61 Frames Per Second : trailer review

Trailer Review: Bayonetta

John Constantine — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 21:00:00 GMT

You’d think that with time and experience and the accumulation of knowledge, a man would move past certain things. He’d start to develop more refined tastes that reflect a growing passion for life’s finer stuff. You’d think he’d exhibit a predilection for more metered explorations of the human experience, subtle meditations on adult relationships and history. You’d think that witches who have guns built into their shoes, who get naked while attacking monsters with their hair wouldn’t be the sort of thing that would interest him.

Nope. Bayonetta is about as cultured as I’m likely to get.

There’s a lot more of the game to chew on in this latest trailer. It’s the first decent look at the sort of play I got to see demoed back in January. I’ll say, though, it still doesn’t give a full impression of just how varied and fast combat in Bayonetta really is. There’s also a heaping spoonful of story, with two new characters spouting dialog that strongly recalls director Hideki Kamiya’s old cheese from Devil May Cry and Resident Evil 2. Also, Bayonetta can turn into a cougar. I guess that explains why she’s chasing after that young, good looking fella driving the car in front of her! You know. Because… she’s a cougar… um…

That is the worst joke I have ever made.

Previous Trailer Reviews:

Fez
Katamari Damacy Tribute
Behemoth’s Game #3
Muramasa – The Demon Blade
InFamous
Watchmen: The End is Nigh
Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure
Dante’s Inferno is Looking Even More… Something
Machinarium
Mightier
Demon’s Souls
Final Fantasy XIII Looks Disturbingly Interesting
Priston Tale II: The 2nd Enigma
King of the Fighters XII
Edge
Dante's Inferno
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Resident Evil 5

Trailer Review: Fez

John Constantine — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Fez? Come here a second. Let’s talk, you and I, of the way the world is. The world is a cruel and indifferent monstrosity, full of danger, heartbreak, joy, and satisfaction. The sun rises and sets on the just and unjust alike. We wake, every morning, guaranteed of but one thing: there will be a new Madden game this year. Chances are it will be good and people will buy it. Other things are not guaranteed but are most likely going to happen. Someone will make a game with a gun in it and you will shoot things with that gun. Some kids will trade Pokemon and they will laugh together about it. And, I hope, and I pray, that you will come out and we can finally, after so long, be together. Fez, the world can be a lonely place. Come away with me, Fez.

Anyways. Yeah. Fez came out of its hibernation den at GDC last week. It looks fan-flippin-tastic. Delight in its wares!

What looks good? The new interior environments, dope night and day settings, and the delectable new logo. What sounds good? The new song. What makes me believe in the promise of all reality? The release date. Woo.

Previous Trailer Reviews:

Katamari Damacy Tribute
Behemoth’s Game #3
Muramasa – The Demon Blade
InFamous
Watchmen: The End is Nigh
Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure
Dante’s Inferno is Looking Even More… Something
Machinarium
Mightier
Demon’s Souls
Final Fantasy XIII Looks Disturbingly Interesting
Priston Tale II: The 2nd Enigma
King of the Fighters XII
Edge
Dante's Inferno
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Resident Evil 5

Trailer Review: Katamari Damacy Tribute

John Constantine — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:00:00 GMT

Keita Takahashi made the right move in separating himself from Katamari Damacy. More of a good thing isn’t always what the world needs. Game sequels are, in principle, about improving on a solid foundation, molding an imperfect idea into something that is greater than its predecessor. Katamari Damacy was pretty much perfect on the first try and Takahashi knew that trying to bottle that lightning in a follow-up would end in failure. He did end up working on the first sequel, We Love Katamari, but he did it for the fans, not because he thought he could make a better game. Namco went ahead and made two more Takahashi-less Katamari games. They were not what you’d call great. Katamari Damacy Tribute, however, looks very promising.

Colorful cel-shading in place of Damacy’s usual subdued pastels is a nice start. Remixed classic Katamari tunes is even better. Most exciting though is the premise of this entry being a tribute to the original, and not an attempt to reinvent the wheel. When you have a game that’s more or less perfect as is, and you want to keep making money off it, the best thing you can do is just remake it with a nice graphical overhaul and some decent extra content. This is what is known as “The Nintendo Strategy”. Even without Takahashi on board, I have a good feeling about this one.

Related links:

Katamari in the Classroom
The 61FPS Review: Noby Noby Boy
Katamari Christmas - Rediscovering the Cosmos... Twice
Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 and the Second Chance

Henry Hatsworth Prototype Not as Awesome as Final Game, Still Awesome

John Constantine — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 23:30:00 GMT

A few weeks ago, I saw a trailer for Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure. Then I freaked out. Because it looked fantastic. Last week, Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure came out. Turns out it isn’t fantastic. It is totally fantastic in every possible way there is to be fantastic and sweet.

