run over the pedestrians, thankfully.

Driv3r certainly wasn’t without ambition, either. In keeping with its reliance on Hollywood finesse, a lengthy advertising campaign in the form of a short live-action promotional film was launched in the run-up to the game’s release. Directed by Sean Mullens and airing exclusively on the Driv3r website in weekly parts, the project was known as Run the Gauntlet, which revolved around Tanner’s pledge to deliver a car that results in, you guessed it, a high speed car chase loaded with spectacular stunts.

For fans like myself of Hollywood car chase sequences, the three-minute short was marvelous to watch despite the god-awful dialogue, although you couldn’t help but wish they would produce a feature length Driver movie – such a project has been teased since 2003 but has since been put on hold, sadly. Renowned Hollywood talent such as Michael Madsen and Iggy Pop also joined the voice cast, with Madsen taking the leading role of Tanner, and the soundtrack was similarly graced with note-worthy artists.

All of this amounted to a solid driving experience that would lead you to think that Driv3r was a terrific triumph. And indeed it was, right up until the moment you stepped out of the car. Wait, we’ve been here before, haven’t we?

While Driver 2’s poorly executed on-foot controls were almost forgivable due to the fact that they were used sparingly, Driv3r made the mistake of making it a central component of the gameplay that led to the mass critical backlash that the game was subsequently subjected to.

In a concerted effort to match GTA’s popularity, Tanner was suddenly equipped with weaponry, but the shooting mechanics were shockingly dire beyond belief. Admittedly, the grenade launcher was at least fun in its ability to cause havoc, but gunning down enemies felt forced and rather awkward thanks to the lack of a cover system. Meanwhile, stilted animations made Tanner amble around with all the dexterity of a constipated crab crippled with arthritis.

Then there was the lousy AI, which often led to enemies standing still until you approached them at close range – it’s hard to recall a game that featured worse enemy AI for its time. And then when you finally shot them, the brainless foes didn’t shed a single trace of blood. It was stark confirmation that while Reflections were exceptionally talented at creating exuberant car models and driving characteristics, they were not only incapable of spelling their own game correctly but also evidently inexperienced with programming third-person shooters.

The advent of weapons made the game severely lose focus since it felt as if mission objectives carried just as much shooting as they did driving. More often than not, the missions that made up the game’s undercover mode were an absolute chore to trawl through with each uninspired shootout becoming identical. The driving portions didn’t fare much better, either, owing to some fiendishly timed objectives and scripted traffic events that were solely designed to make you swear very loudly at the screen. Mind you, this was nothing compared to the immovable lamp posts of death that could single-handedly prevent you from completing a mission should you plough into them.

Still, there were at least some fleeting glimpses of brilliance in the mission design. The Speed-inspired Booby Trap whereby you had to maintain your speed above 50 MPH in order to avoid an explosive surprise was suitably enthralling and reminiscent of the Hollywood thrills the series strives to replicate, and the trashing of a Miami shopping mall made it impossible not to imagine you were driving the legendary Bluesmobile whilst wearing dark sun glasses.

Sadly, the plot was largely uninteresting; amounting to a string of nonsensical, though polished, cut scenes that illustrated Tanner’s latest mission to infiltrate a notorious rig of car thieves. What was interesting, however, was that the game’s intro acted as a flashback of Tanner’s final showdown with Jericho, concluding with Tanner being rushed to hospital after a gunshot wound. As the staff desperately try to revive our hero, Tanner’s fate is left uncertain when the EMG machine flat lines and the game begins six months earlier before ending with the same scene.

Driv3r was also notoriously plagued with a host of unfortunate bugs and glitches to the point that I could easily write an entire article listing every last one. Featuring everything from sinking vehicles to flying pedestrians, it’s staggering to think that this game managed to pass quality control. Even the film director, one of my favourite features of the Driver series, wasn’t let off, often playing entirely different footage to the sessions you had just played. The fact remains that Driv3r was fundamentally broken as a result of being rushed to a deadline.

