Fable fans have waited three years for a proper return to Albion, and they’ll finally get a chance with Fable Legends, which I got to see firsthand on the Gamescom show floor.
Keep in mind, however, that what I saw simply scratched the surface. By the sounds of it, Legends is far from anywhere near complete. If I had to hazard a professional guess, a holiday 2014 release date would be optimistic at this point.
From what I was able to gather from the reveal—as well as a 10-minute demo further illustrating basic game mechanics—Legends will be a throwback to the era of the original Fable, where heroes were plentiful and it seemed that almost anyone could channel strength, skill, or will. Unlike heroes of the past games, however, players will choose from one of several pre-determined warriors who specialize in one of these three pillars of Fable combat. This is a drastic shift away from the customization for which Fable is known, and even if you’re able to create your characters, limiting their abilities might make longtime fans wary.
The major reason for shifting away from one-size-fits-all characters? Legends is designed around four-player co-op. Either with three friends, three AI characters, or a mix of the two, players will always be traveling with a pack of heroes in order to quell the coming threats to Albion.
Whether these quests will be individual adventures or be part of an overarching story is yet to be seen, but I think the latter’s less likely. A level-summary screen popped up at certain points in the demo, which seems to indicate that each specific quest will stand on its own. This would also fit the idea of players taking on a collection of legends from Albion’s past instead of going on a new adventure with semi-fleshed-out characters.
Not everything will be foreign to returning players in Legends, though. The game will still feature a central town that will host the same manner of minigames that have become staples of Fable, such as blacksmithing or chicken-kicking. It’s not clear yet whether this will serve as a hub world where you can recruit other heroes on your adventuring ways, almost like a MMO.
But it’s not all about being a hero—a unique gameplay twist in Legends is that players can now choose to be the villain. This core evildoer will look at the game from a RTS perspective and plant Hobbes, Balverines, and other manner of foes in the heroes’ way and will gain XP and gold depending on how well their defenses hamper the heroes’ progress.
As much as Fable Legends worries me in regards to story, gameplay, and every other key feature, I’ll admit that it does looks really nice on the Xbox One. The demo provided a level of detail on my favorite fantastical creatures like never before—and, if nothing else, Lionhead has shown that they can definitely tap into the power of Microsoft’s upcoming console. Since the game’s still more than likely at least another 18 months out, there’s plenty of time for Lionhead to work out the kinks. That’s the Microsoft way now, after all, isn’t it?
The first two Kinect Sports games helped pave the way for casual gamers on the first Kinect, and while it won’t be available at launch, Kinect Sports Rivals aims for a similar success when it releases in spring 2014. At Gamescom, I went hands-on with two of the six sports Rivals will feature and got a firsthand look at the new Kinect facial-recognition technology.
First, it was time to create an avatar. While the goofy, kiddie fare of the past has been mercifully scrapped here, the new avatars in Rivals are still meant to be somewhat unrealistic—in theory, they’re supposed to match enough of your actual features so that you feel like you’re truly in the game.
Before I took control of the demo myself, I watched several others go through the face-scanning process and saw some amazingly accurate scans courtesy of Kinect 2.0—and also some that got everyone laughing. A bald man whose avatar was graced with wavy, flowing locks was probably the most humorous…at least until I took the podium.
The system immediately had trouble with my face. Usually, it can sense when you’re wearing glasses and will ask you to take them off (they’ll add some generic, Drew Carey–style black frames later). My frames were too thin (the game must have a “hipster” setting that I didn’t trigger), so Kinect scanned my face as if my glasses were actually the areas around my eyes. This led to several other mistakes, and in the end, I wound up appearing as a bald black man instead of an Italian-American from Jersey.
Allegedly, the customization in the final game will be robust enough that you can go in and fix anything you want—or give yourself ridiculous features like a blue Mohawk—but those features weren’t in the demo. So, I changed my skin tone, gave myself some hair, and threw on a beard, since goatees weren’t in the game yet, either.
The six sports featured in Kinect Sports Rivals include returning games like Bowling, Soccer, and Tennis, along with newcomers Target Shooting, Rock Climbing, and Wake Race. I was able to try two of the newest offerings, Wake Race and Rock Climbing.
Wake Race will immediately remind gamers of the N64 era, since it’s a pretty blatant copy of that system’s Wave Race 64. You race watercraft around a course, and the person in the lead after three laps is the winner.
The controls are simple, and I was surprised to find that the Kinect sensor followed me perfectly. You reach out and grab imaginary handlebars to let the game know you’re ready to go, and you control the throttle simply by opening and closing your right hand. Yes, that’s right—Kinect perfectly recognized when I made a fist or had my had open.
You tilt left or right to steer and stomp your feet to use a speed boost, which you can earn by doing tricks off ramps. Speed boosts can also be triggered via voice commands, but due to the noise level at Gamescom, this option was disabled for the demo. You can also perform tricks simply by leaning forward and back while your character’s in the air.
Once the game actually launches and your friends start creating avatars, you can, in theory, populate your friends’ games with your avatar—and vice versa. This actually reminds me a bit of Forza 5’s Drivatars, since the better you play, the more challenging your avatar will be if your friends download you into their games—making the challenge personal, even when you’re not doing split-screen in the same room.