Okay, in fairness, I’ve only played the first few levels, so I’m not sure how deep it is or how good it is overall. (Derrick tells me it gets hard near the middle. We’ll see.) From the start, though, the platforming’s methodical and silky smooth, the puzzling simple but oh so satisfying. You already know the music’s great. Its sense of humor is everything the trailer promised as well. Hatsworth is a funny, funny game. I want to tell you about Tea Time in the game, but I also don’t want to ruin it for you. Tea Time made me laugh out loud on a crowded subway. I can, however, show you what the prototype of Tea Time looks like without ruining anything!

I’m not positive where or when this footage was shown — the YouTube video is dated February 24th, 2008 — but, as you can see, the game was very, very different early on. The trademark humor is there but the visual style is much more spare, recalling Craig McCracken Powerpuff Girls and Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends cartoons. Very, very cool. I wonder what else changed between this early prototype and the final game?

More on Hatsworth as I get deeper in.

Related links:

OST: Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure
Trailer Review: Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure
Portrait of the Prince Pre-Persia

Warning: Wii Punch-Out!! Might Just Kill You

John Constantine — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 23:00:00 GMT

Last week, I came down with a flu like sickness. It was bad. I was sent home from the office twice because, apparently, I sounded like I was coughing whole parts of my insides out of my body. Today I am a well man and it’s all thanks to the power of rest and Mythbusters. Let it be known that, provided you are horribly sick, own an Xbox 360, and are a Netflix subscriber, you too can watch Mythbusters until you are fit, or fitter, than a well-made fiddle. Dr. John Constantine prescribes it! During one particularly awesome episode, Adam Savage was isolating ingredients from Diet Coke to determine which of them causes Diet Coke-Mentos-Explosions. While testing caffeine, Savage mixed a solution while commenting, “This is a lot of caffeine. Enough to kill you.” This blew my bed-ridden mind. Caffeine can kill you? Of course it can, all stimulants can! I’d just never considered it. This revelation, in turn, reminded me how dangerous Nintendo can be.

Case in point: the new Wii Punch-Out!!. Like caffeine and stimulants of all stripes, fan service can kill a person depending on its purity and provided they have enough of it. Watch this trailer for an example of what a just-under-lethal dose looks like.

Seriously, that is potent. It’s more than just the returning characters, we already knew they’d be back. Doc Louis on the bike? The pink track suit? That’s the sort of fan service that will cause hearts to explode. They need to be careful with that.

Next Level Games have, it seems, foregone the crazy power-ups that made their Super Mario Strikers games so unpredictable. That’s okay. Punch-Out!!’s special moves, activated by stars earned in the fights, have always been elegant in their simplicity. The play looks as expected, a nice re-skinning of NES Punch-Out!!. I have to say though, while the game’s gorgeous and the new renditions of old fighters are clean and stylish, the new fighter, Disco Kid, is awfully plain. What gives, Next Level? I know your art team can do better than that.

Editor’s Note: I’m not really a doctor. I am sorry if I misled you. Do not try to cure yourself with Mythbusters.

Related links:

Punch-Out Wii to Make Early 2009 a Little Less Depressing
The Erotic Adventure of Little Mac
Georges St Pierre's Punch-Out!!
Muramasa – The Demon Blade
InFamous
Watchmen: The End is Nigh
Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure

Trailer Review: Behemoth’s Game #3. They Made Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers, Guys. They Rule.

John Constantine — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 23:30:00 GMT

Everything Dan Paladin draws makes me laugh. I just can’t help it. The first time I saw that squiggly-mouthed, bug-eyed little bastard from Alien Hominid, I haven’t been able to look at a single frame from either of Behemoth’s games without cracking up. Seriously, I almost suffocated when I saw the cyclops boss from Castle Crashers give a Terminator 2 thumbs-up as he drowned in lava. My sense of humor isn’t refined, what can I say.

Needless to say, I damn near choked watching this trailer for their new game.

From the looks of it, Game #3 is going to be some kind of… something. It looks like blisteringly fast multiplayer platforming that’s both co-operative (two player jumps) and competitive (player type changing color of platforms.) Not quite as much variety and batshit insanity as Castle Crashers in the art department, but I think simplicity is a nice change of pace after Hominid and Crashers.

Man. That little dude holding up the gem to the other dude. That is… genius. I can’t even properly tell you why that’s funny.

