LittleBigPlanet Finishing Up Alpha Phase

According to a recent blog post on Media Molecule, the highly anticipated LittleBigPlanet will be finishing up the alpha phase of testing soon.

“We’ve been slaving away pushing LittleBigPlanet toward the Alpha stage of its development cycle. Basically, this means all the cool stuff we said will be in there should be playable, even if it isn’t pretty enough to release. The game seems to change every day at the moment and it is very exciting to be able to sit down and play what feels more and more like a complete experience.”

LittleBigPlanet is a PS3 community based game which encourages players to create their own levels and objects and to then share this fully customizable environment with friends. It is expected to be released sometime September.

Source here

COD4 GOTY edition confirmed for US

Upon its initial deployment during the first part of November, Activision and Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has been peerless in the sales charts, wresting control of the top slot away from Microsoft and Bungie’s Halo 3 and never looking back. With Activision claiming the crown of best-selling game of 2007 for COD4, the publisher will be stop-lossing the modern-day shooter for another tour with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - Game of the Year Edition, scheduled for release for the Xbox 360 on April 3.

As noted by leaks from UK news outlets earlier this week, COD4: GOTYE won’t include any new or upgraded features. However, it will come packed in with a redeemable token for the Modern Warfare Variety Map Pack, which will add four new multiplayer maps to the game’s lauded online component. The four new player areas are: Creek, an open village area; Broadcast, a close-quarters in-door environment; Killhouse, an abandoned warehouse; and Chinatown, a low-lit map set in the not-so-war-torn city of San Francisco. Those who already own the game will also be able to purchase the map pack on April 3 through Xbox Live for 800 Microsoft points ($10).

In anticipation of the map pack’s debut on Xbox Live, GameStop will be hosting a live, preview event at two locations in New York City and San Jose. To the first 100 attendees will go a free token to download the Variety Map Pack, and the first 250 people to arrive will have a chance to compete for various prizes, including GameStop gift certificates.

Activision did not indicate whether the COD4: GOTYE rerelease or the Variety Map Pack would also arrive for the PlayStation 3 or PC, and had not responded to requests for comment as of press time. However, Infinity Ward did say on its official Web site for the game in February that the then unnamed map pack would be available for XBL and the PlayStation Network this spring.

GDC 08: LucasArts Unveils The Force Unleashed

LucasArts Unveils The Force Unleashed

LucasArts held a special preview event last week at GDC 2008 to demonstrate its highly anticipated Star Wars title, The Force Unleashed, on both the Xbox 360 and Wii platforms (LucasArts also demoed its original IP Fracture and the forthcoming Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures, more on those later). Held at the LucasArts campus at the Presidio in San Francisco, the preview offered actual gameplay demonstrations of The Force Unleashed to further wet the appetite of Star Wars fans.

“Four years ago, we sat down with George [Lucas] and talked about what next gen really meant,” said Peter Hirschmann, vice president of product development at LucasArts. Hirschmann added that Lucas didn’t care about graphics, RAM or any technical specifications; instead, he wanted to know how the next generation platforms could help tell a Star Wars story. Hence, the Force Unleashed, which takes place after “Episode III: Revenge of the Sith” but before “Episode IV: A New Hope” and follows Darth Vader’s secret apprentice. In the game, which will be released on the PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360, players assume the role of the secret apprentice and must hunt down and kill the remaining Jedi who survived Order 66 and the Great Jedi Purge. But Hirschmann said The Force Unleashed’s story is full of twists and turns and is ultimately about redemption.

LucasArts showed Xbox 360 run-time demo of The Force Unleashed at its campus in the Presidio, but unfortunately media attendees were not allowed to take pictures of video of the demos.

LucasArts showed some Xbox 360 gameplay demo of The Force Unleashed in the campus’ theater. Haden Blackman, project leader for The Force Unleashed, said the run-time demo was “still a little rough around the edges” with some bugs. Indeed, the graphics didn’t look completely optimized and the demo did stumble through some occasional bugs. Nevertheless, the early gameplay footage was extremely impressive. The demo began with an early level of The Force Unleashed that takes place in a TIE Fighter factory, where the apprentice (played by actor Sam Witwer) must assassinate a Jedi. The trick is, the apprentice must remain a secret because Darth Vader wants to use him to eventually overthrow Emperor Palpatine. So the apprentice must kill everyone in his path, from Rebel soldiers to Imperial Stormtroopers.

