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EGM Review: The Amazing Spider-Man 2

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May 18, 2014

Spider-Man No More

If you’re like me, Beenox is a developer still relatively fresh on your radar. Sure, they ported some Spider-Man games to the PC in the mid-2000s, but it wasn’t until 2010’s Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions­, when the studio took point on the web-slinger’s gaming presence, that they really grabbed my attention. Since then, they’ve delivered three solid Spider-Man games in a row, a feat that hasn’t been done, in my opinion, since the LJN/Acclaim days. Unfortunately, it seems that all good things must come to an end, because Beenox’s latest, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, is one of the worst Spider-Man games I’ve ever played.

Right from the get-go, the game may confuse more casual fans, since it’s not a true “movie tie-in.” Instead, you need to go back to Beenox’s first Amazing Spider-Man game. There, they didn’t follow Marc Webb’s first take on the character beat for beat, but rather continued the story of that movie: You played through the fallout of Dr. Curt Connors’ cross-species research and fought several new creatures that resulted from it. Since Sony Pictures seemingly wasn’t enamored with the idea of having their blockbuster movie franchise follow the story a game created, Beenox continued their story from The Amazing Spider-Man, thus crafting an alternate continuity from the films. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 game, therefore, only has the loosest of tie-ins to the new movie in that Green Goblin and Electro are there (Rhino isn’t, because in Beenox’s Amazing Spider-Man universe, he’s a cross-species monster).

Still with me? Once you wrap your head around the multiverse idea, it’s not the worst thing that could’ve happened. This allows Beenox to still have a little creative freedom with the story and not be regimented to following a movie script. After the complicated setup, however, things quickly become mundane in regards to the narrative: Each chapter devolves into loosely tied-together boss battles. In fact, there’s barely any narrative cohesion, period. Most of the story relies on your ability to find audiotape collectibles instead of actually telling you as you progress through the game.

And the dialogue is some of the worst I’ve ever heard in a game, from both Spider-Man as well as his foes. My favorite was a thug screaming out “I like to hurt people!”—truly the bad-guy equivalent to “I like turtles” if I ever heard one. At the very least, the actors who deliver these miserable lines try the best they can with a script that clearly lacks any sort of entertainment value.

The weak narrative isn’t the only thing that makes this the worst Beenox Spider-Man yet; nearly every aspect of the gameplay is inferior to previous titles by the developer. The “menace” system, touted when the game was announced, is a joke. This is your typical “good guy/bad guy” meter that you see variations on in games like inFAMOUS and Mass Effect. As expected, it hinges on doing good deeds in the open world, or ignoring them and seeing the people’s view of you diminish. Only a handful of the same crimes repeat, however, so they become as boring as the boss battles. Meanwhile, there are usually so many going on at once that it’s a neverending uphill battle to keep Spidey from being viewed as a threat. The worst part is that all this has no influence on the narrative, and the reward for being lauded as a hero is minimal stat boosts and fewer enemies in the world. Why even bother at that point?

Also, going back to the boss battles for a brief moment, while it’s nice to see some of Spidey’s most iconic villains again in a videogame, the battles themselves are of the worst “rinse and repeat” variety, wherein the bosses don’t have more than two or three easily avoidable moves, causing you to repeat the same pattern over and over until you whittle away their health.

The developers also emphasized how much time you’d be spending in the open world this time around compared to the last Amazing Spider-Man game. That’s as blatant a lie as I’ve ever heard. There are just as many “dungeon” segments in Amazing Spider-Man 2 as there were in the previous game, and you probably spend even less time web-swinging down Manhattan’s concrete canyons than that one due to the shorter story. Beenox can do indoor sequences perfectly fine, as proven in previous games developed by them like Edge of Time and Shattered Dimensions, but when you stress that you’re going to keep players more in the open world, do it.

Speaking of web-swinging, though, this is the worst gameplay change. Talk about trying to fix something that wasn’t broken to begin with. I understand there’s a movement for “realism” in comics and games, but this is a story about a man who has spider-based powers fighting a man made out of electricity. The need to be grounded in reality isn’t necessary, but Beenox tried anyway and now web-swinging requires a solid surface to stick to. While this design has been done in games before, this iteration of Spider-Man’s Manhattan—already a bland and lifeless shell of the hustling, bustling metropolis—doesn’t lend itself well to this tweak. I’d often shoot my web at some ridiculous angle, if I could find one at all, in order to adhere to this rule. Thus, I never really got into a great rhythm with my web-swinging, which was especially frustrating during the game’s racing side missions, which require a lot more precision than the game allows.

