Great games blog

One thing a lot of people have bitched about after the Halo 3 multiplayer beta, are the graphics. With games like Gears of War, it was easy to be a little uninspired by what Halo 3 had to offer. Next-Gen recently sat down with Bungie’s Frank O’Connor to ask him about this, along with a few other questions about Halo 3. In response to the graphics, O’Conner had the following to say:

“We think that the final aesthetic look of our game will be judged at launch in September and in part based on the more intense single player spaces. We’re also focused on maintaining the Halo character and atmosphere in our visual design – we’re competing with ourselves, and not simply trying to match the aesthetic of other games. We think that folks will be happy with Halo 3’s graphical polish come September.

We have a long time to polish and iterate on the largely complete game at this point. We’ll be working on some big ticket items as well as making sure that the little details, like decorators and shaders are all in place. Lighting and atmospherics are going to be big keystones in our look and feel, and those really haven’t been shown except in multiplayer to this point.”

4 months isn’t a long time to be adding new graphical effects to a game - especially when they are entering the home stretch and trying to squash all the bugs and get it ready to ship. I guess we’ll find out in September if the graphics live up to expectations.

A featured article in the latest Official Xbox Magazine has revealed some new details about Unreal Tournament 3. Epic games has set the release date around October 2007, not September 3rd, and it looks like they are on track to release on time. Some of the new features mentioned in the article include 4 player co-op, confirmation of 18 new vehicles, and the inclusion of hover boards. Unreal Tournament 3 will also feature cross-play between the Xbox 360 and PC versions. When asked about the disparities between an controller and a keyboard/mouse, Epic Games stated that the controls on the Xbox 360 version are so good that half of the staff prefers the controller.

It may be time that Square-Enix president Yoichi Wada receives a new title.  Captain Obvious may be more fitting.

He has announced that Final Fantasy XIII won’t be seeing a release until 2008 - sometime after March, to be specific.  The company’s fiscal year ends in March, and FFXIII is not expected to be a part of it.

I feel this is barely newsworthy, because anyone with any sense could’ve told you that FFXIII wouldn’t be coming around for another year, anyway.  We’ll just wait - it’ll most likely be worth it.

It looks like the action/platform series Sly Cooper will be making at least two more appearances.  Featuring some sort of non-detailed connectivity between them, a Playstation 3 and PSP game are both in the works, and are planned to release simultaneously.

The PS3 game, Sly Cooper 4, will be a continuation of the series, and will be shown at this year’s E3.  According to the developers, “the graphics have been majorly overhauled and the gameplay will be more varied and focused this time around. We’re aiming for a fully interactive 3D world, with no loads and seamless interaction between settings and characters.”  Well that sounds nice.

As for the PSP game, information is limited, and by limited I mean…it’ll be on the PSP.

In today’s squeeze-everything-you-can-out-of-every-customer-and-every-property environment, it is refreshing to hear a company flat-out refuse to do business that way.  Valve software is adamant about not charging customers for downloadable content, and had this to say on the matter:

“You buy the product, you get the content.  We make more money because more people buy it, not because we try and nickel-and-dime the same customers.”

“Our philosophy there is, if you buy the product, we put more content out to keep the game interesting, we sell more products.  Counter-Strike is number one and has been since ‘99 because we kept the game interesting, not because we tried to charge people more, and that’s come back in sales of Counter-Strike.”

In order to keep making money, post-release, Valve has been focusing on the use of in-game advertising to bolster revenue.  Microtransactions have no place in their strategy.

In a recent interview, NOA VP of Corporate Affairs Perrin Kaplan stated that although the company is dividing up its headquarters, and the marketing department is relocating, Nintendo Power magazine will remain alive and well.

The difference will be that it is becoming a licensed property, still under Nintendo’s control.  There is no word who will take over the production of the magazine, but Kaplan says details are on the way.

E3, or at least the shadow of the former expo, “min-E3,” will be held this year from July 11th to the 13th at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California.  The ESA recently released a schedule of events for the show on the official E3 website.