The action was unlike anything I’ve ever seen in a Star Wars game. Imagine being able to use the power of Half-Life 2’s gravity gun on virtually everything, including objects as large as TIE fighters, and you get the idea. The apprentice is extremely powerful with the Force, so the demo showed the character using Force Lightning and other unique attacks. For example, “Force Lightning Grenades” can be used when a player picks up an enemy with the Force, charges the enemy with Force Lightning and then hurls them at other enemies. The physics and destructible environment effects, powered by Havok physics technology and Digital Molecular Matter (DMM) from Pixelux Entertainment, were outstanding and are sure to be a highlight of the finished product when it arrives later this year.

The next demo section took place on the planet Felucia, which is an exotic planet world filled with giant mushrooms. LucasArts showed off a tremendous boss battle where the apprentice must take on a Rancor as well as other enemies. In addition to an assortment of Force attacks, the apprentice also wields a lightsaber and has an number of different melee moves to bring to battle. In the Rancor fight, the apprentice engaged in what LucasArts referred to as “Jedi finishing moves” that are similar to God of War’s mini-game button combinations for its epic boss battles. The Rancor battle ended with the apprentice impaling the beast’s head with his lightsaber (side note: The Force Unleashed is rated T for Teens, so LucasArts said there will be no severed limbs or decapitations in the game).

The Force Unleashed will give players “Jedi finishing moves” to bring down boss enemies like the Rancor.

The final demo section took place on Raxus Prime, a garbage planet filled with debris and toxic waste. Blackman said the design team wanted to include planets that offered a lot of destructible environments and objects for players to use the Force with, and Raxus Prime fit the bill (the planet had previously been featured in Star Wars: The Clone Wars). The demo showed a boss battle with a surviving Jedi named Kazdan, who uses his Force powers to create a “junk titan,” which is an animated collection of garbage and debris that attacks the apprentice.

After showing off the Xbox 360 run-time demo, LucasArts then turned it attention to the Wii version of the game. The graphics of the Wii run-time demo were weak compared to the Xbox 360 and looked more like the visuals of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. However, using the Wii Remote and Nunchuk controls for lightsaber action looked like a lot of fun. Unfortunately, media members were not given the opportunity to play any versions of the demo, so we don’t know for sure (Red Steel, for example, sure looked like fun before we have a chance to actually play it).

The Wii version of The Force Unleashed has less impressive graphics, but the game does feature Duel Mode mutliplayer.

LucasArts said the Wii version of the Force Unleashed (along with the PlayStation 2 version) will boast extra content such as additional levels and planets. But the real draw for the Wii version will probably be the Duel Mode for multiplayer action, which gives two players the opportunity to select different Jedi characters from the Star Wars universe and engage in fighting game duels. Some of gameplay features for the Duel Mode include “saber-lock” and “Force-lock,” where two players engage in an a sort of tug-of-war with their lightsabers or Force lightning powers.

As for other multiplayer modes, such as online multiplayer or co-op modes, LucasArts wasn’t commenting. LcuasArts did say that Darth Vader would not be voiced by original actor James Earl Jones; instead, Matt Sloan of “Chad Vader” fame, will provide the voice of Darth Vader for the game (Sloan previously provided Vader’s voice for LucasArts’ Empire at War: Forces of Corruption). No specific release date was given for The Force Unleashed, which is expected to be released later this year.