Previous Trailer Reviews:

Muramasa – The Demon Blade
InFamous
Watchmen: The End is Nigh
Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure
Dante’s Inferno is Looking Even More… Something
Machinarium
Mightier
Demon’s Souls
Final Fantasy XIII Looks Disturbingly Interesting
Priston Tale II: The 2nd Enigma
King of the Fighters XII
Edge
Dante's Inferno
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Resident Evil 5

Trailer Review: Muramasa – The Demon Blade

John Constantine — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:00:00 GMT

What can I say that hasn’t been said about Vanillaware’s two-dimensional skills. Undoubtedly, they can pay the bills. They are gorgeous. They are vivid. They are blinding in the extent of their flowing beauty, a realization of hand drawn gaming’s promise, a vision of the most fantastic landscapes while still evocative of the world’s natural beauty. Adjectives, adjectives, adjectives. Muramasa: The Demon Blade is good looking, god damn it. See what I mean?

This trailer is more than, as they say, a pretty face. Most promising is that Muramasa’s play looks fast, free of the slowdown that crippled much of Odin Sphere. The combat itself looks to be an evolution of that game’s combo-based slicing and dicing as well. Odin Sphere, like Princess Crown before it, was a little too awkward to be perfect, and it's heartening to see Muramasa is improving on the formula. Here’s hoping that Vanillaware has also grown a better sense of pacing. Their previous games have been uneven, to say the least.

Previous Trailer Reviews:

InFamous
Watchmen: The End is Nigh
Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure
Dante’s Inferno is Looking Even More… Something
Machinarium
Mightier
Demon’s Souls
Final Fantasy XIII Looks Disturbingly Interesting
Priston Tale II: The 2nd Enigma
King of the Fighters XII
Edge
Dante's Inferno
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Resident Evil 5

Trailer Review: Infamous

John Constantine — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 23:00:00 GMT

The media blackout on Suckerpunch’s Infamous is finally lifting. Some very positive, extensive previews of the game have started popping up. Edge’s recent cover story got me particularly pumped. This new trailer is light on play but heavy on ambiance. Still very cool.

Now that Killzone 2 is out, Sony really needs to turn their attention to pushing this game. More than that, they need to start emphasizing the game’s branching good/evil narrative and deeper combat. I keep reading about the meatier powers you get as you progress through the game and how much more interesting they are than the point-and-zap stuff they've shown in trailers, but why haven’t we seen any of it? Why is Sony so reticent to push a game that’s shipping in just three months? And why aren’t they taking pains to demonstrate how different it is from Prototype, a game that shares more than a few characteristics with Infamous? The media blackout may be ending, but its high time the hype train gets rolling.

Previous Trailer Reviews:

Watchmen: The End is Nigh
Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure
Dante’s Inferno is Looking Even More… Something
Machinarium
Mightier
Demon’s Souls
Final Fantasy XIII Looks Disturbingly Interesting
Priston Tale II: The 2nd Enigma
King of the Fighters XII
Edge
Dante's Inferno
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Resident Evil 5

Trailer Review: Watchmen: The End is Nigh

Cole Stryker — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 21:00:00 GMT

"I think Watchman is a pretty cool guy. Eh cashes in on decades of nostalgia and doesn't afraid of anything."

Alan Moore is someone for whom I have long had a deep admiration. In my mind's Artistic Integrity Roundtable, he holds court right between Steve Albini and the Coen Brothers. Moore has always distanced himself from film adaptations of his work. The filming of From Hell, V for Vendetta, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen left him wanting nothing to do with Hollywood, so I'm guessing the same goes for the upcoming film and video game adaptations of Watchmen. Here we have a couple of new "vignettes" released today. They look terribly mediocre, but I won't let that stop my from enjoying the original comic.

What bugs me the most about this portrayal of the characters is that they were never big, dumb brutes.The reason why the comic was so revolutionary is that it was one of the first to reveal the underlying humanness inside every super hero. These trailers do little to convince me that the game will communicate that sentiment as well. Wouldn't it have been wonderful if the franchise had been treated with the moral ambiguity of Bioshock, for example?

Oh well. Biff bang pow.

Videos after the jump:

New Watchmen Throwback Browser Game

Brawler Theory

Trailer Review: Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure

John Constantine — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Videogames do bad things to your brain. Not games themselves, but the business and marketing that surrounds them. Familiarity, as they say, breeds contempt. When I see a name like Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure, I immediately think of poop. It’s bound to some terrible Professor Layton clone, right? Surely, it has to be Data Design Interactive’s latest abomination. You don’t expect it to be some awesome 2D platformer/puzzle game hybrid. You especially don’t expect it to be coming from EA’s Tiburon studio. Tiburon makes Madden!

Watch this trailer and get excited.

How great does that look? An action platformer with slick, colorful art starring what appears to be the protagonist from Braid aged thirty years and doing some kind of Doctor-Livingston-I-presume cosplay. You attack enemies who then turn into blocks who have to be color matched to make them disappear and then fill an ammo/special move meter. That is amazing. You solve columns style puzzles and get “super exciting robot juice” as a reward. The robot juice turns you into a Big Daddy.

Nintendo, this is the sort of game you used to make. Now I have to go to EA, to the freaking Madden team, to get this kind of glory. Talk about defied expectations.