Next, I got to try out Rock Climbing. Again, this wasn’t a very strenuous activity—maybe Rare learned their lesson from the exhausting running in place during American Football in Kinect Sports 2. All I had to do was reach above my head with open hands, grab when near a handhold, and pull downward to lift up my in-game avatar.
If I felt adventurous, I could jump up to put some distance between me and my rivals—of course, this also risked falling to a previous checkpoint in the race. But that wasn’t the best part: I could even reach out and grab rivals who were ahead of me and throw them off the course. They could do the same to me, but this actually incorporated some strategy into the experience and made it less of a blind race.
Overall, the Kinect detection wasn’t as sharp in Rock Climbing as in Wave Race, and I fell several times when the system failed to register my closed hand. I also got thrown off by a competitor when Kinect didn’t sense that I’d moved. That actually gave me the chance to see how fun Rock Climbing could be, though—I ultimately returned the favor on my competitor later on the climb.
Like with most Kinect-oriented titles, this one’s going to boil down to how well Microsoft’s motion sensor performs. Still, Kinect Sports Rivals is shaping up to be a fine continuation of the casual gameplay of the first two games, especially if the developers smash the few bugs seen at Gamescom.
While the first two of seven new multiplayer modes were revealed last week, Activision saved another one for Gamescom. I checked out Blitz mode and the new map, Chasm, that was revealed during the Xbox One press briefing.
Blitz feels like a twist on Capture the Flag, but instead of grabbing a flag, now the players are the flags. This mode sets up two points on opposite ends of the map, with a simple objective: Any player on your team must get into the opponent’s scoring zone, and vice versa. If a player walks into the zone, they’re teleported back to their base and score a point for their team. This means that, essentially, both teams are on offense and defense at the same time.
An interesting little catch, though, is that the developers are already one step ahead of players and have built in a preventive measure to guard against massive scoring from a team working well together—say, four guys moving in tandem across the map. Once a player enters the scoring zone, a 10-second timer starts before someone else can enter. This gives the opposing team time to regroup, and it could put some folks’ survival skills to the test if they’re waiting out the timer near the zone.
This makes Blitz seem like a potential favorite stomping ground for lone wolves. Since you can only score with one person at a time, staying away from teammates might prove more useful if you can hold your own in a firefight. You’ll still have to work together to see who’s making their way to the base, but sending only one or two guys out a time and having the rest camp out near the base might prove a fruitful strategy.
What was most interesting about my hands-on time at Gamescom, however, was that the new map and mode were kept separate. So, I played Blitz on Octane and Strikezone, but I didn’t get to explore Chasm until I went back to Search & Rescue. This makes me think that Blitz may be limited to small to mid-sized maps.
Chasm’s probably my favorite of the new maps we’ve seen thus far. While it’s not as spread out as Whiteout, it’s got a lot of verticality: You’ll work your way through the rubble of a collapsed building and down through the street into a subway system. Since the map features several layers of small platforms, high ground will be critical depending on the modes you play, and several points are perfect for camping and protecting objective points—in this case, placing bombs for Search & Rescue.
The new audio system for Ghosts really shined on Chasm. During my session, players would shout out targets near cubicles or on railway lines rather steadily. I don’t know if the excess noise at last week’s event prevented the system from working as flawlessly as it should’ve, but I heard everything loud and clear at Gamescom.
So, three down, four to go on the Ghosts multiplayer reveals. As of right now, Search & Rescue remains my personal favorite, but Infinity Ward is certainly capable of topping it with something surprising down the line.
At Gamescom, I was able to get my first hands-on with Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag‘ssingle-player campaign. Instead of getting the typical scripted story mission, however, Ubisoft threw me into the middle of the Caribbean Sea for 30 minutes and simply said, “Have fun!” The only limitations? I couldn’t go into Nassau and Kingston yet if I wanted to dock at a major city. Only Havana was available, as well as many of the lesser islands. Of course, the odds of me getting even close to Havana were slim to none, because there was so much to do on the way.
I began the demo on the deck of the Jackdaw, protagonist Edward Kenway’s personal vessel. Eager to try out the revamped sailing mechanics, I immediately took aim at a Spanish convoy protected by some smaller gunships. Looking through my spyglass with a simple tap of a trigger button, I could tell what the convoy was carrying and opened my sails up full, charging rather brashly into battle. While it took me a little time to orient myself to the new aiming mechanics and variety of buckshot, I was fortunate that the bow of the Jackdaw was already heavily fortified, since I plowed headfirst into the aft of one of the gunships. From here, I rained cannon fire on my enemies, easily taking aim with the swivel guns to remove the smaller threats to my crew and using flaming buckshot to quickly wear down my prize’s health.
After dispatching the smaller ships and breaking the main mast of my target, I began the boarding process with a simple button press. From there, my crew let fly grappling hooks that brought our two ships closer together. Once within range, I jumped onto a swivel gun and let some smaller cannon fire whittle down the crew of the opposing ship. Then I jumped across myself and threw another man overboard while stabbing two others in the face with my hidden blade. The ship— and its booty—was ours.