Reflections has always had a bit of a rivalry with Rockstar Games and GTA, but this feud fully blossomed with Driv3r. The case in point was of course the hidden enemies known as Timmy Vermicelli, an obvious jab at Tommy Vercetti from Vice City. Humorously, Timmy was shown to be wearing arm-bands in a joke aimed at the fact he would instantly drown when introduced to water, in comparison to Tanner who now had the ability to swim.

Rockstar would have the last laugh however, as CJ in San Andreas could not only swim but dive underwater. What’s more, a cut scene in the game deliberately poked fun at Driv3r’s failings by having characters subliminally hurl abuse at the game during a cut scene, asking how “Refractions could screw up so badly.” In fact, you could say it was Rockstar that started the whole feud in GTA III – a mission entitled “Two faced Tanner” started with a clear message to Reflections about a “strangely animated undercover cop“ who was “useless out of the car.” So true Rockstar, so true.

And herein lies the problem: Driver was playing catch-up to GTA instead of focusing on what it did best. Truth be told, the market had seemingly moved on from the simple days of 1999 where Driver was a revelation, so it’s easy to see why the pressure was on to compete after Rockstar stole the spotlight. Nevertheless, Driv3r remains a potent and infamous example of the hype train becoming derailed, and it ultimately suffered the consequences of its rushed upbringing with a strong and unforgivable wave of negative press and disappointed fans. As Tanner was left for dead at the end of the game, sadly so was the once untouchable series.

Pull over next week for a look back at Driver: Parallel Lines as Driver Month concludes on Gamer Limit.

Today EA announced that New Orleans’ Saints quarterback Drew Brees will be featured on the cover of Madden NFL 11. This honor should be a bit more meaningful to Brees considering that it was the first time fans got to vote on which athlete would appear on the cover.

It should also come as no surprise that Brees won out over Minnesota Vikings defensive end Jared Allen and Indianapolis Colts wide receiver Reggie Wayne considering the fact that Brees’s team won Super Bowl XLIV and he was named MVP of that game.
After hearing the announcement, Brees stated: “The Madden NFL franchise holds a special place in popular culture and the cover is a coveted position for players all over the league. I’m honored to be the first cover athlete chosen by Madden NFL fans and it’s a great way to cap off an amazing year for the Saints and the city of New Orleans.”

Gamers will be able to pick up Madden NFL 11 on August 10 on the PS3, PS2, Xbox 360, Wii, PSP, and mobile platforms including iPhone OS.

I’m sure there are some football fanatics out there. What do you guys think of this pick? Does Brees really deserve this? Who would you have picked instead? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

Source: Shacknews.com

The Breath of Fire series is immensely popular among older gamers, for some reason. If you ask me, how anyone could enjoy these games is a mystery wrapped in an enigma. They are constantly marred by slow, droll combat, frequent random battles, and even more frequent fetch quests; the payoff being a set of predictable, mediocre storylines in pretty much every respect.

I think Makoto Ikehara, the mastermind behind the series, must have realized this. That’s the only explanation I can come up with as to why Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter turned out so much different from the rest of the series. Even though it may tragically go down in history as the game which ‘killed’ the Breath of Fire games, I believe that this game is perhaps the best thing that’s ever happened to the entire genre of RPGs.

Deep Earth is a series of subterranean caves and catacombs built by remaining survivors of a worldwide catastrophe. In this society, citizens are assigned D-Ratios, a label which determines one’s status. Players assume the role of Ryu 1/8192 an average Deep Earth soldier with about as low a D-Ratio as there could be. One day, Ryu, along with his friend and fellow soldier, Bosch 1/64, are assigned to guard cargo on a transport train. A terrorist group blows the train to smithereens… while they are on it. Ryu, having somehow survived, soon discovers a young girl names Nina being attacked by a monster. After saving her, Ryu attempts to make his way back to Ranger HQ while protecting her.