Previous Trailer Reviews:

Dante’s Inferno is Looking Even More… Something
Machinarium
Mightier
Demon’s Souls
Final Fantasy XIII Looks Disturbingly Interesting
Priston Tale II: The 2nd Enigma
King of the Fighters XII
Edge
Dante's Inferno
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Resident Evil 5

Trailer Review: Dante’s Inferno is Looking Even More… Something

John Constantine — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 01:00:00 GMT

I just don’t know about you, Dante’s Inferno. You sort of have a God of War thing going on. Even more than you did back in December. That’s a cool scythe with its blade on a chain you get there. Looks like the sorta thing you can have a good action-y time with. That giant monster boss covered with barnacles? I don’t remember any God of War bosses having barnacles. Yours are hell barnacles, too!

I don’t want to pry, Dante’s Inferno. You’ve clearly got some things you’re working through. But I wouldn’t be your friend if I didn’t ask what was up with the pink monsters with tube socks full of teeth for heads.

You’ve got a few of them in here and it’s concerning. Are those tooth-tubesock dudes on loan from Brutal Legend until you get something else? The guy I’m talking about is in the picture up there. It’s cool, you can tell me.

That’s enough glibness for today, I think. I’m really not sure what to make of Dante’s Inferno. Is it just going to be a giant brawler? An adventure game? Castlevania 3D before Iga tries it again? Who knows. Dead Space just looked like a Resident Evil 4 clone, and EA Redwood Shores proved just how awesome that could be. Time will tell.

Previous Trailer Reviews:

Machinarium
Mightier
Demon’s Souls
Final Fantasy XIII Looks Disturbingly Interesting
Priston Tale II: The 2nd Enigma
King of the Fighters XII
Edge
Dante's Inferno
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Resident Evil 5

Trailer Review: Mightier

Cole Stryker — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 02:30:00 GMT

"At Mightier, we solve problems. We solve them with a high-powered laser beam fired from space."

How can you not get jazzed about that opening line?

Mightier is a quirky indie title that makes use of a printer and webcam (though you don't have to use these to play, it's more fun that way). You print off puzzles, solve them on paper, and scan the material back into your computer via webcam. Then, you can interact with the puzzles in a 3D platformer. It's pretty simplistic, but imagine the possibilities! And no additional hardware to buy.

Download it for free at Ratloop's site.

Trailer Review: Tokyo!

Trailer Review: Sugar

Trailer Review: Machinarium

Joe Keiser — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 15:30:00 GMT

Remember 2D adventure games in rich, 100% hand-drawn worlds? Yeah, I think the last one I played was The Curse of Monkey Island. It’s pretty safe to say that they don’t make them like that anymore.

Except for these guys, who do. And from the looks of things, they’re doing a bang-up job of it.

This isn’t coming completely out of nowhere. This is Amanita Design, the same team that gave us the beautiful Samorost games. Those weren’t meaty enough to constitute anything more than plush diversions, however, and I remember thinking at the time that we should be so lucky to get a full game from the team. It is extremely surprising to me that we are actually so lucky:

Oh, man. Rusty, adorable robots. A painterly junkyard world. The warblings of a stuttering, broken synth. Push my geek chic buttons harder, Amanita. All you need to do is include one steampunk flying contraption and I’m yours forever.

There is one cause for concern, though: one part of the trailer shows your character unleashing a robo-kitty. The last time I unleashed a kitty in an adventure game, the world collapsed and everything died. So, that’s something to watch out for.

Related Links:

Overworld: Syberia
Indie Dev Moment: Gravity Bone
The Thirst For Adventure, Pointing At Things, and Not Knowing What to Say

Trailer Review: Demon’s Souls

John Constantine — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 22:00:00 GMT

From Software, you guys got some weird in your blood. Who in the hell makes console exclusives these days? Not only that, who in the hell makes exclusives for every console on the market? And who in the hell makes console exclusives that are spiritual successors to cult hits that were console exclusives in the previous generation? You guys, whew, you guys are nutty. You’re nutty nut bars and I love it.

It’s a big month for From Software. Just last week in Japan, they released Ninja Blade on Xbox 360. Ninja Blade is a third-person action game that is a modernization, in both tone and technology, of their Xbox-only franchise Otogi. Today, they released Demon’s Souls in the land of the rising sun. Demon’s Souls is the Playstation 3 version of From’s PS2 oddity King’s Field, a series of distinctly western RPGs full of the dungeon crawling and character customization Elder Scrolls fans go ga-ga over.

As you can see from this trailer, Demon’s Souls is a real odd duck.

The presentation is polished but by no means mindblowing and the same can be said of its art direction. It really doesn’t look like a product of the east or west, its RPG-tropes coming across as just… neutral. I have no idea what to make of it. There’s still no word on whether or not this one’s coming to the States. The Asia version of the game, though, has both full English voice acting and all English menus. I don’t know about y’all, but this one’s so strange I might just have to import it.

