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Preview: Batman: Arkham Knight

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April 14, 2014

The Dark Knight returns

Everyone who knows me understands that I am one of the biggest Batman fans around. I spit out comic book storyline recaps like they were scripture and swear by all things The Dark Knight. So, when Warner Bros. announced Batman: Arkham Knight—and the return of Arkham Asylum and Arkham City developer Rocksteady to the franchise—my elation could hardly be contained.  My feelings of ecstasy only intensified, however, when I was finally allowed to see a half-hour of the game at GDC last week.

With bated bat-breath I watched as Rocksteady devs showed us what they’d been working on as their first project for the new generation of consoles (and PC). The Scarecrow threatens Gotham with a WMD that would flood the streets with a new, highly potent brand of his trademark fear toxin. After evacuating millions of people out of Gotham, all that remains is a skeleton police force, the criminals who want to take advantage of the mayhem, and the Batman.  But Batman isn’t alone in the shadows. In addition to Rogues Gallery mainstays like Two-Face, Penguin, and Riddler, a new villain, the Arkham Knight, emerges.

Although Rocksteady isn’t divulging too much info about the Arkham Knight himself just yet, we do know a couple of facts. First, he’s a brand new character, and he’s making his DC Universe debut in the game. We can see from pictures that he brandishes a large pistol and has taken on a motif similar to Batman’s (pointy ears, chest plate). His “anti-Batman” description also gives him an air that reminds me of the comic book villains Wrath and Prometheus. Whoever he is under that mask, we saw him get the drop on Batman during the demo, so I’m sure he’ll be quite the adversary over the course of the game.

After running through the basic plot points, we finally got to see Batman in action once again. New-gen tech has allowed for a bevy of upgrades and we got to see many of them in action. The biggest change is how Batman gets around. We finally get to drive the Batmobile. A major gameplay pillar this go around, the Batmobile is essential in helping Batman navigate a world that is 20 times larger than Arkham Asylum. But, as brand marketing producer Dax Ginn told us, the Batmobile isn’t the whole game.

“We wanted to be very confident and sure that we didn’t add the Batmobile and it suddenly just felt like a driving game or a driving bolt-on. That was something that was really, really important to us,” Ginn explains. “So, we’ve integrated Batman’s abilities and the Batmobile’s abilities, so that it very much feels like it’s a man and his machine, the integration between the two. You can eject out of the Batmobile to gain insane height, and that sort of augmentation of Batman’s gliding ability is the perfect example of how the Batmobile complements Batman’s features. There’s a lot more the Batmobile can do, but the way Batman gets into the Batmobile, gets out of the Batmobile—those things have really been designed to feel very natural and very organic.”

And from what he showed us, the Batmobile did seem to be more of a complement than the entire experience. In one segment, it launched the Caped Crusader into the night sky allowing Batman to effortlessly glide onto the roof of the building he needed to infiltrate. When Batman was ready to move onto his next objective across town, with a single button press, the Batmobile came roaring around a corner and Batman dropped into the driver’s seat, seamlessly, as Batman then raced off to his next destination. The player was in control the entire time. But between these segments there was still plenty of gliding, fighting, and case solving for the Dark Knight to do.

Also, it should be noted the Batmobile could be used for more than just catapults and driving around town. There are car-chase sequences where Batman can fire debilitating missiles to stop runaway criminals and even Riddler rooms dedicated solely to pushing the Batmobile—and your reflexes—to the limit.

“The role [Riddler] had in Arkham City, he’s more of an engineer. Very physical, constantly covered in a layer of grime, and so we wanted to think about what he would do next, where would he take the motivations he had in the previous game,” Dax says. “Integrating that with the Batmobile was an interesting design choice because he can achieve so much, even just as one guy, but it really comes down to the focus we put on the Batmobile. Driving through Gotham feels incredible, but there’s so much that it can do that the Riddler caves give us an opportunity to design puzzles that are specifically there to push the Batmobile to it’s limits, so we can really give gamers the opportunity to experience the Batmobile in all of its insane facets, not just driving incredibly quickly on the flat. You can drive up walls, drive on the ceilings, but that’s not so easy to do in the open world of the city. But the Riddler circuits can be anything, so that’s where it really starts to get fun and interesting.”

So, yes, the Batmobile can drive up walls. It is confirmed. I saw it do so, and it was amazing. But Batman’s car isn’t the only thing that’s tricked out in Arkham Knight. Gotham’s Guardian has a few new tools as well. In combat, Batman can now utilize the environment, like smashing a thug’s head through a car window, to get instant knockouts.  He can also finally use his gadgets while gliding to get even more of a drop on unsuspecting ne’er-do-wells. And speaking of gliding, the precision while doing so has been increased so Batman can even do 180-degree turns midflight.