Nina is no ordinary girl. Her very existence points to a secret experiment that the Deep Earth government would rather not have the citizens know about. Thus, Ryu’s benevolence sets the army against him. Obviously, fighting an entire army off as just one man is suicide, and Ryu is almost killed for trying. However, at the last minute, the soul of a dragon makes a pact with Ryu, saving his life and giving him special powers. If Nina wants any chance to survive, she needs to get out of Deep Earth, so Ryu vows to take her to “the sky.”

This might not sound like anything special, but it’s not the originality of the plot that makes it interesting. What sets the storytelling above the rest is its superior use of camera direction to portray emotion. Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter makes the absolute best use of non-verbal communication out of any RPG I’ve ever played in my life. The ‘less is more’ approach to dialogue allows the characters’ mannerisms and facial expressions to do the majority of the communication. Despite not having a single lengthy conversation, I always felt like I understood each characters’ feelings by just watching them. In particular, Nina has only one scene in the entire game where she speaks, and yet it’s still easy to understand what she is ‘saying’ and empathize with her.

And after all, isn’t this type of communication something that storytelling in video games should strive for? If all I ever wanted was to read a bunch of text, I could always pick up a book, for crying out loud. If more games followed this example, we’d see a lot less verbal diarrhea, which plagues the genre (and, incidentally, makes for ineffective storytelling).

Combat relies more on strategy than brute force. Battles are turn-based, and take place on the same map as the dungeons instead of using a separate screen, as seen in most JRPGs. Character position during battle is important, as they have limited movement and attack range. Players gain the first strike in battle by attacking them first, and vice versa. As such, when walking through the dark catacombs in this game, it can be easy for enemies to ambush you and wipe your party out unless you’re paying attention.

What gives Dragon Quarter its edge over 99% of JRPG genre is that combat strategy begins before the battle even starts. Enemies never respawn after dying (which prevents grinding, a plus in my book), so experience points are limited. Bonus experience is earned by getting the initiative and ending battles quickly, so lacking alertness while exploring will result in players losing out on experience.

Any enemy in proximity of the player will be in the battle when it starts. Even weaker enemies can be dangerous in large numbers if they gain the initiative, so players need to consider how to separate enemies from the pack and weaken them using trap and bait items, lest they want to fight several tough enemies simultaneously.

Thus, the player is always playing. This is different from the majority of the JRPG genre, where players can absent-mindedly drudge through dungeons like zombies until a battle calls for their attention. Now players need to be alert and use their finely-honed strategic skills all the time. As a result, it’s ultimately more rewarding to succeed in this game than it is in other JRPGs.

A key feature of this game is the Scenario Overlay system (SOL). Upon losing a battle, players can restart the game with all acquired abilities, equipment, and some of the party’s money and experience. Depending on how far one progresses through the game before restarting, they’ll also be able to view new story cutscenes that weren’t available before.

The SOL system was made with the idea in mind that players will have to start over again. Players can only make one hard save, which requires a consumable item to make. Temporary saves can be made; however, they delete themselves upon being loaded. This works wonderfully to create a feeling of tension when playing. Most games allow players to try again with no repercussions, but Dragon Quarter causes players to feel like something is at stake if they lose, adding a sense of urgency to the game.

However, this leads up to the one large complaint I have with the system: holding off key parts of the plot until players have started over several times causes problems. It can alienate some players from the get-go by showing no confidence in the their ability to succeed. It also punishes those who complete the game without having to restart by showing them a story which appears to be sloppily constructed.

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter would be my pick for the best RPG ever made. It was created by someone who understood that JRPGs needed to undergo a drastic change to become relevant again. If JRPGs continue to be lambasted as severely as DQ was for trying to make radical changes to the genre, we’re probably going to see a bunch of uninspired anime JRPGs and Final Fantasy 7 wannabes until no one cares about them anymore. Think about that when the next ‘Dragon Quarter‘ of the genre gets released. Or, better yet, just play it and see for yourself what JRPGs are capable of when they try harder to break the mold.