Tabula Rasa review

Aliens aren’t new to the massively multiplayer online gaming arena, but they’re certainly not as prevalent as elves and gnomes. Tabula Rasa helps balance things out even further, with its universe of secret extraterrestrial artifacts, chainguns, and hulking space creatures. But it isn’t just the setting that makes the game interesting: An action-oriented combat system and a unique Battlefield-esque system of control points add some flair to the proceedings. That isn’t to say you should expect anything groundbreaking, nor should you expect a world conceived as well as Anarchy Online’s Rubi-Ka. Yet even with its flaws, Tabula Rasa is an entertaining game that deserves a look for anyone looking for a little more oomph from their online explorations.

Caves are home to some of the nastiest creatures in Tabula Rasa.
One of Tabula Rasa’s most interesting facets comes to light the moment you create your character. As you would expect from an online role-playing game, you choose some physical characteristics for your character–but what you don’t select is a profession. There are professions to be sure, but you start as a generic AFS (Allied Free Sentient) recruit, which gives you the chance to taste a variety of weapons and skills before committing later on. You are, in essence, the “blank slate” referred to in the title. Eventually, you can specialize in one of eight classes, roughly separated into combat and support types, though you’ll have to wait until level 30 before you can choose your final profession. Worried you won’t like the profession you choose? No worries: The game lets you clone your character with its level and experience intact, so you can go back and try other options without having to start a new toon from the ground up.

There’s more to choosing a profession than gaining levels, though. Artifacts called logos elements are scattered across the game’s two planets. Within Tabula Rasa lore, these are snippets of an ancient language that divulge secrets of universal power. From a gameplay standpoint, you need to collect them to access specific abilities in your skill tree. So just leveling up is enough to gain access to your desired profession, but if you want to use all the weapons and skills available to that profession, you need to go logos hunting. Most of the logos are attached to missions, however, so even if you don’t need a particular logos, there’s still impetus to find as many as possible, since there is experience to be gained.

Right off the bat, you’ll notice how different combat is from the standard massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Tabula Rasa controls much like a third-person shooter. You use the mouse to freely look about, and the mouse buttons to fire your weapon and perform special abilities. There are two hotbars, but rather than click on an ability or weapon to use it, the chosen weapon or skill is assigned to the corresponding mouse button. Thankfully, it’s easy to cycle through them using the Q and E keys on your keyboard, so if you want to switch weapons on the fly, you can do it quickly. This is especially important in Tabula Rasa, because many enemies are weak to certain attacks while invulnerable to others. Regardless of which profession you choose, you’ll want to keep a few different types of firearms on you. Of course, this is still an RPG, so you won’t need an enormous amount of twitch skill to succeed. The targeting reticle is extremely forgiving, and the damage you are doing, as in most similar games, is tied to a series of under-the-hood calculations.

These warnet soldiers are immune to electricity.

But even with these typical MMORPG trappings, Tabula Rasa does a good job of keeping you engaged in its shooter-inspired combat. You’ll fight off all sorts of indigenous critters, from tree lurkers (which look sort of like arachnids made of tree bark) to giant amoebas, but the crux of your fighting is against the evil Bane–a group of races fighting the remnants of the humans they drove from Earth. As you roam about the planets of Foreas and Arieki, dropships will release groups of soldiers, which keeps you on your toes, since it could happen at any time. In fact, the game’s greatest asset is the element of surprise, a quality not many similar games offer to this extent.

This factor is most prevalent in the Bane attacks on the various control points scattered across the planets. In a Battlefield-inspired stroke, these bases swap hands based on exciting surprise attacks from Bane forces. One moment, you may be purchasing new supplies or turning in quests; the next, the entire base may be under fire from swarming Thrax warriors. These moments are the game’s best, because they play directly to its biggest strength: fun combat. One of the drawbacks of the system, though, is that there is no looming reason to control bases, aside from gaining access to those missions (and, of course, being able to turn them in). You do gain tokens for kills during these assaults, and it’s fun to group with friends and take back a captured base. But in the overall scope of gameplay, there isn’t as much of a sense of urgency to retain control of these bases as you would expect. Thankfully, these battles are fun and rewarding to participate in, even if you won’t always feel pressed to stick around for them.