But wait! There’s more! While it’s clear that the combat/counter system is a rip-off from the Batman: Arkham games, it seems Beenox couldn’t resist to steal a little more from the Dark Knight. Amazing Spider-Man 2 sees stealth rooms make an appearance, and they just reek of the “predator room” designs from Rocksteady’s games. And, like everything else in this game, they’re inferior in every way. Spider-Man’s Spider-Sense replaces Batman’s Detective Mode, and much like Arkham Asylum, players will run into the problem where they’ll feel like they never have to turn the power off. This means that even if the levels were beautifully designed (which they aren’t), they’d only see them in the red-and-blue hues this mode paints everything in. On top of all this, the combat upgrades from the first game have been simplified into only eight powers, with three upgrades each. So much for doing everything a spider can.

My final issues with the game come from the technical side of things: Glitches galore, folks. Not only are the character models bland—and only half a dozen of them are scattered throughout the game—but many of them love just vibrating themselves through walls, sidewalks, and rubble. Throw in three late-game crashes in the middle of boss battles, and I almost had enough to never look at this game again.

Despite the abject time I had playing the game, I was able to finish it, however, because flashes of the competency Beenox illustrated in their previous games do appear sporadically. These came in the form of tributes to some iconic moments from Spider-Man comics—like Cletus Kasady being wheeled into Ravencroft at the start of the Maximum Carnage storyline—that, as a lifelong fan, I understood and instantly recognized. But that only made me more frustrated, because it meant that Beenox had to know them, too, and yet they still let this miserable pile of data get stamped onto a disc and sent to stores. If you’re a Spidey fan, hope that Activision lets Beenox out from under this movie-licensing deal and gets them back to making original Spider-Man games.

Developer: Beenox • Publisher: Activision • ESRB: T – Teen • Release Date: 04.29.14
2.5
Easily Beenox’s worst outing with the Spider-Man brand. Nearly every game system is a step backward from the previous three Spidey games—this one isn’t worth your time or effort.
The Good The story has its moments.
The Bad Web-swinging takes a huge step backwards, the “menace” system is a joke, and the dialogue made me want to stick a pencil in my ear.
The Ugly 40 years of comic book history was diluted down into a less than 10 hour game.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is available on Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Wii U, 3DS, iOS, and Android. Primary version reviewed was for PS4. Review code was provided by Activision for the benefit of this review.
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EGM Review: Kirby Triple Deluxe

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Kirby and the Beanstalk

Someone at Nintendo sure loves Kirby. Ever since the Pink Puffball first debuted back in 1992 on the original Game Boy (he was white back then because of the system’s limited color palette), if we count collections and spin-offs, the most recognizable figure on Popstar has had 23 games starring him come out over the past 22 years. But what’s even more amazing is that people haven’t gotten tired of him. I believe a large part of this is because the Kirby series always finds a way to make the simple characters shine, and the core gameplay mechanics of sucking up enemies and stealing their powers feel fresh and new each time. Kirby: Triple Deluxe, his 3DS debut, is no different.

Triple Deluxe begins with Kirby resting peacefully at his Dream Land home, when all of a sudden a giant beanstalk (appropriately called the Dreamstalk) erupts from the ground, lifting Kirby’s home and Castle Dedede into the night sky. Assuming King Dedede is up to some new mischief, Kirby floats over to the castle. When he arrives, though, he is shocked by the sight of unconscious Waddle Dees scattered about the place and a new foe, a spider named Taranza, carting King Dedede away in a magical web. Putting past transgressions aside, Kirby knows he has to save King Dedede and stop Taranza.

On the surface, Kirby still has his same classic powers of sucking up enemies and copying some of their abilities. To help him quell this new threat, however, he has several new hats to wear as a result of his copying prowess. Archer allows Kirby to fire arrows in a 360-degree arc; Bell gives Kirby the ability to use a pair of bells as blunt objects as well as to stun enemies with soundwaves; Beetle sees Kirby impale and throw enemies around with a special rhinoceros beetle horn; And Circus has Kirby turn into a clown who can throw flaming bowling pins or balance on a ball to roll over enemies with. The new powers are a lot of fun—and very useful in several situations—but they don’t hold a candle to the single most powerful new skill Kirby can acquire: the Hypernova.

By eating a Miracle Seed, Kirby will gleam like a rainbow in Hypernova form, giving him the ability to eat massive objects in one swallow. From mini-bosses to obstacles like fallen trees, nothing is too big for Kirby to gulp down. The Hypernova form allows Kirby to literally change the terrain around him to fit his needs while continuing on his adventure. This new ability is so powerful, though, Kirby can only use it for the rest of the stage he is on and not carry it with him like his other copy abilities.

Along with these new powers, the 3DS affords Kirby some new gameplay mechanics, especially when it comes to puzzle solving. Taking advantage of the system’s gyroscope, you can manually aim rocket launchers and cannons to destroy enemies and blocked pathways, or slide specially marked blocks around to help Kirby get past traps and the like.

The 3D feature is also a huge boon for Triple Deluxe; Not only does the game look great, with bright pigments punctuating each landscape, but also the 3D is subtle enough most of the time as to not be a distraction. Meanwhile, several puzzles take advantage of the depth of field the 3D provides to create hurdles Kirby has never really had to deal with before. So, by utilizing some 3DS hardware features (and not shoving them down our throats to feel “gimmicky”) and combining them with the classic platforming action the Kirby franchise is known for, Triple Deluxe provides a huge variety of unique challenges for Kirby to tackle.