There’s a strange lack of tension in Front Mission 4, considering that the Front Mission storyline is about nations perpetually warring with each other using bipedal tanks called Wanzers, and making battlefields out of inhabited cities. I couldn’t put my finger on what the problem was until I was most of the way through the game.

One time while playing, my girlfriend watched for a few minutes, and I asked her if she felt tense watching a city being made into a war zone. She pointed out that there’s a distinct lack of human element in the game; there’s no people running for their lives, no civilians to protect, not even any repercussions for hitting buildings with missiles on accident. Hell, there’s not even any vehicles on the side of the road!

The epiphany hit me like a ton of bricks. The previous installment – Front Mission 3, of course – for all the bad things I have to say about it, successfully made me feel as if my life was constantly in danger. It also made me feel like, by grace of piloting a Wanzer, I was constantly endangering other people who could care less about the pointless conflicts which spark the fuels of war. FM3‘s protagonists would always talk to new people in new villages and hear how they were handling themselves. Many of the side characters were war orphans. Enemies sometimes fought out of Wanzers. Even the city environments used for battles felt more real; there were actual signs of the places being inhabited, and players were allowed to destroy parts of the environment by shooting at it. Front Mission 4‘s exposition suffers heavily from never having its player consider the perspective of non-combatants.

Front Mission 4 occurs chronologically in the series after the events of the original game. It puts the player in the midst of two ongoing stories. The first of the two being the story of the Durandal, a U.K-based European Wanzer research team dedicated to studying all aspects of Wanzer combat, from physical to psychological.

This story is told from the perspective of Elsa, a French military graduate and new member of the team. Shortly after the story begins, unidentified Wanzers attack several armed fortresses in Germany, leaving no evidence of their origin. The European Commonwealth – a Supranation consisting of the majority of Europe as we know it – sends the Durandal to help Germany investigate the attacks, despite the fact that they’re not actually a combat unit.

The second of the two stories is told from the perspective of Darril and his squadron in the army of the Unified Continental States (U.C.S), a Supranation that consists of the entirety of North and South America. They are stationed in Venezuela to try and force the nation into submission after attempting to secede.

One day, while on patrol, Darril and his squadmates, Renges and Chaeffer, observe a plane crash. When they inspect the crash site, they find millions of dollars in gold, and decide that the best course of action would be to desert the U.C.S army and try and make it out of the Venezuela with their newfound, unearned bounty.

It’s a bit difficult to talk about the two as a complete story, because their relation is marginal at best. The Durandal plot arc is the meat of the story, as the Durandal works to uncover a conspiracy to sabotage the E.C’s resources and blame the attacks on the U.C.S, prompting a war between the two. The plot follows a very predictable path: the Durandal goes to places to investigate, comes home empty-handed, looks bad, and gets severely remprimanded. But, they of course keep getting second chances because the British Prime Minister trusts them implicitly.

The only thing that really ties the Durandal’s story arc with the U.C.S arc is that Darril and Elsa finally get into contact by chance, and Darril’s random antics have caused him to stumble upon critical evidence that will turn the situation around for Elsa and co. Naturally, they indeed get things going their way, and save the day.

We can see the plot’s every move coming a mile away; we know who’s behind everything from the very beginning, and we know every time the Durandal is being led into a trap. One could set their watch to the time when the Durandal’s luck suddenly changes and everything starts going wonderfully for them, and then, that’s it! There’s no real atmosphere to take in, and the individual members of the Durandal exist solely for the player to have a squadron of six to send into battle, rather than being imperative to the narrative device.