Once you bypass the combat and surprising Bane assaults, you will find a mostly standard MMORPG underneath with its share of hits and misses. There’s nothing terribly unique about the questing system, and most missions boil down to the usual go-here, kill-that scenario. Actually, performing missions can occasionally be a drag, due to the oddly linear map designs. Unlike many persistent-world games, in which there are vast expanses of explorable land, Tabula Rasa keeps your travels very focused, with its mountainous terrain and impenetrable forests. Often, you will seemingly be right next to a mission waypoint but can’t get to it because it is high above, and you need to wander about to find the one path that will let you reach it.

Going into this instance on your own is not really a good idea…

On the other hand, instanced mission areas are put together extremely well. When you enter an instance, you are greeted with a story sequence that fills in some backstory, in the style of Asheron’s Call 2. Once inside, you and your group will find a good number of subquests to complete, plenty of challenging combat, and some well-designed multipart missions that can take a bit of time to complete.

You should also note that like with most MMORPGs in their first months, there are some bugs and annoyances that you’ll need to struggle through to get the most out of the experience. We had to deal with quests that couldn’t be completed, getting stuck far too easily in level geometry (thankfully an easy fix with the /stuck command), monster models that blink on and off, missing animations, and, most annoyingly, mission waypoints that get turned off every time you change areas or log out. And considering the game’s far-future, far-removed setting, it’s a little odd that there are Dell XPS terminals scattered throughout the bases. Is the fact that you can turn on the screensavers on these in-game computers a feature we really needed?

There’s also the issue of Tabula Rasa’s erudite crafting system. The game never explains exactly how to craft, though it’s essentially a matter of removing items from looted weapons and armor, finding or purchasing certain components like electronics, and then using them to craft new items or modify existing ones. This works pretty well with modifications, but it’s far too much work when you end up with just a few grenades. An in-game auction house would help you find needed components, which would make crafting a lot less of a hassle, but as of this writing, there is no auction house to allow players to easily sell and purchase what they need from each other.

Exploration is not as rewarding as you would hope. Once you get past the initial freshness of a sci-fi world to explore, you discover that Tabula Rasa simply isn’t much to look at. Many of the creature and soldier models are done well, but across the board, the game offers little visual respite. The color palette is a mess of browns, oranges, and other dull colors, a visual design that fits with the obvious tone the developer aimed for but weighs heavy on the eyes over time. Even areas that scream for lusher greenery or brighter tones, such as the fields of the Cumbria Research Facility, are formed without much detail or variety. The weak technology behind the graphics certainly doesn’t help, so expect to see lots of sharp edges, plain textures, and a good amount of visual slowdown.

Xanx don’t do a lot of damage, but they absorb an awful lot of bullets.

The sound design stands out a bit better. You can hear the eerie whispers of the Eloh race when you collect a logos symbol, and the growls of Thraxx soldiers are creepy and cool. The rock-tinged soundtrack fits the bill nicely as well. On the other hand, some of the weapons lack a sonic punch, though sound effects across the board are rather good. The voice acting is anemic, though. Some of the voice-overs are just overblown military cliché, as if the actor were trying to do an imitation of R. Lee Ermey but failed. Other actors sound as if they were pulled from a local high school drama class.

Nitpicks aside, Tabula Rasa’s take on the genre is unique enough to make it worth playing. It’s fun and action-packed, and if you can get a good group together, the instanced areas are a blast. It’s got its share of problems and plenty of room to grow. But if you want something different and surprisingly entertaining, you’ll probably find a lot to like about Tabula Rasa.

Spore Hands-On

It’s a sign of the anticipation surrounding a game when you’re a developer visiting a foreign country and passport control asks you about its release date. That’s exactly what the developers of Spore were met with when they entered the UK for the London demonstration of their game. Thankfully for both immigration officers and the gaming public at large, Spore is now “pretty much finished” according to EA, and a worldwide release date of September 7 was recently announced.

The game itself is looking much more complete now, although it has been six months since its last showing at Leipzig in August 2007. With the game now in fully playable form, we got to see the life sim as its gameplay progresses from single-cell organisms to intergalactic warfare and everything in between. It was also a good opportunity for us to put our questions to the development team about Spore’s many community features, and to take a look at the Nintendo DS version of the game.