For all the new things that this game added, there are also a lot of nice little nods to Kirby’s history, scratching that nostalgia itch older fans of the series may have. Not only are there 20 old-school copy abilities this time around—like Wheel and Needle—but also a lot of the bosses are takes on some of Kirby’s most iconic foes. From the return of Kracko to Flowery Woods (a larger, more difficult take on Whispy Woods), many of the bosses, and even a couple of the stages, are nothing but direct nods to what’s come before in the series.

If that’s not enough for you, there is also a new “Keychain” system. In the single player game, you can collect keychains that represent special scenes or characters from Kirby’s entire 22-year history in games. They don’t do anything in particular, but they’re nice to have. If you don’t want to spend time searching for them in the campaign, you can also spend 3DS coins (three at a time) to receive a random pick, or trade unneeded keychains with other players via StreetPass (a great way to get rid of any duplicates).

Not everything is perfect in Dream Land, though. The Kirby games have never really been that difficult, and Triple Deluxe is no different. If it takes you more than eight hours to find every collectible (that isn’t a randomized keychain) and beat the story, I’d be shocked. Also, I never liked the resetting of your lives and powers every time you exit the game. I know, this is something that has gone on for a long time in the series, but it still bothers me as it makes star collecting and 1-ups completely pointless—simply by exiting the game, you’ll be back to having seven lives. I get that it’s one way to get around an issue many other Nintendo platformers run into—the stockpiling of lives—but why not make a game that’s a little harder then?

Of course, Triple Deluxe is named that for a reason: the single-player campaign is just one of three included modes. The first added game mode is Dedede’s Drum Dash, a music rhythm game that has you hit the A button in time with the music as you try to maneuver King Dedede across a bunch of giant bongos. Honestly, this was a bit of a throwaway experience, as neither the interface nor the music are all that good.

The second extra game, Kirby Fighters, is far better—and actually might serve as a nice warm-up to the Smash Bros. games coming later this year. Up to four players can battle it out in the arenas inspired by classic Kirby locales, using special attacks to whittle away opponent’s lifebars while trying to maintain their own by eating food. As a twist, you can select from all of the powers from the single-player campaign to customize your Kirby, opening up possible match-ups such as Ninja Kirby vs. Bell Kirby vs. Beam Kirby vs. Leaf Kirby. This mode is so deep, it even has a single-player arcade ladder system, where you can try to see how fast you can make your way through seven different matches.

In the end, Kirby: Triple Deluxe is another fine addition to the long line of stellar handheld games in the series. A couple of outdated practices and a forgettable mini-game were not enough to stop me from feeling immensely satisfied with my experience after polishing off the final boss. New powers and well-executed use of the 3DS’ peripheral features added just a bit of freshness to keep this old formula working well, giving the Pink Puffball yet another successful debut on another Nintendo console.

Developer: HAL Laboratory, Inc. • Publisher: Nintendo • ESRB: E – Everyone • Release Date: 05.02.14
9.0
Kirby’s debut on the 3DS could not have been better as new powers and puzzles complement classic Kirby gameplay to provide an experience both fresh and familiar to longtime fans.
The Good Inventive puzzles and new powers complement classic Kirby gameplay.
The Bad The resetting of lives and powers each time you exit the game; Dedede’s Drum Dash mini-game.
The Ugly The fact that the main bad guy is based off a spider, but only has six legs, bothers me a lot.
Kirby Triple Deluxe is a 3DS exclusive. Review code was provided by Nintendo for the benefit of this review.
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EGM Review: Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff

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Simpsons did it

We all know by now that taking a movie, TV show, or comic book and trying to turn it into a game rarely works. More often than not, it ends up being a huge mess that neither fans nor developers end up happy with. Occasionally, though, someone hits it out of the park and the risk pays off. One media property that’s still trying to hit gaming gold is Family Guy.

We’d rather sweep games like Back to the Multiverse under the rug than celebrate them, so Fox looked to change the series’ digital luck like they did with the Griffins’ Animation Domination cohorts, the Simpsons, and Tapped Out. Instead of EA Mobile, Fox tapped (no pun intended) TinyCo, the creator of TinyMonsters, to bring the mobile digital revolution to Quahog. Instead of breaking new ground, though, they simply decided to retread what’s already been done over in Springfield.

Right from the get-go, you can tell that Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff is a carbon copy of The Simpsons: Tapped Out. Sure, some minor tweaks are present, like the story and characters obviously tailored to fit Family Guy, but starting with Peter and Ernie the Giant Chicken destroying Quahog in their latest brawl the same way that Homer destroyed Springfield by letting the power plant have a meltdown, this is just another free-to-play city builder with some Sunday-night flair.