Ah, but since it’s a pirate’s life for me, here was the big question: What to do with the ship? Since I’d crashed as soon as the battle began, I chose to repair the Jackdaw and was rewarded with a short scene of my crew carving up the enemy ship and bringing lumber and other supplies onboard my own vessel. I then sailed away from the empty husk and took aim for shark-infested waters.
Here, I decided to do some hunting. From a rowboat, I threw a harpoon tied to a rope at the head of a bull shark. It didn’t take too kindly to that and rampaged in the water—pulling me and my crew deeper into the sea. After several more harpoons, however, I had some fresh shark meat and skin that could surely be sold onshore for some coin.
Then came my most enjoyable part of the demo, when I took the diving bell down into the sunken hull of a ship as I looked for treasure. This segment intrigued me, because it felt so foreign to Assassin’s Creed. Normally, we’re always adding more armor and weapons to our hero—or our ship—becoming more and more empowered. Here, Edward strips himself of everything in order to more easily sink with the bell to the bottom of the sea. This leaves him unusually vulnerable to the sea urchins, moray eels, and the variety of sharks that roam the area.
Defenseless, I felt somewhat panicked as I swam as fast I could through the rotted ship’s carcass. My goal? Seven different treasures and two Animus pieces. While no one would tell me what the Animus pieces could do, the ship wasn’t considered picked clean until I gathered them up. I barely escaped with my life as several sharks took chunks out of me—I had to punch one in the nose after he clamped onto my leg, which left a trail of blood that began to attract several of the original shark’s friends.
Next, I docked at a small island and took on an assassination contract. Luckily, the target was nearby. I stealthily began to approach my target—making sure to tag him with eagle vision—and took out two nearby guards. Unfortunately, I wasn’t stealthy enough and spooked the target, who then proceeded to run to his nearby ship. I took a couple of shots at him with my pistols, but I missed—badly—and had to chase after him in the Jackdaw. After sinking his ship, I collected my bounty and began my seemingly endless quest toward Havana once more.
Unfortunately, my demo time ended here. The session flew by, though, and while I only saw a small portion of everything going on in the world, I felt like I’d done so much. Depending on how you look at it, Assassin’s Creed IV could be a completionist’s nightmare—or a dream come true. After pulling up the map and zooming out, I discovered that I’d only covered a very small patch and hadn’t even attempted a single story mission, meaning that Black Flag is easily shaping up to be the largest, most immersive game in the series yet.
The more things change, the more they stay the same
At this point, everyone has seen the trailer or at least gotten the cliffnotes to everything announced at the Call of Duty: Ghosts multiplayer press conference. If you haven’t though, be sure to Chris’ write-up on all the new multiplayer details.
For the rest of you, though, you probably want to know how a lot of these announcements actually affect the gameplay. Well, we’ve got you covered. I was able to sit down with Ghosts’ multiplayer for about 90 minutes and put the new modes and maps through their paces.
Let’s start with the new modes. Two of seven new modes being added to the game were shown to us, and the first one I saw was Cranked. In this twist on Team Deathmatch, players who get a kill are given a speed boost as reward. The speed boost lasts for 30 seconds, but if you don’t kill anyone else in that time, your character literally explodes. Talk about messing with your K/D ratio.
After playing several matches, I realized a couple of things. The speed boost doesn’t stack, so there are only two speeds—normal and fast—and if you explode, there’s no splash damage that can hurt opponents. So anyone thinking that a suicide bomber strategy might help win the match or salvage that K/D, think again.
Also, 30 seconds is a lot more time than you might think. I saw a lot of people who started running around like a chicken with their heads cut off when their timer began and got mowed down by enemy fire before they even came close to running out of time. Panicking doesn’t help you or your team.
After Cranked, we got to try out Search & Rescue. This is a twist on Search & Destroy and Kill Confirmed–style matches. Kill an opponent, then collect their dog tags to remove them from the match altogether. If an ally grabs the dog tags first, the person will respawn. Since I love both of these modes, I had a lot more fun with Search & Rescue than Cranked. Just like classic Search & Destroy, you don’t have to eliminate the entire enemy team if you are on the offensive, since there are also two points where you can plant a bomb.
Honestly, the modes may be described as “new,” but neither reinvent the wheel. All we’re seeing is some unique little twists being added to classic modes, or modes being combined and passed off as something revolutionary. But, I can’t deny that these modes, especially Search & Rescue, we’re a lot of fun to play.
Aside from these new modes, we also played Domination a couple of times, which remains the same as ever.
We also got to play on three brand new maps: Strikezone, Whiteout, and Octane.
Octane is a medium-sized map based around an abandoned gas station and a western ghost town. As demonstrated in the trailer, this map featured destructible walls and structures. Players can blow apart the supports to the gas station roof, causing it to collapse into new cover, or crush players underneath. While I didn’t see anyone stupid enough to get squished, the few times we did level the station it definitely caused a huge shift in strategy. Terrain morphed and closed off some old paths, while new ones opened up. When we played Cranked on Octane, the disorientation proved deadly—a few players found themselves lined up in enemy crosshairs after not being able to find a way through the rubble.