Darril’s story is another matter entirely. It’s kind of original, but it’s also deplorable; while on the Durandal side of things, the characters are boring, static dialogue manufacturers, Darril’s company has some personality, but it’s hard to get behind their cause for many reasons. For one, their motivation is just morally bankrupt. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing to see in a story, but it’s weird when juxtaposed against the otherwise good-natured personalities of Darril and his friends.

More importantly, though, it’s just plain stupid: even if they were to escape Venezuela, I have a hard time believing that the U.C.S government and military couldn’t track down and court martial three deserters. I find it even harder to believe that three military men with good heads on their shoulders could manage to let such possibilities slip their mind entirely.

The main theme of Front Mission 4 seems to be “If you are going to fight, make sure you’re fighting for something.” But, is that really a theme worth exploring? It seems juvenile when examining the main antagonists, all of which are combat veterans. They take to fighting with unusual fervor, and don’t seem to care about much else. They’re easy to hate, because they appear to be causing a lot of trouble for no good reason. Naturally, no one is going to argue that such a self-destructive lifestyle is ultimately better for a human being, so what the hell are we even examining such a thing for?

The core foundation of FM4‘s gameplay is your typical turn-based Tactics RPG: characters move in square grids, and all allies take their turn, followed by all hostiles. Any attack is subject to immediate counter-attack as long as the character is in range to counter, with the exception of long range attacks. As is typical of the Front Mission series, combat is done in Wanzers, and instead of characters having a job class, players can buy parts to make a Wanzer which specializes in a certain type of offense.

All attacks inflict damage at random to one of four Wanzer parts, each with their own max HP. Losing all HP in the legs reduces movement range to one square; losing the arms disables a weapon equipped on the arm; and losing the body removes the Wanzer from combat entirely. All actions in a turn are dictated by a character’s Action Points (AP), which are used for both movement and attacking. As such, players need to carefully balance movement and attacking during their turn.

The new perks of Front Mission 4‘s combat lie mostly in significant improvements to FM3‘s skill system. Instead of learning skills based on equipped parts, Wanzers have built-in skill lists with abilities they can choose to learn by spending Enhancement Points (EP) gained after battles. Skills still activate at random, but FM4 has thankfully done away with all the skills that could randomly screw your pilot over by activating at the wrong time.

Backpacks – accessories that allowed Wanzers to use items in combat or equip heavier weapons – have now been modified to include Backpacks which can repair Wanzer parts and induce status effects, amongst other things. The last major innovation to the combat is the Link System – before battle, players can choose to ‘link’ a character to one or more other allies, allowing them to attack in tandem during battle if other linked allies are in range.

Unfortunately, Front Mission 4 still winds up being a rough game to play for a few reasons. For one, it’s still obnoxious to have no control over which part of the Wanzer a pilot shoots (allowing them to do so breaks the game – the original Front Mission proved that years ago). I wish I could think of a solution to that, but after three FM games, I still come up with nothing.

The Link system doesn’t give you any option to have someone not join in the attack. This might sound like a silly complaint at first, but sometimes linked Wanzers will chime in when they have a low chance to hit from their position, essentially wasting their AP.

Enemy Wanzers are also extremely passive; if they can’t reach you from the spot they’re stationed at, they’ll just sit there and watch you kill off their friends. This is extremely abusable up until the final few battles, because you can just kill any Wanzers that rush you at the start, slowly repair your Wanzers, and systematically pick off the enemies while ensuring your team is always at full health.

At thirty hours, it’s hard to really say if Front Mission 4 is worth anyone’s time except die-hard fans. The story is half predictable and half pointless. The combat has some nice ideas, but the AI is so braindead that any strategy requiring critical thinking is unnecessary. What exactly is the point of making a Tactics RPG with combat so mindless, anyways? Is that really any different from making an RPG with hour-long random battles?

Yesterday during an analyst conference, Activision CEO Mike Griffith announced that the publisher is going to refocus its rhythm games into two main franchises, Guitar Hero and DJ Hero. According to Griffith, this will help Activision reach a “broader audience.”