The gameplay consists of rebuilding Quahog in any way you deem fit. You’ll be laying down roads, rebuilding houses and businesses from the show, and sending your favorite characters off to do various tasks in an attempt to earn currency to build up Quahog bigger and better than it was before. If you don’t want to wait for an hour for Chris to finish picking his nose or six hours for Mort to do Peter’s taxes, you can use real-world cash to buy premium currency or “clams” to make everyone almost instantaneously finish what they’re doing. The app also features a social aspect (explained as being part of Stewie’s multiverse) where you can invite your Facebook friends to join—and, if they do, you can visit their unique Quahogs and earn extra money and XP.

The payoff of hoarding cash and visiting friends is hopefully forwarding the “story” of rebuilding Quahog and unlocking some original animation and dialogue. The humor here is definitely a bright spot if you love the show, and Quest for Stuff even introduces its own set of zany, one-off characters, but I would’ve loved some more voice acting besides the prerecorded one-liners that get repeated constantly.

A major difference between Quest for Stuff and that other Fox animated-sitcom-inspired city builder is that each character also has bonus costumes that give them a new set of actions. Performing specific activities or having particular buildings also gives you bonuses to unlock even more costumes. Peter dressing as a “lady of the night,” Quagmire stripping down to a Speedo, and Lois going commando (not that kind of commando—like a soldier) are just some of the different outfits available.

Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff also tries harder not to turn into a game where you’re constantly waiting for quests to finish up. You rarely have to endure 12- and 24-hour tasks in order to finish quests that advance the game as you continue to unlock more of Quahog’s unique denizens and structures. This is a double-edged sword, though, since I also found that my Quahog got very cramped very quickly. I was constructing buildings faster than I was unlocking land—the exact opposite issue I often face in Tapped Out.

Despite the glaring lack of originality, The Quest for Stuff isn’t a bad game if you simply take it for what’s it worth: a free-to-play title that’s great for killing 5 to 10 minutes on your lunch break. But it won’t get you through a long plane flight. It won’t kill all that time wasted sitting at the DMV. It won’t get you through that boring meeting at work as you pretend to take notes on your iPad.

But dropping into your own digital Quahog for a couple of minutes a day will probably give you a much-needed chuckle as Bonnie twerks for way too long on a backyard stripper pole, Quagmire lets his pet gerbil loose, and Peter stuffs his face at the local burger joint. If you’re a fan of Family Guy (and considering you don’t have to spend any money on this), there are probably a lot worse things taking up space on your mobile device’s hard drive right now.

Developer: TinyCo • Publisher: TinyCo • ESRB: N/A • Release Date: 04.10.14
6.5
The lack of originality is evident from the opening animation, but in small doses, The Quest for Stuff can provide fans of Family Guy a welcome chuckle here and there, and that makes it worth the free download.
The Good Captures the essence of the show’s humor.
The Bad A lack of originality; only good in short intervals.
The Ugly Meg.
Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff is available on Android and iOS devices. Primary version reviewed was for iOS using an iPad 2. Review code was provided by TinyCo for the benefit of this review.
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EGM Review: Kinect Sports Rivals

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Getting nowhere fast

One of my biggest surprises during the launch of the new consoles wasn’t a particular game, but the absence of one. Microsoft didn’t release a wholly Kinect-oriented first-party game to show the potential of what the motion-control device could do for gaming. Well, six months after launch, Microsoft’s finally ready to rectify that glaring omission with Kinect Sports Rivals.

Rivals is developer Rare’s chance to help Microsoft grab that casual market early in this new generation—and prove why the new Kinect is worth an extra $100 for the Xbox One. Unfortunately, that’s a lot of pressure to put on a single title, and after playing Rivals for a dozen hours–far longer than most any sane person should–I can say that Rivals may hurt the case for Kinect a lot more than it helps it.

Kinect Sports Rivals follows the same formula as seen in the first two games of the series, with six different sports you can choose from: Soccer, Bowling, Tennis, Target Shooting, Climbing, and Wake Racing. These sports are all tied together this time, however, by a story that sees you, as the newest athlete, come to Rivals Island, where three warring factions vie for control of this tropical paradise through the art of competition. As you play through the missions, which really just serve as extremely long introductions to the games, you learn the personalities of the island’s inhabitants and finally get to choose to join one of them. After unlocking the sports in Story mode, you can then play them whenever you want.

Kinect Sports Rivals actually started off on a high note that made me extremely hopeful. Not only was it a joy to hear David Tennant providing the narration (shoutout to all the Whovians out there), but Rare’s facial-recognition tech is definitely a boon for the Kinect. I was pleasantly surprised to see how well my digital face turned out after scanning it into the system, especially when I had some less than spectacular results when I tried it at Gamescom last August. Unfortunately, the entire experience was nothing but downhill after this.