The next map was Whiteout, and was easily my favorite of the event. It was a massive, open map that afforded players plenty of sniper perches in abandoned vacation cabins, as well as cover through twisting, ice-covered caves. While playing on this map though, I admit to having flashbacks to the White Pass map from Battlefield: Bad Company 2. While the attention to detail here was much higher (as I would hope with next-gen on the horizon), the feeling of sniping from a second floor window overwhelmed my nostalgia factor at times as we played Search & Rescue.
The final map was Strikezone. Easily my least favorite, this was probably the smallest map I can remember in recent history. It seemed comparable in size to Hijacked from Black Ops II, but with even less cover and a square layout overall instead of Hijacked’s elongated corridors. There is nothing more frustrating than spawning in maps like these, since—with everyone running around in such a confined space—you’ll often pop up right next to an enemy and be dead again before getting your bearings. It also had very little going on in it. While the idea of a firefight breaking out in a stadium hot dog stand sounded fun, it turned out to be anything but.
After exhausting the modes, I attempted to go in-depth with the customization, but we were on an unforgiving rotation that prevented me from truly messing around with the new point-value perk system (where some perks are worth more than others) or really mess with my character. I was able to cycle through some pre-assigned camo options like arctic, desert, urban, and the classic jungle, and gave my soldier a badass helmet before being whisked into another match. But it was nice to see so many of Ghosts‘ new female character models on the maps. Ultimately, these customization options are more about personal tastes than anything else, since they don’t change things like movement speed or health. It’s just another way of putting a personal stamp on your Call of Duty experience.
I also got to experience the new Field Orders feature, where a blue briefcase will randomly appear on the body of a felled enemy and provide you and your team a Care Package if you complete certain extra objectives, ranging from getting a kill while jumping to performing so many headshots. This was an interesting addition, but not one that most people I played with cared about. I’d often see the briefcase just sitting there, so lonely, waiting for a player to try their hand at its challenge. But no one ever bothered, because there’s so much else going on in a multiplayer match to worry about.
At the end of the day, the new modes and maps were nice, but it’s still the core Call of Duty experience that millions of people have come to love. There was little here to make me think that what we’ve grown accustomed to over the years, besides the next-gen prettiness of it all, will be getting a massive change. Some of the things announced at the press conference, like Clans, weren’t available to me when I wanted to check them out, but the idea of making clan tags more official and rewarding players as a group for doing well on top of individually has a lot of potential.
Overall, if you love Call of Duty, I don’t see anything here that will turn you off to Ghosts. On the other hand, if you’re looking for a true game-changer, what I saw suggests that you’ll probably have to keep looking.
When you consider the phenomenon that the first Plants vs. Zombies became—being ported countless times to every system available and inspiring every piece of merchandise imaginable—it’s no wonder that the folks at PopCap would, at some point, get around to making a sequel. Instead of resting on their laurels and riding the massive wave of success generated by the first game to an easy payday, however, Plants vs. Zombies 2 erects a wondrous monument on the foundation of its predecessor that has the potential to consume every free second you have—if you let it.
Building a bit on the story of the first game, PvZ 2 sees your neighbor, good ol’ Crazy Dave, construct a talking time machine out of his car. After eating the most delicious taco ever assembled, Dave gets the idea of using his time machine to travel several minutes back in time to consume this hallowed taco once more. Being in the vicinity of the car, you’re pulled back with Dave, but instead of several minutes, you’re sent back several thousand years. Now, you must battle zombie hordes with the help of Dave and his sentient automobile, traveling through time as you try to get back home.
The biggest change that most players will notice is that, unlike its predecessor, Plants vs. Zombies 2 is free-to-play (not to mention starting out as an exclusive on iOS devices). Fans needn’t worry about free-to-play becoming pay-to-win, or about any story content being gated, though. The entire game can be played without you having to pay a dime, and only one of the new plant types is locked by a purchase. Plus, the extra good news is that PopCap has promised continual content updates to the game through this system.
Despite the switch to a free-to-play model, both the core tower-defense gameplay and cheesy humor that made Plants vs. Zombies so great return here in droves. The obvious additions are dozens of new plants, like the fire-breathing Snapdragon or kung-fu-proficient Bop Choy, and new zombies, like the sun-stealing Ra Zombie. Along with these new characters comes a bevy of powers that you can utilize at any time.
Some of these powers come from supercharged plant food that you acquire by defeating special green-tinted zombies. By utilizing it at the right time, you can turn the tide of any battle, and each plant has its own appropriate special attacks. Old standbys like Pea Pods will shoot a continuous stream of pellets, perfect for wearing down shielded zombies, while Bop Choy will deliver furious roundhouse kicks and swinging haymakers that allow it to attack not only directly in front of it, but in adjacent lanes as well.
Utilizing the touchscreen feature of the iOS devices, PvZ 2 can also give the player special powers that you can purchase either with in-game currency earned by playing well, or by dropping some real-world cash via the in-game store. These powers can serve as a Hail Mary for some more troublesome maps. For a few seconds, one power grants you the ability to electrocute any zombie onscreen and turn them to ash. Another allows you to pinch zombie heads off their bodies, instantly killing them. And the final power allows you to flick zombies off the screen and into an unknown abyss from whence they will never return. When you combine the new plant food feature with these powers, you have countless new strategies that can potentially open up.