Microsoft will get things started this year with their pre-E3 conference at 8:30pm on July 10th.  Nintendo will be up next, hosting their conference at 9:00 the next morning.  Sony will take up the rear with a conference at 11:30am on the 11th.

Third parties will be granted conference time, as well.  The full show schedule follows:

7/10/07:

• 8:30pm - Microsoft Press Conference

7/11/07:

• 9:00am - Nintendo Press Conference
• 9:00am-5:30pm - Meeting suites open at the Fairmont Hotel
• 11:30am - Sony Press Conference
• 1:00-6:30pm - Barker Hanger open to view games
• 2:00pm - Electronic Arts conference
• 3:15pm - Activision conference
• 4:30pm - Midway conference
• 5:45pm - Konami conference

7/12/07:

• 8:00am - Take-Two conference
• 9:00am-5:30pm - Meeting suites open at the Fairmont Hotel
• 9:15am - THQ conference
• 10:30am - Ubisoft conference
• 1:00-6:30pm - Barker Hanger open to view games
• 1:00pm - Namco Bandai conference
• 3:30pm - Disney Interactive conference

7/13/07:

• 9:00am-3:30pm - Meeting suites open at the Fairmont Hotel
• 11:00am-3:30pm - Barker Hanger open to view games

On the hangar floor, booths will be set up for over 30 companies.  Some notables who won’t have formal conferences include Capcom, Square-Enix, and SEGA, among others.

Here’s the older screenshot…

That’s right, from another job posting on the Gamasutra job boards comes yet another Duke Nukem Forever screenshot. What’s going on here? We got our of Duke Nukem Forever screenshot a few months ago (back in January), and now we get another one? Woah fellas, development just started on this one only a few 10 short years ago. You keep releasing these screenshots and people are going to think you’re actually going to finish it!

I’m sorry 3d Realms, but poking fun at you guys for Duke Nukem For-never is just too easy. It’s like throwing a pie in someone’s face, then strapping them down to a chair so you could keep throwing pies in their face until you get numb in the hand. It’s just too easy. I can’t wait to see what you guys are doing with this one behind closed doors though. I’ve cleared my calendar from 2015 thru 2020 when I’m guessing the beta will hit (see? fish in a barrel for crying out loud!).

Source: 3d Realms

To most of the fellow players he encounters in the shoot-’em-up online game called America’s Army, Joseph DeLappe is a serial pest.

For starters, the man just doesn’t fight like virtual warriors are supposed to fight. As soon as he logs on, he inputs the command to drop his weapon.

Instead of shooting to kill, he’s content to become cannon fodder for the trigger-happy millions who regularly play this popular game.

Point is, he wants his man to die and he’s gone down this path over and over again since he began this sitting duck routine 14 months ago.

DeLappe has turned his “intervention” into a game within a game with a goal of recording every US military death in Iraq.

The irony is, he’s doing this part protest, part memorial in America’s Army - an interactive project funded by the Pentagon which it uses to enlist recruits, some of whom are destined to fight in the very war that DeLappe is opposing.

“I was trying to say something about what’s going on and the complete disconnect between the citizenry and what’s been happening [in Iraq],” explains DeLappe, 44, an associate professor of art at the University of Nevada, Reno.

“It just made me angry and I wanted to do something that drove home the reality of it.”

As the game continues around him after he is killed - and usually under a hail of abuse from the other players - DeLappe types in the name, age, service branch and the date of death of each soldier.

Because nothing remains in the game after the session expires, DeLappe takes a screen shot of his handiwork and posts it on his website.

In a typical session lasting an hour, he will get through about 40 names. To date, he’s input details of about some 3000 of the almost 3500 US troops who have been killed in Iraq since the war began more than four years ago.

“It’s a slow process and purposely so because I’m conscious of this being a meaningful activity and not wanting to rush through it,” he says in a telephone interview.

“The very methodical, careful typing in of the names, even reading though all the names, is intense because it starts to individualise it.”

Launched in 2002, America’s Army is, by some accounts, among the top ten most popular multiplayer online games in the world.

The game has been downloaded 17 million times and is reported to have almost 10 million regular players, many of them 17- to 24-year-old males who cannot be reached by tradional advertising.