It’s a nice idea to try to motivate players through a loose story to play the different activities, but when compared to the Kinect Sports releases that came before it, Rivals is the most poorly executed of the bunch. Problems that were frequent with the first generation of Kinect rear their head again here far too often. Many times, I’d have to turn on every light in my apartment for the sensor to recognize me, and even giving the camera a decent six-foot berth, it often would say it lost sight of me while playing several of the games. At one point, it even said that it couldn’t see my legs, probably because I was wearing dark jeans, even though I’d never left my initial position from when I started.

My fashion faux pas aside, I quickly grew frustrated as I realized that even with all the touted advancements in the new Kinect, the same issues just kept cropping up. Even trying to navigate the menus by swiping my hands was a nightmare, and I ended up just using my controller to select where I wanted to go on Rivals Island instead.

The games themselves are also either dumbed-down versions of things we’ve already played, or so simple that you wonder why you’d even need to bother with a Kinect. Target Shooting is just pointing at the screen, Bowling is the same as before, Climbing breaks half the time because every time you reach over your head the Kinect sensor goes bonkers, Wake Racing feels like a test to see how long you can hold the same pose, Tennis is just swinging your arm around, and Soccer never picks up your leg motions correctly.

A couple of new features do work, at least. The focus on challenging your friends and trying to beat their scores and times provides a hint of replayability for über-competitive gamers. The addition of power-ups, like bowling balls with superspeed or double scoring in target shooting, also gives many of the sports an extra semblance of strategy (when you can get everything to work).

As a whole, however, Kinect Sports Rivals falls far short of its lofty ambitions. It’s not fun, and it only furthers the argument that the Kinect is completely unnecessary–and unwanted. Now I know why Microsoft didn’t launch with a Kinect-oriented game. I just hope that they decide to abandon any future projects revolving around the peripheral. Maybe they’ll let Rare go back to making good games again.

Developer: Rare • Publisher: Microsoft Studios • ESRB: E10+ – Everyone 10 and up • Release Date: 04.08.14
4.0
Instead of making a case as to why you need a Kinect, Kinect Sports Rivals shows that the peripheral—and most games revolving around it—still have a long way to come.
The Good The facial-recognition tech; David Tennant’s narration.
The Bad Familiar tracking and space issues shine a light of doubt on how far the new Kinect has supposedly come.
The Ugly Remembering when Rare made good games like GoldenEye and Donkey Kong Country—I miss those days.
Kinect Sports Rivals is a Xbox One exclusive. Review code was provided by Microsoft for the benefit of this review.
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EGM Review: Trials Fusion

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Daredevil’s delight

I’ve always enjoyed the Trials series, because it’s uncommon nowadays to get a game that gives you a sense of accomplishment every time you finish a section—and that seems to be a staple of Trials’ charm. It constantly tests your reflexes as you try to guide a digital motorbike across ridiculous landscapes while battling Newton’s laws of motion. It’s rarely easy, but almost always fun.

So, it was with great pleasure to find that Trials Fusion, the latest entry in the series, has that balance that made me curse it at times—like when I didn’t have enough momentum to carry me through a vertical loop—but still made me want to try again and again until, thumbs aching, I could pump my fist in the air after nailing a perfect run for the gold medal.

Just like previous games in the series, you play as a motorbike driver who moves along a linear path through an obstacle course designed by madmen. By beating stages both quickly and without crashing, you earn medals, which then unlock more stages that continue to ramp up in difficulty. To increase replayability, each stage also has three special objectives that require you to play the course differently each time. Some tasks ask you to locate and flawlessly run through alternate paths, while others demand you perform a variety of acrobatic moves on your bike.

The first things players will likely notice is that Fusion’s courses are just as demented as those seen in previous Trials games. You bounce across a bunch of blimps hovering around skyscrapers, get shot into the air by water fountains in a park, and need to anticipate tracks that rise and fall at the whim of an automated factory’s maintenance programming. Couple this with the voice of your instructor providing color commentary in the background and the always comical demise you meet after crossing the finish line, and the tracks seem to have as much personality as some antagonists in more narratively driven games.

The controls are also just as tight as the previous games, with your position on the bike affecting momentum just as much as the pressure you apply to the gas or brakes. When you combine the insane level design with the crisp controls, it’s easy to see the series’ infamous difficulty is also mostly intact. Even early on, you can’t just hold down the accelerator and hope to barrel your way through each stage.

There’s a little more handholding overall, however, that Trials veterans should be aware of. Fusion sees a lot more checkpoints in each individual trial to restart from, but only a perfect run will net you gold, which is a nice way to cater to both the casual as well as the hardcore.

Something that clearly favors newcomers? Tricks don’t unlock until the third level, nearly two dozen stages in. While I get that a lot of controls might be a bit much for novice players to take in—and with this being the first game in the series on a Sony system, there’s a strong possibility for a new audience—that means experienced Trials players have to wait for almost a third of the campaign before they can unlock their Superman handlebar grab, and that could rub them the wrong way.