Outside of the action on each main level, there are plenty of side activities as well, providing some much-appreciated gameplay variety in the form of minigames and challenge maps. Whether it’s using only a certain number of total plants in the match or starting with plants already on the field that you can’t let die, the challenge maps add a ton of replayability.
There is, however, a fine line between replayability and grinding. The one negative in PvZ 2 is that in order to advance from ancient Egypt to the pirate world and finally to the Wild West, you need to collect a certain number of stars—and these stars usually will require you to do the same story levels over and over again, collecting them one at a time. Although it’s enjoyable at first, after a while, it feels needless to constantly backtrack and retread ground, like some infuriating JRPG.
Putting that aside, though, there’s no way I can’t recommend Plants vs Zombies 2: It’s About Time if you have an iOS device. It doesn’t cost you a single cent to play, it maintains the same addictive strategy elements of the first game, and it adds a ton of new gameplay variety. If the first Plants vs. Zombies was a sensation, Plants vs. Zombies 2 may turn the franchise into a way of life.
Developer: PopCap Games • Publisher: Electronic Arts • ESRB: N/A • Release Date: 08.15.2013
9.0
PopCap maintains the addictive tower-defense gameplay and cheesy humor that made the first Plants vs. Zombies such a phenomenon, while adding a plethora of new features that ensure this game will consume every free second you have—if you let it.
The Good
A near-unbelievable amount of enjoyable additions.
The Bad
Can become a bit of a grind when forced to replay a lot of levels before advancing to the next world.
The Ugly
Fire-breathing flowers and highly combustible zombie flesh.
Plants vs. Zombies 2: It’s About Time is currently an iOS exclusive.
Drama in games is a good thing—it has the potential to show the growth of the medium. But with a heavy emphasis on action due to the popularity of shooters and the like, it’s easy for game developers to shy away from pushing for unique plots or rich storylines as they gravitate toward what’s been proven to sell. That’s somewhat understandable, since everyone wants to collect a paycheck and have a job at the end of the day. But this makes those few games that take narrative risks truly stand out above the din of explosions and gunfire.
There’s a fine line, however, in utilizing dramatic tones. There’s a risk of going overboard. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons follows a pair of siblings on a fantastical quest to find magical water that can cure their sickly father. A simple concept, but the game’s true focus is on the relationship between the duo and how they interact with this world—and each other. Brothers looks to tell a story with the depth of character many of us long for but so rarely are given in videogames.
Unfortunately, the game finds itself on the precarious opposite end of the drama spectrum, beating players ham-fistedly over the head with a slew of moments meant to make our hearts clench. Instead, they turned me off.
A perfect example is the game’s opening cutscene. In what seemed like a tribute to Titantic, the younger brother is on a rowboat, desperately trying to hold onto his mother as she slips beneath the waves, drowning. In concept, it’s a powerful moment, but since it was the very first thing I saw, the weight of that moment was largely lost. There simply wasn’t enough context for me to care. For much of the game, all this flashback does is establish why the younger brother is afraid of water and needs to be ferried by his older sibling across rivers and streams.
I’d argue that this memory would’ve been infinitely more powerful if it came later in the game—after we’d figured out that only the older brother can swim. This would’ve given the characters room to breathe and grow, instead of being smothered by this cloud of despair right from the start. I’ll avoid spoiling some moments from later in the game, but these overly dramatic instances are frequent enough that the experience becomes less enjoyable as a whole.
That’s not to say that some segments don’t hit it out of the park. At times, the gravitas of the situation was clear, and I felt those heartstrings pulled. I’m just saying that much of the drama felt like the developers were fishing with hand grenades. It was overkill.
Besides its overt attempts at deep storytelling, Brothers also experiments with a novel control scheme. It’s possibly the simplest set of controls I’ve seen on a modern console: The shoulder buttons move the camera, the trigger buttons let a brother interact with items in the world, and the twin sticks move each character around. This gives Brothers the feeling that anyone could potentially pick it up and play it. The simplicity of the controls are a double-edged sword, however, that creates two problems.
First, it gets confusing if the brother assigned to the right stick crosses to the left side of the screen—or vice versa. It took almost the entirety of the game (it’s only a three-hour romp altogether) for my brain to get used to controlling both of them at the same time.
This isn’t nearly as problematic as the fact that the simple control scheme leads to very simple puzzles. Not once in Brothers was I hindered by anything thrown at me. Whether it was a “boss” (I use that term lightly here), a dual-action brainteaser, or a puzzle that could be handled by only one of the characters, everything from a gameplay perspective felt underdeveloped, especially as the sequences began repeating themselves towards the end of the game.
Still, Brothers does shine in some areas. The aesthetics—especially in the later levels—depict a beautifully diverse fantasy world that I wish I could’ve played around in a little more. Icy waters populated with whales, blood-drinking tribesmen, and a land ravaged by a war between giants are all aspects of the brothers’ world that made me wish I could’ve broken free from the linear path. These fleeting glimpses filled my heart with wonder—far more than the brothers’ quest ever did—and the animators should be applauded for this effort.