Batman: Arkham Knight is looking great—but with only a small taste of the full game so far, I’m eager to see if Rocksteady’s plans indeed pan out. Still, if there’s anyone I trust to make a Batman game, it’s them, so I have faith they’ll be able to deliver on their promises of the best Arkham game yet. Knowing the care and detail that came off in this demo, it’s hard not to believe they’ll come through for Bat-fans everywhere in the end.

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Hands-On: World of Speed

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Shifting Gears

Racing games have been around for a long time, and several top-quality franchises immediately spring to mind for anyone with an affinity for tearing up the asphalt. But when you narrow it down to free-to-play racing games for the PC, that list shrinks significantly. So, Slightly Mad Studios—best known for the pair of Need for Speed: Shift games they’ve worked on—decided to act a bit like their namesake in order to try to mix things up. Not only do they hope to succeed in an environment that hasn’t been great for racing games, but they also want to provide something different than what’s offered by the few competitors already in the space.

Enter World of Speed, a racing MMO that hopes to deliver the look and feel of a triple-A racer while simultaneously connecting players via a social experience they usually don’t get from other games of this ilk. Sure, the game has brilliant HD graphics like Forza and all the tracks and real-world locales you’d expect from Gran Turismo, but the hook here lies in trying to win races and contests in teams and as part of larger clubs. Not to mention that, of course, since the game is free-to-play and on PC, new tracks and cars can be added at any time.

Team-based racing in and of itself isn’t necessarily a new thing, though—and this is where Slightly Mad mixes things up. Besides trying to win the race, each team member is also attempting to complete objectives to earn points. Whether it’s drafting a certain number of feet beyond an opponent, drifting through specific turns, or trading paint with so many cars, the objective points are worth more than your placement points. So, a squad that finishes third and fourth, could still beat a team that places first and second across the finish line. This adds an interesting bit of strategy to each race, since you’ll sometimes have to “throw” the actual crossing-the-finish-line part in order to hit your objectives. Yes, this actually happened during one of my races while playing the game.

I was in second place steadily for much of the race and was desperately trying to catch my opponent to hit the drafting objective. When I realized I had no chance of catching him, though, with about a half a lap to go, I slammed on the brakes and let his teammate, who was in third, pass me. I then earned the drafting points on him. In the end, my team still lost, because the partner I was randomly paired with seemed to not know what the gas pedal was, but I closed the points gap significantly with that move, even if I finished one place lower than I would’ve originally.

All this flies in the face of the basic instincts of a racing game, but the nuances added by the objectives are a fun touch and help the game straddle a line between pure simulation and arcade racer. Another element that straddles that border? The handling of the cars. The way vehicles take turns or accelerate makes them feel heavy, like there’s weight to them—just like in a simulation experience. But to make the game a little more fun, and to expand the possible objectives list, you don’t lose speed when drifting through turns, similar to an arcade-style experience like Ridge Racer. This strikes a balance you don’t often see in racing games, since they usually go one way or the other. I admit that, much like the objectives, it took some getting used to, but it only made the game feel that much more refreshing as I tried to master a new control scheme.

World of Speed left me wanting more. It fine-tunes a classic formula and makes it feel fresh again, and I was impressed even after just a couple of races with how everything handled—and how badly I wanted to form a team with some close friends. Some big questions still surround the game, such as release date and monetization, but as of right now, World of Speed seems to be set on a path straight for the winner’s circle.

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Hands-On: Armored Warfare

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March 26, 2014

Tanks, but no tanks

When I heard that the RPG specialists at Obsidian Entertainment were making another game, I already had images of mana pools and character-progression pages forming in my mind. I couldn’t have been further from the truth, however, as Obsidian wants to show everyone that even a decade-old studio can learn a new trick with Armored Warfare.

I admit that, going into my hands-on session, I didn’t know much about the project, since it had only been announced the day prior. With a name like Armored Warfare, though, I figured I could safely rule out ponies and princesses from the range of possibilities. What I wasn’t expecting, however, was the World of Tanks clone Obsidian had produced. The only discernible difference? Armored Warfare uses modern tanks—instead of those used during the mid-20th century—and a better graphics engine with CryEngine 3.

This isn’t to say Armored Warfare is a bad copy of Wargaming.net’s F2P sensation—but Obsidian scores no points for originality here. Armored Warfare’s PvP modes, multiple tiers of unlockable tanks, customization/upgrade systems, and even their F2P model are already seen in World of Tanks and feature no noticeable distinctions. What’s more, the PvE mode and destructibility in Armored Warfare will be seen in World of Tanks’ upcoming spring update, which will be well before Armored Warfare plans on hitting the market sometime in late 2014.