Previous Trailer Reviews:

Final Fantasy XIII Looks Disturbingly Interesting
Priston Tale II: The 2nd Enigma
King of the Fighters XII
Edge
Dante's Inferno
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Resident Evil 5

At Least Batman: Arkham Asylum's Story Will Be Good

John Constantine — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 01:30:00 GMT

It’s been pretty disheartening to see so many people losing their game industry jobs these past few months. First and foremost, it’s terrible to see thousands of talented people out of work. It’s also tragic to see so many games get cancelled. I’m still upset that Free Radical’s Star Wars Battlefront 3 will never come out. That game looked unbelievable. That’s not always the case with cancelled games though. For example, I think the world’s a better place now that Pandemic’s The Dark Knight tie-in won’t clog up shelves across the land. From the sounds of it, that game was troubled with a capital OUBLED. It’s cancellation also means that Rocksteady Games’ original Batman game, Arkham Asylum, will have a much better chance of getting noticed by the millions upon millions of people obsessed with Bruce Wayne and Joker.

This new trailer doesn’t have any play in it, so it’s pretty useless for giving an impression of Arkham Asylum as a game. What it does have is plenty of story. Competently written and awesomely voiced story. Not to be too gigantic a geek, but that’s Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy you’re hearing! The Joker and Batman of Paul Dini’s Batman: The Animated Series! Speaking of Mr. Dini, he’s the man in charge of writing Arkham Asylum. This game is going to be like a giant playable episode of that show, albeit an episode with graphic violence suited to the drippy, bumpy textures of a game built on Unreal Engine 3. Sounds like a winning combination to me.

Rocksteady Games only has one other title under their belt, a PS2 first-person shooter called Urban Chaos: Riot Response. Anyone out there ever play it? Should we trust these guys to make an awesome Batman game?

Related links:

Batman Can't Even Land a Punch on Superman in a Video Game
A Silver Lining to the Dark Knight
Of Children and Lego Games: A Valid Concern

Trailer Review: Final Fantasy XIII Looks Disturbingly Interesting

Bob Mackey — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:00:00 GMT

I'll admit that the creative direction of Final Fantasy XIII always bothered me a little--I was never a fan of Tetsuya Nomura's Japanese pop culture aesthetic--but after seeing the new trailer for Square's upcoming RPG (thanks 1UP), my tune's started to change a little. Only recently I've realized that I've begun to grow a little bored with the typical medieval trappings of JPRGs; I'm currently yawning my way through Tales of Vesperia, hoping something outside of swords and sorcery will eventually grab my interest. It's actually pretty exciting to see something from the JRPG extend far beyond the limitations of J.R.R. Tolkien and Gary Gygax, despite what my snotty 17 year-old self whined about FFVIII.

"It's supposed to be Final Fantasy," indeed.

Many of Nomura's games (or at least the ones he's had a hand in) have been slowly grasping at imitating the American blockbuster movie, and so far, Final Fantasy XIII seems to be the most extreme--or, according to some people, egregious--example of this mentality in action. Hell, when compared to the ninja acrobatics, machine gun fire, and exploding sky trains of XIII, Final Fantasy X almost seems like an art film. But, flashiness aside, perhaps the most notable feature of this new trailer is the actual gameplay on display; I'm not exactly sure what the hell's going on, but all of those numbers flying around certainly look exciting.

Suddenly, the 15+ month wait for Final Fantasy XIII just became much more painful.

Related Links:

Every Day is Better With Two Scoops of Final Fantasy XIII
Final Fantasy XIII Delayed to 2010--Wait, Where Are You Going?
Screen Test: Final Fantasy Versus XIII

Trailer Review: Priston Tale II: The 2nd Enigma

Cole Stryker — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 22:30:00 GMT

Oh hey, check it out. Another MMORPG that I'll forget about overnight.

An entire staff of Korean animation artists spent weeks making this trailer, which does absolutely nothing to differentiate the game from the dozens of other identical RPGs.

"Our enemy is powerful, but this time we have the best warrior on our side: You"

Ugh. What, because I wasn't around for the first installment? They've managed to include every boring JRPG cliche here, and on top of that have come up with one of the most unimaginative sequel titles that I've ever heard.

How is it that gamers are still falling for this? Haven't we been having this discussion since the dawn of full motion video? I remember complaining about trailers that don't feature any gameplay footage back in the days of the first Diablo. I don't blame publishers, they wouldn't invest the money if you dopes would stop buying into their bull. As usual, the blame lies with brainless consumers.

qq345: kool and awesome

docknockboot2: That was a pretty tight cut scene.

mattman2: mmmmmmm sweet

Kill me.