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons has a solid-but-flawed foundation. It tries to tell an intriguing and emotional story, but it feels like it’s talking down to the player more often than not—and the gameplay’s simply not deep and engaging enough to overcome this. With only three hours of content and no replayability (once the story’s told, there’s nothing to make you come back for more), it’s hard to recommend Brothers to anyone but the most voracious fantasy fans.
Developer: Starbreeze Studios • Publisher: 505 Games • ESRB: T – Teen • Release Date: 08.07.13
6.0
While Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons occasionally succeeds in tugging at the heartstrings, there’s a heavy-handedness that runs through a good portion of the drama—and that’s off-putting. The unique controls take too long to get used to (considering this is only a three-hour experience), and the puzzles are simple and repetitive. The aesthetics are definitely pleasing, however. In the end, Brothers doesn’t do anything terribly wrong, but it doesn’t do anything spectacularly well, either.
The Good
Terrific art style; some genuine emotional moments.
The Bad
A fair amount of ham-handed, unnecessary drama; simple, repetitive puzzles.
The Ugly
Going cross-eyed from the twin-stick control system.
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is available on Xbox 360 (XBLA). It will release on PC on August 28th, 2013, and PS3 (PSN) on September 3rd, 2013. Primary version reviewed was for Xbox 360 (XBLA).
In anticipation of next week’s release of DuckTales: Remastered on PSN, Nintendo eShop, and Steam, and next month’s release on XBLA, Capcom sent a special package out to remind some of us of those great childhood memories we might’ve had playing the game.
At first we here at the EGM office thought it was just a lunchbox with the sweet art for DuckTales: Remastered plastered on the front. A fine piece of swag in and of itself. But, as I am wont to do with most packages that come into the EGM office, I gave it a good hearty shake before placing it down and realized there was something inside the tin bin.
Upon opening it, to our joyful surprise, we found the contents of the box were possibly as valuable as the whole of Scrooge’s moneybin. The lunchbox had been holding a limited edition golden NES cartridge for DuckTales (ours was numbered 107 of 150). Now, we don’t know if the cartridge is actually a legitimate, playable cartridge, but it has contacts and is well put together enough that we at least vow to bring an NES into the office tomorrow to try it out.
Along with the cartridge came a certificate of authenticity, several Duckburg themed coupons similar to those that you might find in an old school NES box, and advertisements from Capcom to check out some of their other classic games like MegaMan, Bionic Commando, and Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins.
You can check out the fully laid out contents of the box in the pictures below. Woo-oo!
UPDATE:
The NES cartridge does indeed work after some tests (and several NES’s) and is the 1989 version of the game.
Before everyone gets all in a huff, we know Shigeru Miyamoto is the man behind Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, Donkey Kong, and most every other beloved Nintendo franchise. But since this is a Pikmin-centric interview, we simply referred to him as “Pikmin Creator.” And yes, we were able to get a few minutes with this videogame legend and chat about the upcoming Pikmin 3.
EGM:So, it’s never easy to launch a game—any game—but Pikmin 3 was originally supposed to be a launch window title and got pushed back. What went into that decision to push it back, and what were you able to accomplish with the extra time?
Shigeru Miyamoto: Well, I guess one simple explanation for what happened was, in helping prepare the launch titles, I was a little bit too busy working on NintendoLand and the other games. The other reason is that we had a bit of an extravagant goal with Pikmin 3. We want this to be a game for people who haven’t really played games before. We want this to be a game that, from a controls and gameplay perspective, they can play. Even if they sort of take their time and learn the game rules, they could play through the game and experience it and enjoy it. But at the same time, we want it to be a game that really avid and experienced gamers can very quickly get and jump right into the depth of the gameplay and really experience it through the replayability and the high scores and the challenge that it offers.
This is obviously a very complicated task—to create a game that bridges both of those audiences. So if we had put some more effort into it, it’s possible that we could’ve released Pikmin 3 earlier and had it ready in February or March, but as we got close to that time frame—and looking at the overall balance between these two desires—we felt that we really wanted to take the time to polish them both up just the right way so that everyone who plays the game is going to be totally satisfied with it.
EGM: You mentioned that you were helping work on the Wii U’s other launch titles, and you’re known as the father of so many beloved Nintendo franchises. How do you balance your time between so many given projects?
SM: I—obviously—am getting up there in age, and getting to the point where it wouldn’t be strange if something happened and I wasn’t with the company anymore. Because of this, we’ve been preparing for the day when I might not be there, and part of that process has really been bringing up the younger developers and producers and getting them to a point where they can run many of these series on their own. So we have someone in charge of the new Super Mario Bros. series, someone else on the Zelda series. They’re working really hard on developing those games on their own, and I’ll only look at them from time to time. What this allows me to do is really spend my time on the projects that I really want to devote my time to.
EGM: What new features have the Wii U and its controller allowed you to bring to Pikmin 3?