The PvP side of things includes the options you’d expect from a tank battler like this, highlighted by team deathmatch. There’s also a mode called Territory Wars, which encourages players to join clans. Their performance in battles while representing their respective clan then influences a metagame map as their group tries to conquer entire regions, which ups the stakes of your standard PvP fare in a similar fashion to Call of Duty: Ghosts’ Clan Wars mode.

Some originality does bleed through in PvE, at least, since there’s a loose story based around the idea of players taking on the role of a tank pilot for a massive private military contractor. With new conflicts popping up all over the world, business is good. So good, in fact, that your company has a fleet of war machines always ready for you to ride into battle to help keep your pockets lined with cash. As you earn money, both here and in PvP, you can unlock bigger and better tanks from the fleet and customize them as you see fit. And, although details are currently sparse, you’ll also be able to develop a relationship with your tank crewmembers, giving the tiniest glimpse back to Obsidian’s RPG bread-and-butter.

I tried one of the PvE missions during my hands-on time and confess to being pleasantly surprised by the gameplay. There’s an unexpected amount of balance for a game that hasn’t reached its closed beta yet. The controls felt smooth as I slid from a third-person view to a first-person angle to take careful aim down the sights of my cannon and blow up enemy AI. My tank handled well and felt very responsive as I rolled across various kinds of terrain (as responsive as a lumbering mass of steel and rubber can feel, anyway). The power of CryEngine 3 also really came through: The tiniest details were crystal clear on my PC monitor, and the destructible environments really helped convey the power of my tank as I bulldozed my way through brick buildings in a Western European countryside.

Despite the fact that the demo played really well, though, I don’t know if there’s enough in Armored Warfare, from what I’ve seen so far, to make players jump ship from Wargaming’s offering. If your biggest complaints about World of Tanks is its look and having to use heavy armor from 70 years ago, then Armored Warfare can help with their modern, CryEngine 3–built tanks. Aside from that, I’m at a bit of a loss. No matter what side of the fence you’re on, however, the fact remains that Armored Warfare is going to have a steep hill to climb as Obsidian continues to target a 2014 release for the suddenly crowded action-MMO, tank-battler genre.

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Face-Off: Oculus’s DevKit 2 vs Sony’s Project Morpheus

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I can see for miles and miles and miles…

While plenty of news came out of GDC this year, the topic on everyone’s mind was virtual reality. With both Oculus and Sony making VR-headset announcements within a 12-hour span, the race is on to see which one can first transport players to another world. Luckily, I was able to wrap both peripherals around my head this week, and I’m ready to decide who has the early lead.

 

Round 1Demos

The Oculus DevKit 2 showed off the Epic-developed “Couch Knights.” To start out, you plant your butt in a chair in both real life and the virtual world (such a stretch of my imagination). You then control a medieval-garbed, toddler-sized avatar and hop around a virtual living room, trying to kill a similar-looking puppet controlled by a second player.

Sony gave us a pair of demos. The first was Sony London’s “The Deep,” an underwater-diving simulator with minimal controls that goes horribly wrong when a great white shark mistakes your cage for dinner. The second, “The Castle,” sees players use the PS Move to wield medieval swords and a crossbow against some targets and practice dummies…and then eventually being swallowed whole by a dragon.

 

WinnerMorpheus

While I’ve seen some really impressive demos from Oculus in the past, I was a little shocked that they didn’t bring out some bigger guns to show off the new specs for DevKit 2. Sony, meanwhile, tried their best with their demos to highlight everything we’d need to know about their headset and give us a range of experiences.

Round 2Controls

As with most of their demos in the past, Oculus continued to use a wired Xbox 360 controller with the DevKit 2. Sony, on the other hand, used a PS4 controller for “The Deep” and a PS Move for “The Castle.”

 

WinnerOculus

“The Deep” and “The Castle” had significant syncing issues with their respective controllers that resulted in some haphazard playtime, which Sony blamed on Bluetooth interference around the Moscone Center. When the controls worked, it felt great. When they didn’t—about half the time—it left me frustrated and eager to take the headset off as quickly as possible. My least-favorite instance? The crossbow arrows in “The Castle” would sail off into the sky at cartoonishly ridiculous angles, even when I was aiming straight down the sights. It seems that Sony has too many moving parts right now with all those light sensors, so until they work out the bugs, Oculus wins by default with the old reliable wired controller, which worked perfectly.

Round 3Graphics/Image Quality

Both DevKit 2 and Morpheus display in 1080p and have a 90-to-100-degree vision range (depending on whether you wear glasses or not). High framerate and low latency are critical in getting the best picture across, and Sony and Oculus’ numbers mirror each other there as well.