Trailer Review: King of the Fighters XII

John Constantine — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 23:00:00 GMT

King of the Fighters fans are a lot like people who tell you they prefer The Rolling Stones over The Beatles. They seem insane to us normal, Street Fighter-loving folk, and their predilections make us deeply uncomfortable on a fundamental level.

I kid. Outside of the weapons-based affairs, like Samurai Showdown and Last Blade, I never cottoned to SNK’s two-dimensional fighters. I’m the first to admit that the King of the Fighters titles, and the series that birthed them, are all beautiful, well-made games, but the flow of their fighting has just never clicked for me. Call it Capcom brainwashing. I respect the hell out of the King of the Fighters series though. Fighting game staples like enormous character rosters, franchise crossovers, and team battles all have their roots in the series. I also have to give props to a series that was developed on hardware from 1990 for eleven entries over as many years. That’s awesome.

King of the Fighters XII is an event for the series. It abandons all of the character sprites of yesteryear, loses many fan favorite characters, and it is built from the ground up for HD play. What’s more, every single facet of the game, from the backgrounds to the character sprites, is hand drawn. Even Arc System Works, the 2D fighting hounds responsible for Guilty Gear, Arcana Heart, and others, didn’t make their HD debut, Blazblue, fully hand drawn. And understandably so. SNK has taken an enormous risk with King of the Fighters XII. It is monumentally expensive (not to mention time consuming) to make a densely animated 2D fighter by hand, let alone one built for high-definition. And fighting games broadly aren’t the most profitable genre in gaming,

From the looks of this new trailer for KOFXII, it looks like SNK’s efforts have yielded very positive results. This game is gorgeous. So gorgeous, I’m going to have to pick up its inevitable home release like it were a work of art I would hang over my mantle. After almost twelve years, it looks like someone may finally best Street Fighter III’s level of detailed animation in its characters.

Previous Trailer Reviews:

Scribblenauts
Resident Evil 5
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Edge
Wanted
The Chase: Felix Meets Felicity
Yakuza 3
Dragon Quest IX
TGS Trailer Time: Resident Evil 5
Retro Game Challenge
Golden Axe: Beast Rider
House of the Dead: Overkill
Riz-Zoawd
Idolm@ster PSP
The Last Guy
Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff
Captain Rainbow
Mega Man 9 and Chrono Trigger DS
Densetsu no Stafi 5
Sonic Unleashed
Infinite Undiscovery
Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood
Street Fighter IV
The Conduit
Mirror’s Edge

Trailer Review: Edge

Derrick Sanskrit — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 20:30:00 GMT

Take a gander at this trailer for Edge, the new iPhone/iPod Touch game released today by mobile phone game developer mobigame and feel the waves of nostalgia for a game you've never even played.

In its presentation, Edge is equal parts Marble Madness, Q*Bert, and Tron, but it clearly has potential to be ever so much more.

Beautiful isometric geometry, subtle use of color, a soundtrack halfway between 80's new wave and contemporary chiptune, Edge may very well be the stylish iPod counterpart to artsy downloadable console titles like Eden, Everyday Shooter, echochrome, Orbient and Cubello.

As I mentioned above, Edge was just released on the App Store today. As I've been on a serious gaming binge on my iPod Touch lately, I'll be sure to check this one out, but damn is that trailer stylish!

Related articles:
Overworld: Marble Madness
iPhone Owners Are Gamers, Idiots
The Original Adventure - Now Portable
Ports That Need To Be Made: iTouchRez

Trailer Review: Dante's Inferno

Cole Stryker — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 21:00:00 GMT

I had to read Dante's Inferno back in college around the time that Doom 3 was released.

Cole: Dude, you're playing Doom 3. Looks awesome.
Bro: It's aight. Kinda boring after a while.
Cole: Dude, they should totally make an expansion for this based on Dante's Inferno.
Bro: I dunno, brah.
Cole: Seriously, gluttons forced to slosh around in black sleet? The slothful gurgling beneath the filthy River Styx? Heretics in flaming tombs? A river of boiling blood?
Bro: Alright already, I get it-
Cole: Centaurs firing flaming arrows? Harpies tearing the wooden flesh of sinners doomed to be gnarled trees for eternity? Flatterers steeped in a lake of shit? Crying sorcerors with reversed heads? Demonic snakes and lizards?
Bro: OK, geez.
Cole: I haven't made it to the ninth circle yet. And just think of the boss battles! Scary, dude. Scary...as hell.

Video after the jump:

Awesome, right? Faithfulness to the story aside, it'd be difficult to screw up a game set in these chilling environments.The trailer doesn't give us too much information, but it's enough to get me excited.