In 2010 Activision plans to release less than ten music game SKUs. While that still sounds like a lot, it’s not even half of what 2009 saw. Griffith explained, “This year, fewer SKUs will service a broader audience.”

To clarify each SKU refers to one retail package. For example a new Guitar Hero released on both Xbox 360 and PS3 counts as two SKUs. Also different packages, like a Guitar Hero game plus guitar controller versus just the Guitar Hero game, counts as two different SKUs.

Out of the ten SKUs planned for 2010, almost all of those will be various packages of Guitar Hero and DJ Hero titles. One reason for the cut back on SKUs is that Activision will no longer release Guitar Hero games on the PS2. According to Activision the PS2 no longer generates the sales numbers to make it a valid platform.

Personally I think this is great news. My biggest problem with rhythm games is just that the market is over saturated. We don’t need three different Guitar Hero games in one year, all of which using the same technology. I mean if you’re going to release three games, all in the same genre, in the same year, you better hope there are some significant improvements with each release. Hopefully there is a correlation between cutting down on the number of games and an improvement in overall quality of the experience they offer.

What do you guys think? Will cutting down on the number of Guitar Hero games help improve sales numbers or quality?

Source: Gamasutra.com

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, billed as a re-imagining of the classic horror franchise, was released last year to decidedly solid reviews.  In fact, Gamer Limit’s own Andrew Kauz gave it an 8.5 in his review.

Given the relatively positive reception the game received, it seems that developer Climax Group still wants another shot at the series, which is published by Konami. In a recent interview with Official Nintendo Magazine, lead designer Sam Barlow cited his team’s fondness for Silent Hill:

“We’ve always loved working on the series. Since Origins we’ve spent a lot of time with the series. For us we felt we’ve put our stamp on the series with Shattered Memories so we’d love the opportunity to do another one.”

He’s not alone.  Game director Mark Simmons thinks that this has been the first Silent Hill since the first two “where people are saying it has its own identity,” and expressed desire to take this momentum and move forward.

After playing through Shattered Memories, do any of you think that another title in the same style would be fitting?  Or is this best left as a “one and done” sort of deal?  Share you thoughts!

Source: Edge-Online

In a recent interview with Game Informer, Sony Senior Vice President of Product Development Shuhei Yoshida talked about a number of things.  One of these topics pertained to the fact that God of War II, a best-selling and critically acclaimed title considered by many to be one of the last great PS2 games, almost ended up on the PS3.

According to Yoshida, certain departments within the team believed it to be a good idea to put Kratos’ second adventure on their new platform, while others wanted to make one final splash on the PS2.

“We had a lot of debates about it, actually. I always firmly stood by keeping it on PS2. Many people, including marketing, suggested that maybe it should be moved to PS3. What I believed was that God of War II would be the best-selling and best game of the year. We had always seen that, at the launch of a platform, the developer has to spend a lot of time becoming familiar with the platform and software tools. Technical issues take up a lot of the development, perhaps leaving less time for really polishing the game. Towards the end of a platform is when you see really great games, after developers really begin to understand the hardware.”

It’s tough to argue that logic.  After all, God of War II featured something like four times as much content as the original, and executed it all with incredible presentation, epic scale and heaps of gore.  Had the team been forced to work with the relatively new tech associated with the PS3, things might not have turned out so well.  As Yoshida points out, it was only fair to the team that they get to finish what they started on the platform they started on.

“In the God of War franchise,” he continued, “I saw an opportunity for the Santa Monica team to complete their vision for the second game on a platform they totally understood. That was my argument and the company and team supported it. I’m very happy with the result. So to your question, I have never regretted the fact that we released God of War II on PS2.”

Seems like things worked out in the end, as God of War II is considered by many to be one of the best action games ever made, and I believe that’s largely due to the fact that it was made with very familiar technology, and not as a semi-tech demo for a new console.  Good call Sony.

Source: Game Informer