 

WinnerMorpheus

On paper, the headsets should be producing similar visuals. Due to Sony’s years of experience with displays, however, everything on Morpheus was just a little clearer and crisper—and it was noticeable enough to edge out the DevKit 2.

Round 4Atmosphere/Immersions

This is a big one. Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida spent several minutes preaching about the importance of immersion during Tuesday’s Project Morpheus reveal, and it’s been one of Oculus’ defining pillars from the start.

 

WinnerBoth

A bit of a cop-out, I know. Each had issues that put them on the same level to me, even if they were different problems. Oculus’ older demos, and its new one, “Couch Knights,” never made me feel like I was in a different world. I always felt like I was just playing another game. DevKit 2 produced an extremely realistic illusion, however, and the headset fully pick up all my motions thanks to its new camera and sensors as I turned my head to peek behind a couch or end table.

Sony made me forget about being in a game—but only for a little while. Holding the PS4 controller with both hands helped “The Deep” pick up my full range of body motions. Due to the nature of the experience, however, I was holding the controller with two hands and moving around, but the game would only move one hand, instantly bringing me back to the real world.

“The Castle”, meanwhile, ran into problems with space. The demo made it so I had to step backward or forward a lot for the sensors to pick me up (before they completely lost sync). I stepped too far back once, though, and ran right into a wall (nothing like bruising your back to break the immersion). So, one demo started immersive but then lost it due to its controls and limitations, and the other never really tried. It’s a tie right now for negative reasons, but I’m fairly confident than with more time, both can nail this element properly.

Round 5Comfort

Oculus has added a plastic layer over its main components to protect your hands from the sensors, and it only has one cable before it splits into HDMI and USB plugs. The same cloth and adjustable straps from previous models remain when adjusting it to your head. Project Morpheus features a rubber seal that cushions the headset against your orbital bones, and it also has an adjustable front piece and straps as you place it over your head.

 

WinnerOculus

While I liked the way Sony’s rubber cushion felt against my face, and the adjustable visor was great for getting my sight lines right where I needed them to be, it also feels much heavier than the Oculus and has so many cables coming from it that you’ll be hard pressed not to trip over the rat’s nest sprouting from your head. The DevKit 2 is lighter and easier to put on as long as you remember to put your eyes in the lenses first and then pull the straps over year head, like a pair of swimming goggles. And you won’t be worried about tripping over a bunch of wires, either.

Round 6Side Effects

Reports of nausea after using the DevKit 1 were somewhat common among first-time users, but with the lack of motion blur in DevKit 2 thanks to HD graphics, higher resolution, and lower latency, Oculus hopes to lessen or even eliminate this effect. Sony had warnings plastered all over their demo booth explaining that their headset could induce similar nausea-like symptoms to those seen in DevKit 1.

 

WinnerBoth

This was a much easier tie to call, since neither headset left me with any feelings of nausea, dizziness, or anything else we’d been warned about. I was one of the people first affected by DevKit 1, and after my longest VR session yet with DevKit 2, I can report both no motion blur and no feelings of sickness. Sony’s headset also left me feeling completely fine.

Overall WinnerTie

I know. In a world where we’re constantly looking for definitives, a tie is a hard pill to swallow. The fact of the matter is, though, that after trying both headsets, I see them being in a virtual dead heat. If Shuhei Yoshida is to be believed, Sony’s been working on something like this just as long as Oculus, but they’ve just waited longer to show it, so it makes some sense that the two are so close in many ways. You could argue that Oculus is ahead, because even after they’ve poached talent from studios like id and Valve, they still don’t have nearly as many resources as Sony. On the other hand, Sony hasn’t had the community feedback like Oculus to help with their iterations.

If what I’ve found at GDC 2014 holds true and continues throughout the development of these devices, the decision will have to come down to much simpler things: retail price, accessibility, uses besides games, and whether you’re a PC person or a PS4 one. So, as much as I hate to say it, we still need to take a “wait and see” approach to this VR thing.

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Hands-On: Gauntlet

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Ray needs remake…badly

While it hasn’t had nearly as many remakes as some of its arcade brethren over the years, Gauntlet still holds a special place in many gamers’ hearts. EGM even listed the beloved “needs food…badly” quip as the No. 3 greatest videogame line of all time back in 2002. Now, Warner Bros. has secured the rights from Midway after the latter went bankrupt (and after Midway acquired the rights from Atari in the same manner), and they’ve tapped Swedish developer Arrowhead Game Studios—best known for 2011’s Magicka—to bring the series back for a modern audience.