Putting this aside, when it comes to the core pillars of the game, developer RedLynx thankfully appears to have taken a “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” approach to things. There’s more to Fusion than just racing through obstacles and performing absurd poses in mid-air and praying that you stick the landing each time, though.

The renowned track creator also sees a return. RedLynx once again opens up their toy box and gives players all the tools they used to make the tracks the game launched with. Once you create your own tortuous run to the checkered flag, you can upload it to a new community bulletin board where players and developers will vote on tracks each week, with the best of the best getting the spotlight.

Like many of your runs through late-game courses, however, Fusion does hit the occasional pothole. A new leveling system sees you gain XP for every course and challenge you complete, and it’s used to unlock different costumes and bike parts. This common gaming feature hits a snag, though, because the parts are for purely cosmetic purposes. Cosmetic-only unlocks certainly aren’t unheard of, but I would’ve loved for new parts—or even entirely new bikes—to feel like they handle differently from one another. The only vehicle that doesn’t feel like a clone of all the others is the ATV, but that’s because it’s a completely different class of vehicle. I don’t need to completely deconstruct the bike and fine-tune the engine like some car-racing simulator, but knowing that some bikes go faster or have better grip would’ve given me some motivation to unlock items.

The multiplayer from Trials Evolution also returns, but only a local versus option is available day one. A patch with a new online multiplayer mode is coming down the line, but neither mode is likely to hold your attention because your focus will always deviate back to not crashing than winning the race.

Trials Fusion is still a worthwhile experience for all those wannabe daredevils out there. When you’re able to push past a lot of the little additions that didn’t work out, Trials Fusion is still one heck of a platform racer with a core that longtime fans will enjoy—and that newcomers should embrace.

Developer: RedLynx • Publisher: Ubisoft • ESRB: E10+ – Everyone 10 and up • Release Date: 04.16.14
8.0
While Trials Fusion isn’t the best entry in the long-running motorbike-racing franchise, the core of what made previous entries so great remains, which should satisfy longtime fans and newcomers alike.
The Good Gameplay is still challenging enough that it feels like an accomplishment when you beat courses.
The Bad Pointless leveling system; local multiplayer only at launch.
The Ugly The looping theme song that haunts you in your nightmares.
Trials Fusion is available on Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS4, and PC. Primary version reviewed was for PS4. Review code was provided by Ubisoft for the benefit of this review.
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Hands-On: Project Totem

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April 14, 2014

Carving out a niche

The big project on everyone’s mind during this year’s GDC was, of course, Sony’s Project Morpheus. Because of this, another work-in-progress at the show might have flown under a lot of people’s radar, but I went hands-on with it before the week was through—and it’s finally ready to be revealed.

Project Totem is the latest Microsoft exclusive from developer Press Play, the folks behind Max: The Curse of Brotherhood. It’s a puzzle-platformer that, like many games in the genre, has a simple premise. You play as a pair of blocks that normally would sit in a totem pole. Each block is sent down a path that often has a similar, yet not exactly identical, layout to their counterpart.  Your objective? Get both blocks to the end of the course in order to unlock larger and more intricate carvings for the ultimate totem pole.

Where puzzle-platformers shine isn’t why you’re running these courses, but in how you traverse them. Gameplay is the driving force in this genre, and fortunately, even in the six pre-alpha-build single-player stages I was able to test, there seems to be enough easy-to-learn-yet-difficult-to-master mechanics to give Project Totem the addictiveness to compete against similar games.

The first, most critical element that I needed to learn was that the totem pieces are always linked. When one jumps, so does the other. When the other runs right, so does the other. Run left, and…hopefully you get the picture. The puzzle aspects quickly become evident from this mechanic when the courses stop being as identical as the totem pieces. Some pathways can only open when one of the totems steps on a particular switch. Other pathways can only be walked through by pieces of a certain color. And sometimes the lower totem block will have to serve as a stepping-stone for the upper one to reach the next platform.

As the courses become more intricate, the totem blocks also begin to acquire special powers. The first of these makes it so the two blocks can flip-flop positions at any time, even in mid-air, to move through color-coded barriers. Meanwhile, certain powers allow you to change the gravity of a single piece so one can be walking on the ceiling while another is on the floor.

Just as I began to get comfortable with these abilities, though, I had to start using them in unison. For example, in one instance I had to swap totems while simultaneously having one of them use its gravity powers. As more powers become unlocked, it was easy to imagine how crazy it might be to use three or four powers quickly in succession or different powers for each individual piece.

Besides this single-player mode, there’s also a time-trial mode to see how fast a player can beat each stage. The game also offers local co-op, which has completely different stages from single-player. Also, instead of each player controlling an individual totem (that would probably be a bit too easy), they control two totems for a total of four totems onscreen at once. When obstacles start becoming three and four blocks high, the emphasis on teamwork quickly becomes clear.