Life can get scary at the cellular level…

Jumping straight onto one of EA’s demo PCs, we wasted no time in getting a hands-on with the game. Spore will offer five evolutionary stages in its duration, and given that we’ve covered the early parts of the game in other previews, we decided to jump forward and check out space exploration. As with the creature-creation tools, you can customise your spaceship to a highly advanced degree. We chose to use a flying-saucer-shaped vessel as a template, and from there we altered the proportions, applied different colours and patterns, and adorned our creation with various cannons and lasers. Although there was no way that an advanced civilisation would be caught dead in such a monstrosity, it’s clear that the tools will let players create pretty much anything they can imagine.

When it came down to playing the game, our hastily designed creation was no match for the toilet-shaped vessel that had already been designed by the Spore team. The game holds your hand with a tutorial on the basic controls and abilities of your ship, both those needed for flying low over planets and abducting creatures, and for interplanetary travel. Controlling the ship in the air was simple. You use either the WASD keys or a right-click of the mouse to move around, and the mouse wheel to ascend or descend. You select weapons and tools by clicking icons at the bottom of the screen. Equipped with a tractor beam, you can click on unsuspecting creatures and pull them into your ship with the left mouse button.

Not all your spaceships need look like bathroom fittings.

Spore has a very dry sense of humour, and it calls on you to collect creatures for your own nefarious ends. However, there’s a downside to your scientific experimentation, and in our demo we managed to introduce a rogue infection to our city by collecting bug-ridden creatures. The result: You have to eradicate the surrounding colonies with your onboard laser, using the left mouse button to fire. Before you can start exploring and colonising other worlds, your final task on your home planet is to colour it purple, although we couldn’t quite understand why.

The first planet that we visited was completely barren and needed development before life could inhabit it. We equipped our ship with a variety of plants and used the tractor beam to drop them on the ground. With vegetation available, the next step was to introduce herbivores, with the setup complete once carnivores were dropped on the planet.

Aside from actual gameplay, the big theme of EA’s presentation was user-generated content. It’s clear that Spore has learnt much from Facebook and MySpace, and instead of being a separate component, the online community features are very much woven into the fabric of the game. In fact, much of Spore’s terminology borrows directly from Web 2.0 vernacular; sporecasts let you subscribe to other users’ creations, whereas sporepedia is the in-game directory for all of your content. Sporecasts will let you transmit and receive user-generated content, and you’ll be able to search the entire Web based on ratings or specific tags (for example, “Doctor Who” or “purple”). We were shown how one of the designers had created a series of animals based on letters from the alphabet, and then put them in a set that can be downloaded by any Spore player online.

Don’t expect the online aspect of Spore to be limited to the gameworld, either, because the creators want it to spread to your browser as well. Although no specific announcements have been made, it’s clear that the team wants to develop a variety of badges and links that can be embedded into blogs and social networks to show your activity in Spore. Of course, with so much encouragement for user-generated content, it presents an interesting proposition for the creators of The Sims. With so many add-on packs helping to make their previous game one of the best-selling of all time, can we still expect the same sort of support for Spore? The answer that’s being hinted at by Maxis is that rather than directly making stuff for the game, the company will release more tools to help users produce it instead. But whatever happens, Spore is clearly a franchise title for EA, and the game is bound to be heavily supported once it finally makes its way to store shelves.

Speaking of franchising, Spore is also being released on the Nintendo DS. Though you can still build creatures and explore new worlds, the handheld version is much more task-oriented than its PC counterpart. The character-building aspect of the game is used to solve problems. The game boasts Phantom Hourglass-style cel-shaded visuals, and the characters have some of the colourfulness of the animals from Viva Piñata. You control your creature by touching the screen, and you use the stylus to shake trees for fruit or attack other creatures.

Spore is shaping up very nicely, and from what we saw in London, it’s well on its way to completion. EA has now announced a worldwide release date of September 7–in the meantime, should it drip-feed any more information, we’ll be sure to keep you updated.