Obviously, tailoring Gauntlet for younger gamers means some changes. I’m going to brace myself, because this is where the old-school trolls start licking their chops. But there’s actually not that much of a difference here from what arcade junkies know and love. The most immediate change you’ll notice is that you don’t continuously lose health anymore. This forced “time limit” was originally designed as another way to suck down your stack of quarters, and it would probably just piss a lot of people off nowadays. This new Gauntlet isn’t a cakewalk by any means, though. While before you’d pump in more quarters in order to revive yourself, now you need to spend the gold you find in levels.

This works because a lot of modern games have put less of an emphasis on score. It also means this remake has its own skill-based life limit in line with the spirit of the original game. An extra nuance is that when playing cooperatively, all the gold is communal, so if you have a friend who really sucks, all that extra gold you risked your life for may not be there when it’s your turn to finally kick the bucket.

Another interesting thing about gold is that it’s not used to buy weapons like in later Gauntlet ports. Instead, you get new weapons and items by finding “relics” in levels, which then give you special powers like an ice blast or better speed. As you find more and more relics, you need to make some tough choices. You’ll keep them forever, but you can only carry two at a time into a level and can’t spam them because of a recharge meter.

Beyond this, the 4-player hack-n-slash co-op action you know and love still feels a lot like it did back in the day. The four classes—Warrior, Elf, Valkyrie, and Wizard—return, but you can only have one on each team (no clones). You can choose to turn friendly fire on in order to add some extra griefing potential, but because of the communal gold, the game feels less like a competition and more like a true co-op experience, kind of like the Gauntlet Legends spin-off for the N64.

The game also features some classic dungeon designs. I played a level with an Egyptian-tomb motif that was filled with hundreds of undead mummies, and at the end, I faced off against a boss that looked a lot like Death. The classic top-down view is still present, and everything just looks like it’s received a modern coat of paint. I can’t deny that it was tons of fun to swing my Warrior’s axe while surrounded by dozens of foes.

My only real disappointment is the fact that this is currently a PC/Steam exclusive. I miss games where you could sit around a couch and play with a bunch of friends—and I don’t think of that when I hear “PC.” This feels like it’d be perfect for the Xbox One and PS4 with four controllers, but we’ll have to wait and see if Warner Bros. reconsiders after seeing how well Gauntlet does when it hits this summer.

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EGM Review: Constant C

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The C stands for charming

Constant C, a puzzle-platformer where players take control of an intrepid robot trying to right science gone wrong, immediately intrigued me when I first saw it at Tokyo Game Show last year. With a couple of simple button presses, gravity and time were mine to command, so the possibilities for countless physics-based puzzles instantly became evident. The only real question: Would the cute little bot’s platforming escapades have enough of a soul to motivate me through the dozens of stages in the final game?

The bot in question—known as Rescue Robot—is designed to activate if his space-station home ever succumbs to some calamity—and, as is quickly relayed via the master AI system, it has. After experimenting with time travel and gravity manipulation, one of the scientists’ devices runs amok, enveloping the entire station in a stasis field that’s frozen everything in place—except you, thanks to inhibitors in your robo-parts that let you walk and jump around. So, it’s fallen to your metal shoulders to see if there’s a way to turn the field off and save the facility.

The biggest hook here is how you can interact with the immobile world. Starting off only able to pull nearby objects out of stasis, you can ride the momentum of boxes that froze while falling to get to another part of a stage. Alternatively, you can clear other boxes out of your path to open up exit doors. As the story progresses, more complex obstacles, such as lasers, moving platforms, and globes, all start to hinder your progress.

Later on, your powers increase and diversify, mirroring the smooth, upward flow of difficulty you’ll see over the dozens of stages set across six levels. These include the gravity skill mentioned earlier, which allows you to turn the world on its axis by either 90 or 180 degrees, and a second stasis-dampening field that allows multiple objects in motion at once. The expansion of your powerset also, unfortunately, opens up your playtime to potentially devolve into a comedy of errors. The gravity abilities allow Rescue Robot to use momentum to fling boxes around corners and into normally unreachable positions, which fast becomes a cornerstone of gameplay.

I found having the 90- and 180-degree rotational shifts relative to your position maddening at times, however—I kept wishing that the buttons were instead assigned to specific walls in the room, and I’d often rotate myself the wrong way, thinking the leftmost wall was still X, even though now it had changed to B after my initial rotation. Yes, this is largely user error, since I kept slipping into a way of thinking that the game obviously wasn’t designed for. To do it the way I would’ve preferred would’ve required a different control scheme, possibly setting up all four directions to the D-pad or the second analog stick. Having to take a step out of the game, though, and methodically plan out my button presses instead of letting them flow naturally was a bit disappointing.