Even though Project Totem is still in its pre-alpha phase, Press Play is confident they can have the game available for download on Xbox 360 and Xbox One sometime in Q3 2014. And from what I was able to play of it at GDC, I’m fairly confident they can hit that mark, since the seven total stages each had a layer of polish you don’t normally see from games still labeled as pre-alpha. The controls were tight, the obstacles were creative, and there was a nice feeling of accomplishment every time I overcame a new challenge. If that’s any sign of what’s to come, puzzle-platformer fans should definitely keep an eye out for this one.

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The Golden Age of Gaming is Now

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It’s rare to get a collection of some of the best and brightest names in gaming under one roof, but that’s exactly what happened at the 2014 D.I.C.E. Summit in Las Vegas. One of this year’s themes was how many game developers feel we’re in a Golden Age of Gaming. So, taking advantage of this rare opportunity, we decided to ask these great minds just what we might expect over the next 5 to 10 years from this perceived Golden Age.

Freddie Wong
Co-Founder, RocketJump
More indie games. They’re the only games I have the patience for now. I don’t finish a lot of triple-A titles anymore. I’d rather just sit down and do two hours of something, and I’m more willing to pay that price.

Felicia Day
Co-Founder, Geek & Sundry
Really good hair. There’s nothing grosser than when you create an RPG character, and it just looks like they’ve never washed their hair. It’s all spiky and disgusting. It looks like dyed straw, and I hate it.

Victor Kislyi
CEO, Wargaming.net
I think no matter what happens with technology, that we, as game developers and publishers, will keep concentrating on the game experience, and that will be the key to our success in the future. We have to provide to the users the best possible experiences in regards to gameplay and service, and that will keep the future bright.

Richard Hilleman
Chief Creative Director, Electronic Arts
I think it’s going to be an interesting next 10 years as the rest of the world decides they get to have some influence on what the gaming business is, too. And it’ll introduce us to a whole new collection of gaming styles, to different business models, to new characters—and, most importantly, to new developers who will make really exciting stuff.

Ted Price
President, Insomniac Games
I think you’re going to see a large number of new IPs that are really pushing the boundaries in terms of what players expect. I think, after seeing—and we’re certainly guilty of this as well— a lot of shooters on the last-gen platforms, a lot of stuff felt like we’d seen it before. There’s a big push from both large and small companies to change the rules for players. What does that mean? Well, just look at 2014. It means a lot of brand-new and surprising IPs.

Matias Myllyrinne
CEO, Remedy Entertainment
I think we’re at an interesting junction point. There have been a lot of trends and courses laid creating a perfect storm in many ways. We have massive ecosystems with digital distribution coming in, and then we’re having increasingly powerful machines and new business models and games as a service. I think we’re going to have this massive connected living room, and I wouldn’t be surprised if, even in just two or three years, we start interacting with fiction in a different form.

Eugene Jarvis
President, Raw Thrills
It’s a rough world out there. One percent of the apps take 90 percent of the revenue, and 99 percent of the guys are getting run over by the Google bus. So, there’s this huge emphasis on monetization, how to make your game make money, and I think the industry is almost going off a cliff where the monetization is driving the creativity so much that we all end up making the same game. Just trying to trap the player, hold him upside down, and shake the money out of his pockets. I think, in the future, this is going to just collapse, and we’re going to start thinking about making games to be fun again and not be so obsessed with this monetization thing.

Neil Druckmann
Creative Director, Naughty Dog
We’re all going to be in the Matrix, but we won’t know that we’re in the Matrix, and then [Naughty Dog Game Director] Bruce [Straley] is going to be the one who fights for us all to get out.

Randy Pitchford
President and CEO, Gearbox Software
It’s really exciting right now, because we’re crossing the threshold where everyone is a gamer. If you rewind to the beginning of the last generation, more than half the population didn’t play games. Our grandparents had no idea what was going on. But the Wii got grandma bowling. Smartphones have brought all kinds of new games to all kinds of people. Everyone now is a gamer. That’s really exciting. Now, it’s going to be about that we can try anything, and we’ll find an audience. When you combine the spectrum of platforms with the width of the audience, we can try anything. As long as we’re smart about how many people might be interested in what we’re doing, I think you’re going to see a lot of risky and exciting games. A lot of things we’ve never seen before.

Palmer Luckey
Founder, Oculus VR
I don’t know what the future will look like. I think virtual reality will play an important part in it. I think indie games are going to be more and more polished. I think the creation tools that allow people to make games are going to be easier to use and allow for better and better games with less and less effort. It was really hard to make good-looking games a couple of years ago, but I think tools like Unity have made that whole process so much easier, so I think you’ll start having more amazing games from smaller teams.

Patrick Hudson
President, Robot Entertainment
What I think is fascinating is a developer anywhere in the world can now reach consumers anywhere in the world. Everyone has a smartphone in their pocket. The access to high-speed bandwidth is pervasive globally. So, I think you’ll see gaming grow more globally, reaching markets that were never reachable before so you might see gaming become just as important in Zimbabwe as it is in North America in the next decade.