SM: Well, we have three different explorers now. So this means you can have three different teams working independently, doing different things at the same time. Usually what you would have to do is, if you had one or two explorers, you would be sending little Pikmin to a task and you would have to run around and find out where they were in terms of their progress on completing that task. Now, with the new map and site controls that you can access via the Wii U GamePad, you can quickly jump from one place to another and you can see on the map how done they are with their tasks and if I can sign them a new task. So it really helps you to efficiently manage your resources as you build your strategies to play the game.
Beyond that, we also have the pointing technology, which we first utilized on the Wii version that we re-released with the new play controls. With Pikmin 3, we are taking more advantage of the Wii MotionPlus functionality that’s in the Wii Remote. It’s really helpful when aiming precisely at specific areas of the enemies. So, for example, in the previous games, you would simply charge at your enemies with all your Pikmin and they would try to destroy the enemies to defeat them. With Pikmin 3, what you can do is you can aim at specific parts of the enemy. So you might attack a Bulborb specifically on the eye, which prevents it from seeing, and so it can’t attack at the Pikmin as long as the Pikmin are attacking it’s eyes. That gives you a window to then attack from another direction on it to defeat that enemy. So with the use of Wii MotionPlus combined with the pointer technology, it makes it much easier to be a lot more strategic both in terms of how you’re issuing commands to the Pikmin but also in terms of how you’re attacking certain enemies.
EGM: Was there ever a thought of doing some kind of Pikmin tie-in for the 3DS?
SM: Well, certainly there are a lot of options, and my dreams have a lot of potential possibilities for Pikmin, but we really wanted to focus on sort of creating the ultimate version of the strategic-action gameplay of Pikmin, and we were able to do that with Wii U. We thought it was just the right, perfect hardware for Pikmin 3, so that was our focus this time. But I think that in the future we’ll certainly have opportunities to look at ways that we can bridge Pikmin across different consoles or other ideas that may come up.
EGM:The Nintendo faithful in general are very hardcore. How is Pikmin reaching out and helping cultivate that community this time around?
SM: Well, there are a couple of ways that we kind of encourage people to connect with each other with regard to the game. One is that Pikmin is certainly a game in which strategic moves and advice and things are going to be a lot more plentiful and a lot more useful to the gameplay than even something like a Mario Kart with its shortcuts. With Pikmin, there will be plenty of opportunity for people to go into Miiverse and really help give each other advice on ways to better approach their levels and how they can work their way through them, or ways to get higher scores and things like that, because the strategic depth is so deep in this game.
But the other is also a Miiverse functionality that does take advantage of the GamePad. This is something where, with a GamePad, you’re able to go into a first-person view in the game and snap photos. Essentially, you can get down to a viewpoint that’s similar to the Pikmin’s. With this, what you can do is take pictures and try to get people to guess where in the game you found this, or perhaps find very funny pictures of things that people didn’t anticipate would happen. Then they can exchange those pictures over Miiverse, which I think is going to help build that communication and help give fans a way to really engage with Pikmin 3.
Pikmin 3 launches exclusively on Wii U August 4 in North America, and is currently available at retailers and the Nintendo eShop in Japan, Europe, and Australia.
The DC Comics booth was abuzz as always at this year’s San Diego ComicCon, as demos of Batman: Arkham Origins and other DC-inspired videogames were available for the first time to the public. While everyone else was playing, I had a chance to catch a quick tutorial from Jim Lee on how to draw Aquaman, and found out how much he hates drawing scaled armor. But then I headed back to the movie costume displays and met briefly with Warner Bros. Montreal senior producer Ben Mattes to talk about some of the work going on with Batman: Arkham Origins.
EGM: What made you want to include a small-time villain like Copperhead in Batman: Arkham Origins, and what inspired the character’s drastic redesign?
Ben Mattes: I tell this story differently than Eric [Holmes, Arkham Origins’ Creative Director], but I remember the meeting where we decided to go for it. We had a big bulletin board up with a lot of different assassins on it. First and foremost, we had the assassin angle. So we were looking at KGBeast, we were looking at Firefly, we were looking at Lady Shiva, we were looking at Copperhead. All these different characters. Anyone who might’ve, sort of had the word assassin in their history. And then we were looking for elements that would match different components of gameplay. So we were saying “this one would make a good challenge for freeflow combat” and “this one would be a good option because it could challenge your navigation” or whatever the case may be.
So as we were looking at the board, we realized we didn’t have a ton of women on our roster and that was frustrating and disappointing for a variety of reasons. And Ames Kirshen, who is the vice president of production for all DC properties at Warner Bros. Interactive, kind of likes the idea of the Copperhead character, and likes the idea of this acrobatic, contortionist character. And there was this merging, this alignment of the stars, where we said we have an idea of what the gameplay could be with this character. We’ve got an interesting angle in terms of this being an assassin, but we’re looking for more females, let’s pitch the idea of a refresh, a rebranding, of the Copperhead character and make it a visually appealing female character.
At first Ames and DC were a little hesitant. They weren’t against it, but they needed some convincing. And so working with our character concept team, we put together a few compelling character pieces that showed how visually appealing this character could be with her claws and her tattoos and her costume. And while doing this, we’re describing the image we have of her being a dangerously seductive contortionist, and that was a cool image that everyone could see in their heads. Imagine her wrapping herself around Batman and using her claws to attack and poison him. It was a pleasing image we all thought would be cool.