The second stasis-dampening field also comes with problems, but these are clearly on the technical side. Rescue Robot’s presence brings objects into and out of stasis at an ever-quickening rate, and the later levels require more precise timing and movements. As a result, the use of the second stasis field would often culminate in some screen tearing and lag, and it would occasionally lead to frustrating deaths for reasons that weren’t always clear.

The more I played Constant C, though, the more I forgave these shortcomings. Besides solving puzzles, you’re also encouraged to collect special data tubes. Not only do these unlock later stages, but also they allow the master AI to “remember” security footage from before the accident, letting you see what led to the space station’s eventual downfall. These movies include a surprising amount of character development by showing you the fates of your creators and provide an unexpectedly delightful, compelling backstory.

The data tubes also serve another purpose, though. Some levels are simple and straightforward, tempting you to just press on and let the station’s secrets remain undiscovered because the data tubes are tucked away behind near-impregnable defenses that truly push your reflexes. It’s here, in the optional objectives, where the overall difficulty can spike. You could probably rush through the game in about four hours, but if you want to collect all the tubes and have a more fleshed-out and enjoyable story, you’re looking at easily twice as long. If you’re a completionist like me with a penchant for punishment, however, you won’t be satisfied until you collect every last one. Plus, it always felt rewarding when I figured the puzzles out, and the process never felt daunting.

Of course, once you beat the game and collect all the data tubes, there’s not much in the way of replayability. But considering the 100-plus puzzles that push your skills with a controller, charming story, and interesting mechanics, Constant C shows—much like its plucky protagonist—that it has more than enough to overcome its shortcomings.

Developer: International Games System, 5pb • Publisher: Mages, 5pb • ESRB: E10+ • Release Date: 03.12.2014
8.5
Some minor bugs and a lack of replayability can’t hold back Constant C, a puzzle-platformer full of memorable conundrums and surprisingly charming characters.
The Good Inventive puzzles; delightful characters.
The Bad Lack of replayability; controls take some getting used to.
The Ugly Realizing how much time you spent struggling to get those last couple of data tubes.
Constant C is available on Xbox 360 and PC. Primary version reviewed was for Xbox 360. Review code was provided for the benefit of this review.
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EGM Review: Yoshi’s New Island

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This is why dinosaurs are extinct

For many gamers who grew up in the SNES era, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island was nothing short of extraordinary. Not only did the game look and play great, but no one would’ve figured that playing babysitter with Yoshi—a character himself just introduced in Super Mario World­—would be as charming or as addictive as it was. Since then, we’ve visited Yoshi’s Island a couple more times, but those subsequent sequels and spin-offs never quite lived up to that original outing that featured Baby Mario.

Nintendo never stops trying to improve on past iterations, however, so they brought in Takashi Tezuka—the original Yoshi’s Island creative director—to find a way to finally top his 1995 surprise hit. So, with the help of relatively new developer Arzest, Tezuka, now in a producer role, presents Yoshi’s New Island. But you can’t recapture the magic of Yoshi’s Island without the proper team in place, from top to bottom.

Chronologically, Yoshi’s New Island picks up immediately after Super Mario World 2. That dumb stork that let Baby Luigi get kidnapped in the first game realizes that he delivered the Mario Bros. to the wrong house. Taking flight, bundles in beak, the stork begins to search for the Bros.’ proper parents. Kamek, Baby Bowser’s caregiver and head Magikoopa, sees another opportunity to kidnap the twins. He again snatches Baby Luigi, and again lets Baby Mario slip through his fingers and fall to an island below. Luckily for Baby Mario, this happens to be the Yoshis’ second island—their summer home (kind of like those jackasses from my home state of New Jersey who vacation on Long Island). The Yoshis snatch up the future plumber and quickly realize they must unite the twins, no matter the cost.

At the very least, most of the elements you’d expect to be quality in a Nintendo game shine through here. The music’s great—I found myself sitting on the title screen while writing this review simply because I found the theme song that enjoyable. The game also looks very nice, providing the bright colors and stark contrasts that make enemies and allies alike really pop off the screen with the series’ trademark coloring-book art style. If only the same could be said of the 3D effect, which doesn’t do all that much to the world except provide a little roundness to Yoshi and some of the enemies.

Yoshi’s New Island also controls nicely, and Yoshi can use all the same moves from previous games like his stutter-step float and chowing down on enemies to turn them into eggs. He also gets some new moves that provide a little variety compared to the original game, such as making giant eggs out of giant Shy Guys to destroy the environment, or making giant metal eggs out of—you guessed it—giant metal Shy Guys to help him sink to the ocean floor.