Trailer Review: Star Wars: The Old Republic

Cole Stryker — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 15:00:00 GMT

It's a double shot of Trailer Review from me today, this time with the first in a series of video documentaries from the folks at Bioware and Lucasarts. Star Wars: The Old Republic is an upcoming MMORPG based in the universe that we know and love from the Star Wars films. All the action takes place 300 years after the events of Knights of the Old Republic and roughly 3,500 before Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker went toe to toe.

Check out the video, after the jump:

Most interestingly, the game will make use of KOTOR's alignment system, whereby players' actions and speech patterns would push the character towars the light (good) or dark (evil) sides. The game promises to offer a deeper level of emergent narrative than your average MMO. This seems to be the game's unique selling proposition, other than just being Star Wars, of course.

Trailer Review: Resident Evil 5

Cole Stryker — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Game Trailers has posted some new Resident Evil 5 in-game footage, and does it look pretty. I am consistently amazed at how heart-pounding they have been able to make this game, even though it seems largely set in bright sunlight. I find it impossible not to be a little nervous when I hear those wailing sirens that sound when enemies are near.

Maybe it's because I've been playing so many old games over the last year, but the way the camera wobbles when slap a dude disorients me. Was it that dramatic in RE4? I can't remember.

Watch a guy and a girl kick and shoot some undead suckers back and forth, just for giggles. The footage, called "Zombie Ping Pong Montage" after the jump:

Related Links

Resident Evil 5: Continuing on the Transformation Trail From Horror to Suspense
TGS Trailer Time: Resident Evil 5
Games to Film to Games to Film: Resident Evil Degeneration

Trailer Review: Scribblenauts

Derrick Sanskrit — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Last Friday, IGN was treated to the exclusive reveal of the new DS title from 5th Cell, the young developer with mostly mobile phone games under their belt. Why is this worth an exclusive reveal? Because 5th Cell's last two games, 2007's Drawn To Life and 2008's Lock's Quest, both for the Nintendo DS, were wildly exciting experiments in game design and interaction. Most notably, Drawn To Life delivered on the dreams of many DS gamers by asking the player to use the touchscreen to draw various elements throughout the game world, including the protagonist and their weapons and vehicles. The game was such a fresh new concept that 5th Cell licensed their engine to publisher THQ for a Spongebob Squarepants spin-off and an upcoming Wii version.

So how do they follow-up on a game that let players draw pretty much whatever they wanted in an admittedly limited capacity? Well... it's kind of hard to explain... Here, just watch this trailer for Scribblenauts and prepare to be buried under a mountain of brand-new gameplay ideas:

I didn't really think it would be possible to be excited about physically writing in a video game, but here we are, and that is kind of awesome. In the interview with IGN's Matt Bozon, 5th Cell co-founder and creative director Jeremiah Slaczka said of Scribblenauts:

We've got this tool that we created in-house called "Objectnaut", so now designers can put in any name of any object, and put in all sorts of data. We're talking AI properties, physical properties, attraction and repulsion to other objects, weight, size, where it splits, can you pick it up, is it flammable or how do elements effect it… really all these things that you need. We're spending a great deal of time just imputing tons and tons of these objects, and once we flesh it all out with this Objectnaut system, we have a hierarchy of data.

Let's look at an elephant, for example. It's an animal – a mammal – so we know that. It has organic flesh therefore, since every mammal has organic flesh. Now we don't have to write that in for every animal we make, the system just knows to attach that to anything we label "animal." We can then look at it and say "organic flesh can… well, it can be eaten, right?"

But...that's insane, right? I mean, this is a game, you can't possibly have everything in there. Surely there's only a list of like twenty-four objects I can use however I want, right? Not so, says monsieur Slaczka:

"We can't have copyrighted materials, and we won't do anything vulgar, but outside of that people are going to be really happy, and really surprised. I mean we've spent three months of just hardcore list-making. A gigantic excel sheet of just going through dictionaries, and going through encyclopedias, and just grabbing anything and everything there is to get. Find and define every object. We have things in here that are so obscure that I don't think people are going to ever find them unless we release official lists someday. People won't write half the things that exist in this game because they're so obscure. You just don't think of them."

Wowzers. Well... that's certainly impressive.

Obviously, we haven't seen enough of this game yet toreally have any idea what the full game is going to be like, but Jeremiah does say that the game is still the better part of a year away from completion, and that is plenty of time for finesse and polish. Scribblenauts may just wind up being one of the most adventurous game designs of this generation with the potential of being one heck of an amazing game to boot. Now, however, we play the waiting game.