Jean Guesdon
Creative Director, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
I’d be rich if I knew what was coming. [Laughs] But I think it’ll be interesting to see what emerges from the mix of these highly capable consoles and all these social and mobile mechanics, and whatever comes from that will be something to keep an eye on.

Lucas Pope
Developer, Papers, Please
VR. I think VR is the future. Once it becomes accessible with the Oculus Rift, I think everything’s going to change in how games are made and sold.

Tameem Antoniades
Co-Founder and Chief Creative Director, Ninja Theory
What I think is you’ll see is a shift away from games being designed by publishers for gamers and instead see gamers designing games for themselves. I think there’ll be much more of a homebrew scene, where technology will be awesome and game engines will be so powerful that small bands of people will be able to come together and make incredible games. I think the future will be less corporate-driven and more gamer-driven.

Troy Baker
Voice Actor, The Last of Us
I think that what we’re doing right now is that we’re not only redefining what games look like, but we’re also redefining how players play them. I think, to some extent, gamers have gotten a little spoiled. Now we’re shaking things up, and gamers are able to participate in the infrastructure of how their games are presented to them. I think that’s an exciting opportunity for publishers to listen to their audience and collaborate with them in not only creating the content but also in how the content gets to them, so I’m excited to see how that relationship grows over the course of the next generation.

Rex Crowle
Creative Lead, Media Molecule
I think we’ll just see more and more games seeping out of our screens and interacting with our reality, from new display methods to all kinds of crazy science-fiction stuff.

Steve Gaynor
Co-Founder, The Fullbright Company
I think we’re going to see another big, must-have item that people will move to, like mobile was for the last generation. I can’t pretend to tell you what it may be, though.

Be sure to check out EGM Issue #263, available now on newsstands everywhere, to hear these and other gaming personalities share their thoughts on the flip side of this topic: what they thought was the most important aspect of the last generation of hardware.

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Super Smash Bros. Wii U/3DS release windows announced, will be separate from each other

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In today’s Super Smash Bros. oriented Nintendo Direct, game director Masahiro Sakurai announced two separate release windows for the 3DS and Wii U versions of Nintendo’s flagship fighter.

The 3DS version of Smash Bros. will see a summer 2014 release, but in a shocking turn, the Wii U version won’t hit store shelves until Winter 2014.

While this could potentially promote consumers to buy both versions of the game and help keep Nintendo from directly competing with itself, it also looks bad for the Wii U, which desperately needs a potential system selling game like this to hit sooner rather later.

Aside from the release dates, specific game modes and new characters were also detailed during the 39-minute video presentation.

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Microsoft’s Ken Lobb promises ‘innovative,’ Unreal Engine 4–powered Gears of War from Black Tusk

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Industry veteran and current Microsoft Studios creative director Ken Lobb explained that Black Tusk’s take on Gears of War would be “innovative” and run on Unreal 4 in a recent interview with Edge.

“I think the reality is what we have is innovative Gears Of War. That’s what I believe they’re going to make,” said Lobb. “They’re an internal studio, but the reality is it’s cool to have [an IP] that can be a grand slam right out of the gate. The concepts they’ve been toying with are awesome. You take what they were thinking about and their expertise on Unreal Engine 4, because that’s what they’ve been playing with since their founding, and really go with the IP.”

Ken Lobb has worked in the games industry for over 20 years, helping craft such memorable classics as G.I. Joe for the NES and Goldeneye 007 for the N64 (he’s who the infamous Klobb was named after). He even took part in the discussions that led to Metroid Prime before joining Microsoft in 2001.

Black Tusk is a relatively new first-party studio, founded in 2012 under the Microsoft banner, and was supposedly working on an original IP before being charged with Gears of War. To help get the feel of the franchise, long-time Gears of War producer Rod Fergusson was also brought on as studio manager when Black Tusk took on the project.

No other details about this new Gears of War project have come out yet, as Black Tusk only began work on the project a few months ago.

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Pokémon X/Y becomes the best-selling 3DS game with 12 million sold

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The Pokémon Company has announced that Pokémon X/Y have together sold 12 million units worldwide, making them the best-selling 3DS game currently available.

It was revealed at the beginning of 2014 that the game had cracked the 11.6 million mark, so it seems to still be selling decently well considering it’s been on store shelves for six months now.

Pokémon X/Y also set the bar for the fastest selling 3DS game back when it was released in October. It sold four million copies in its first two days available, although this might be attributed partially to it being the first simultaneous global release for the franchise.

It should be noted that while these are impressive numbers, X/Y still only cracks the top five of all-time best-selling Pokémon games as Diamond/Pearl’s 17.63 million units, Ruby/Sapphire’s 16.22 million units, Black/White’s 15.42 million units, and HeartGold/SoulSilver’s 12.67 million units still sit ahead of it.

With these updated numbers, the Pokémon series has sold more than 245 million units worldwide.

To see what I thought of Pokémon X/Y when it came out, check out my review.

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