As a fan of Super Mario World 2, I really wanted the game to reinvigorate this spin-off series. Instead, Yoshi’s New Island falls far short of its ambition. On paper, it’s as long—and features as much replayability—as the original. Six worlds, each with eight stages, and each with a bevy of collectibles in the form of stars, red coins, and flowers, could keep completionists busy for hours on end. Here, though, the stages are far shorter than in the original Yoshi’s Island, and I completed the game, with most items found, in fewer than 10 hours. This lack of depth in each stage meant I felt no joy of discovery when I came across a new warp pipe or hidden crevasse, no sense of accomplishment when I found every item on a stage. It all just felt like a cheap—and far easier—rehash of the original.

How easy, you ask? This is possibly the easiest Nintendo game I’ve ever played, and I died only a little more than a dozen times. And that’s after I killed myself several times stupidly in the last few stages because I’d become so disenchanted with the entire experience. Before this game, I don’t remember any Mario game feeling like a grind, no matter how simple it may have been at its core. Here, I found myself running into enemies a few times and letting Baby Mario cry until the timer ran down to zero, just to punish the little brat. That incessant whine served doubly as a personal torture for the fact that I ever got my hopes up in the first place.

While on the subject of torture, the game also features a multiplayer. At first, the six minigames (each unlocked after beating a world), sound like they could be a positive element if they proved worthwhile. Instead, they’re the biggest facepalm moment of all (as EGM’s Andrew Fitch can probably attest to, since he helped me test them out). Instead of versus minigames, they’re all co-op-oriented, so you’re just trying to work with a buddy to beat your own high scores over and over again. How sweet and innocent and not at all what I want from a multiplayer minigame. Could it have been that bad for the two players to face off against one another in competitive enemy-eating, coin-collecting, or balloon-popping?

Even the things Yoshi’s New Island gets right feel watered down compared to the original. I loved the boss battles from the first Yoshi’s Island.  I remember Burt the Bashful, Salvo the Slime, and Naval Piranha like it was yesterday. And while the bosses start off well here, they fall into simple patterns and die in a predictable three-hit fashion, which most of the original Yoshi’s Island bosses never did. Three hits to kill not just the first boss, but every boss, just seems so antiquated now, and it’s shocking games so often still adhere to that rule.

The Yoshi transformations remain a lot of fun but falter for different reasons. Like before, our tongue-happy dinosaur pal can become a helicopter and a submarine, but he can now also change into a bobsled, a jackhammer, a mine cart, or a hot-air balloon. But even this is spoiled by the fact that you’re forced to use the 3DS’ gyroscope to control Yoshi through the special sections, making what could’ve been a saving grace clunky and awkward instead.

You can’t blame Nintendo for trying to capitalize on a character that clearly holds a special place in many gamers’ hearts. In retreading ground most of their audience will be familiar with—and doing it less successfully this time around—it just seems they went about it the wrong way. As a platformer, Yoshi’s New Island works fine, but it’s definitely not up to Nintendo’s usually stellar standards.

Developer: Arzest • Publisher: Nintendo • ESRB: E – Everyone • Release Date: 03.14.2014
6.0
It may say “new” in the title, but there’s simply not enough to get excited about in Yoshi’s New Island. Fans of the original will probably be turned off by this inferior and all-too-familiar retread.
The Good Fun boss battles; new eggs and transformations for Yoshi.
The Bad Relies too heavily on nostalgia to cover up gameplay deficiencies.
The Ugly The return of the most annoying sound in videogames: Baby Mario’s crying.
Yoshi’s New Island is a Nintendo 3DS exclusive and was reviewed using a retail code provided by Nintendo.
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Ubisoft Toronto working on five unannounced projects

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Ubisoft Toronto is working on five unannounced projects, two of which are being co-developed with other studios, managing director Jade Raymond revealed to Toronto’s The Star at SXSW yesterday.

While her talk was devoid of details for these projects, Raymond did provide a peek at Ubisoft’s mindset, talking about more blockbuster, AAA-franchises with comic book and movie tie-ins coming down the line. Even though the idea of potential “transmedia” IP is at the forefront of many minds at Ubisoft, Raymond reiterated that the company’s focus remains on games first.

“Our business is making games, so we have to make sure we’re making good games, first and foremost,” Raymond said. “I don’t think we can think out the gate, ‘How is this going to be a good movie?’ I don’t know anything about movies. I’ve never made a movie in my life.”

Raymond also mentioned that diversifying Ubisoft’s library beyond console/PC titles and having exclusive mobile franchises is a priority for her as well. According to her, games with a strong social element will only continue to grow in popularity over the coming years.

Jade Raymond is probably best known in game development for her role as producer on the original Assassin’s Creed before helping found Ubisoft Toronto in 2009. So far, the studio has only worked with their older sister Ubisoft Montreal on last year’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist. They are currently, supposedly, helping out with the constantly-in-limbo Rainbow Six: Patriots.