Once that happened, we got [DC Comics’ chief creative officer] Geoff Johns on board, and then the rest was just implementation. And as we revealed at the San Diego ComicCon panel, the motion capture of her was probably the point where everyone looked back and said, “See, I knew it would work!” We all thought it would be cool, but then we got these three really talented actresses and we hodgepodged together their MoCap, glued it all together to create the Copperhead experience in the cinematics we’ve shown, and that’s really when it clicked.
And then to have Geoff Johns talk about it at the panel and give credibility to the character by saying she’s going to become canon, she’s going to become a character you’re going to see in the New 52, is really validating, and shows the working relationship between us and DC—which has been great—but it also shows the importance of videogames as a medium in the overall DC space. The Arkham games sell. They get millions of eyes on them. And so they’re becoming increasingly powerful and important just as a platform to influence the canon of this character, which is very rewarding and exciting for us.
EGM: You mentioned the New 52 and how the Arkham games are now influencing that. The New 52 is very young, and the Arkhamverse is in its infancy as well. Because of its freshness, are you guys tempted to reach for Batman’s newer history, as it might have a more viable audience, or do you like staying rooted in Batman’s lengthy pre-New 52 history?
BM: Generally speaking, everything is on the table. We are more influenced by the older comics for sure in regards to references and inspiration and try to steer clear mostly just of the movies, TV Shows, and other media. What’s more important than if our inspiration is from old or new comic material, is if it makes sense to the Arkhamverse, because it is young and it is its own unique branch of the DC timeline.
Hypothetically, let’s stick The Court of Owls into the Arkhamverse. We go back then and ask if that makes sense, especially since Origins is Year Two and very clearly Court of Owls isn’t Year Two, so there are some things where the chronology of our story dictates who we can and can’t have in it. But in regards to what books or authors or anything—it’s all available. We just have to make sure it stays consistent. And that’s not necessarily a DC mandate. I mean, they appreciate that we hold ourselves to that even before we put options in front of them, but we want to make sure that we are building a cohesive, coherent universe first and foremost. Because first of all, we’re huge fans and that’s the world we want to play in, and we don’t want to create an experience where the fourth wall is broken for those extra hardcore fans who find inconsistencies and lose that sense of immersion because there’s something about our narrative that breaks and fractures their sense of understanding in the universe.
EGM: How hard is it to keep that consistency with a prequel, though? You have a lot of new villains and gadgets that weren’t around in the first two games.
BM: You know, it’s really not that hard if you put gameplay first. We’re not ashamed of it. We’re proud of it. We didn’t sit there thinking that we needed to create an awesome gadget, but it needs to be technologically inferior to Arkham Asylum and so we need to limit him. That’s not how you make an exciting game. We wanted to make a game that felt like an upgrade over the previous two games in as far as Batman’s capabilities, even though this is chronologically taking place before Arkham Asylum. As a player, do you accept that the chronology means Batman should miss some punches, the Batclaw cable should snap once in a while, and the Batarangs shouldn’t fly as far? It would be frustrating instead of an empowering experience.
Luckily, though, there is a very well-established component of the canon that makes it all moot. Batman never leaves the Batcave with everything. It’s part of the character. He has different outfits, different gear, different vehicles, different versions of weapons, different versions of gadgets, different suits, and it’s always been accepted that based on the different challenges he may face, Batman will use some subset of his arsenal to use in that encounter, and so we’re just staying consistent, really, with that part of the canon. In Arkham Origins, Batman finds a need for the remote claw, and so narratively we can still be consistent. It’s just part of who he is.
EGM: Well, as long as he never brings out the Bat-Shark Repellant again, I think we’ll all be okay with that. So, you have a new Joker voiced by Troy Baker and a new Batman voiced Roger Craig Smith. Besides the fact these are younger versions of the characters, what made you want to change the actors and what went into choosing the new actors?
BM: Really, younger is it. That was the main reason behind the decision to change voice actors. It’s not that we don’t love Mark [Hamill]. It was simply the fact that we needed a voice actor who could sound like he was the Joker, but seven years younger from where Mark typically played him.
And everyone acknowledged that need. We are an early career story. We needed our voice actors to be younger men who have younger sounding voices, but who can still very much play the characters the way that Mark and Kevin would’ve played them. We didn’t want Troy to re-invent the wheel and come up with an all-new Joker. We wanted him to the deliver us the Joker who becomes the character played by Mark Hamill in Arkham Asylum and Arkham City.
So what went into the casting was listening and auditioning tons and tons of some of the best male voice actors in videogames for that angle. And trying to make sure we found partners who understood and embraced that, and saw that as a huge opportunity rather than a restriction or a confinement or some sort of limiting factor. And both Troy and Roger immediately keyed into that in their auditions. You could actively hear them trying to do their versions of the vocal mannerisms of Mark. And it became quite evident to us early on in the process that these were our actors—not just because they could deliver the voices, but because they embraced the challenge so wholeheartedly and are so respectful of the giants whose shoulders they were asked to stand upon, which is exactly what we were looking for.
RayCarsilloWrites.com 