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EGM Review: Walking Dead: Season Two: Episode 2 – A House Divided

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Cannot stand on its own

After nearly three months between episodes (the holiday break no doubt adding to the delay), we finally get a chance to play out the cliffhanger ending from the first episode of The Walking Dead: Season Two from Telltale. Because I want to avoid spoilers, I’ll talk about Episode 2 – A House Divided in broader terms than usual.

For as much as I looked forward to it, A House Divided is my least favorite episode of the eight Walking Dead chapters we’ve received so far. While it’s clearly designed to set up events for the last three parts of the season, it develops at a much faster pace than players may be used to. In only 90 minutes, the entire group changes, both in terms of its personality and its makeup. This accelerated storytelling meant that the gravity of most situations didn’t hit me until after I’d finished the episode, so many of the “gut check” moments that have come to define the series just weren’t there in my eyes.

I think part of the problem is that there’s so much focus on action in this chapter. A House Divided offers almost no exploration or puzzle-solving to speak of, moments that normally allow players a chance to catch their breath—or at least lull them into a false sense of security. Here, it seemed like Clem was just thrown into crisis after crisis where lives were at stake, dulling the effects of members added or subtracted from the group. Plus, the couple of conundrums thrown Clem’s way are overly simple and not really worth being called “puzzles.”

One story element that is enjoyable? Ramifications from Season One and 400 Days finally start to crop up. Even though I was partially expecting it, a powerful reunion took place that was one of the more moving moments I’ve ever seen in a game.

Other problems arise beyond the quickened pace, however. The most glaring is that Clem, an 11-year-old girl, has become the leader of the group. While it makes sense that everyone sees her as wise beyond her years due to what she’s been through, putting the fate of so many lives solely in her hands feels wrong. Maybe it’s the idea of her having lost so much innocence that really doesn’t sit well with me, but seeing her pretty much boss around middle-aged physician Carlos, twentysomething Luke, and the rest of the group just doesn’t work.

Also, with all the action on display in this episode, I rarely felt as if what I did with the controller mattered. We’ve had to shoot zombies in the series before, and you have to do it again here. Clem’s known how to shoot a pistol for two years now, and she’s shot zombies from point-blank range plenty of times. So, when placed once again into such a situation, why does it take three tries for Clem to get the satisfying, brain-blasting explosion when I put the aiming reticule on a zombie’s forehead to get a headshot kill? You still have a large enough zombie horde to trigger the familiar click of an empty chamber and lead into the predictable scene where Clem has to run for her life and fend off one of the undead hand-to-hand. Don’t make me feel like I’m wasting my time.

And that’s the thing about A House Divided: While it does a nice job of changing up the setting and puts all the pieces in place for what should be a crazy third episode, Episode 2 is mostly just filler, and I felt like it wasted my time to a degree. If you’re a fan of the series, obviously, you should play it, because your decisions will continue to carry over—and you can’t play Episode 3 without getting through this first. You might want to hold off until the third episode is about to be released, however, so that you can quickly get the taste of Episode 2 out of your mouth with what will hopefully be a nice payoff.

Developer: Telltale Games • Publisher: Telltale Games • ESRB: M – Mature • Release Date: 03.04.14
6.0
A House Divided is the weakest episode, by far, in Telltale’s Walking Dead series. Much of the action and plot “twists” are predictable and don’t hold nearly as much weight as in previous episodes.
The Good Old friends from Season One and 400 Days finally make their presence known.
The Bad A faster, more action-oriented pace dulls the effects of the more “dramatic” moments.
The Ugly An 11-year-old ends up bossing around a ton of adults in the middle of the Zombie Apocalypse.
The Walking Dead: Season Two: Episode 2 – A House Divided is available on Xbox 360, PS3, PC, and iOS devices. Primary version reviewed was for the Xbox 360 with a retail code provided by Telltale.
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Bethesda announces Wolfenstein, Evil Within, and Dishonored art books

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Wolfenstein: The New Order, The Evil Within, and Dishonored art books are on their way through a partnership with Dark Horse Comics, Bethesda announced today.

The first of these books, The Art of Wolfenstein: The New Order, takes a look at MachineGames’ upcoming first-person shooter set in an alternate timeline to the original Wolfenstein games. It will be released first at comic book retailers May 14, then bookstores later on May 27. The art book spans more than 200 pages and features concept art, designer commentary, in-depth looks at settings and technology, and more.

The Art of The Evil Within will be released sometime in August. Bethesda did not mention a specific date, but it is currently  listed on Amazon as the same date as the game: August 26.

The third and final art book Dark Horse and Bethesda are producing is Dishonored: Dunwall Archives, expected to hit shelves sometime in November.

All three books will retail for $39.99.

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