Previous Trailer Reviews:

Terrifying New Mirror's Edge Content
The Chase - Felix Meets Felicity
Yakuza 3
Dragon Quest IX
TGS Trailer Time: Resident Evil 5
Retro Game Challenge
Golden Axe: Beast Rider
House of the Dead: Overkill
Riz-Zoawd
Idolm@ster PSP
The Last Guy
Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff
Captain Rainbow
Mega Man 9 and Chrono Trigger DS
Densetsu no Stafi 5
Sonic Unleashed
Infinite Undiscovery
Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood
Street Fighter IV
The Conduit
Mirror’s Edge

Trailer Review: Terrifying New Mirror’s Edge Content

Joe Keiser — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Ah, Mirror’s Edge. There’s so much to think about when talking about it. It is, without doubt, a flawed, frustrating experience, the kind of game experience that you hate just as much you love. It also just happens to be the most important, must-play AAA title of the year. And it’s beautiful, and also nauseating. It has dizzying production values, and cheap looking Flash-like cutscenes. For every positive point, DICE’s opus has an equally negative counter-point, save for the one negative that stands alone: Mirror’s Edge is pretty darn short.

So of course there’s new DLC coming out for it, and it’s not just more of the same—for starters it’s called the Pure Time Trials pack, time trials being the one thing that everyone unequivocally loved about the original.

And judging by the trailer, which I’ve just watched for the sixth time in a row, it is also in its way more beautiful than the rooftop playgrounds of the game’s story mode. If you thought that was a clinic in Swedish minimalism, you’ve seen nothing—these new levels are made entirely of blocks of solid color hovering in space. The camera twirls as the mind boggles, searching for the seemingly limitless paths of flow in this pristinely artificial landscape. Here is the game that design mechanic fetishists wanted the original to be, this trailer seems to say. I personally couldn’t be happier.

Previous Trailer Reviews:

The Chase - Felix Meets Felicity
Yakuza 3
Dragon Quest IX
TGS Trailer Time: Resident Evil 5
Retro Game Challenge
Golden Axe: Beast Rider
House of the Dead: Overkill
Riz-Zoawd
Idolm@ster PSP
The Last Guy
Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff
Captain Rainbow
Mega Man 9 and Chrono Trigger DS
Densetsu no Stafi 5
Sonic Unleashed
Infinite Undiscovery
Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood
Street Fighter IV
The Conduit
Mirror’s Edge

Ghostbusters. Peter Venkman. Walter Peck. The World is Just.

John Constantine — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:15:00 GMT

There is a reason that this new trailer for Ghostbusters: The Videogame is not getting posted under the Trailer Review banner: I am completely incapable of judging this game with any kind of objectivity. Don’t you see? It has Walter Peck, a William Atherton voiced Walter Peck, cowering in fear and then getting possessed by a ghost. It has the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man tossing police cars about Manhattan and Ray Stantz, a Dan Ackroyd voiced and written Ray Stantz, saying it isn’t his fault this time. It has Peter Venkman.

It’s true, your honor. This game is amazing.

Related links:

Films to Games: Ghostbusters Really is Ghostbusters 3!
Film to Games: Ghostbusters is the Beginning of a (Hopefully) Beautiful Friendship
Dear World, Find Ghostbusters a New Publisher Immediately

Trailer Review: The Chase - Felix Meets Felicity

Derrick Sanskrit — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Look, Atari has a new DS game coming out! Oh, and its a platformer about a boy and girl who fall in love? Yeah, and the graphics are the kind of saccharine sweet that are rarely seen outside of Barbie's Horse Adventures? Surely this will appeal to nobody except for the kids who buy the Suite Life of Zack & Cody games and all those Ubisoft pet simulators that end in the letter Z. Ah well, here's the trailer, I might as well watch it to confirm all of these suspicions.

Hmmm... this is actually pretty fast-paced looking, and the music is sort of exciting. Hey, you draw platforms just like in Kirby Canvas Curse! I loved that game. Woah, look at that jump, these kids are serious about OH MAN did she just swing on that? DAMN, look at him slide through those WAS THAT A ZOMBIE???

I may have prejudged this game too harshly. This looks... kind of... sort of... completely awesome...ish.

Previous Trailer Reviews:

Yakuza 3
Dragon Quest IX
TGS Trailer Time: Resident Evil 5
Retro Game Challenge
Golden Axe: Beast Rider
House of the Dead: Overkill
Riz-Zoawd
Idolm@ster PSP
The Last Guy
Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff
Captain Rainbow
Mega Man 9 and Chrono Trigger DS
Densetsu no Stafi 5
Sonic Unleashed
Infinite Undiscovery
Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood
Street Fighter IV
The Conduit
Mirror’s Edge

Trailer Review: Yakuza 3

John Constantine — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Kazuma Kiryu and I are going to hang out. We’ll go out and he’ll show me the sights, take me to a hostess club, and we will laugh and laugh. Chances are, some dudes in puffy winter jackets will start some shit. I will hold their leader in a headlock and Kaz will drop kick that mofo so hard that Canadian children will say, “Ow” in their living rooms, thousands and thousands of miles away. We’ll high five each other then, before listening to a hardboiled detective tell us of intriguing and nefarious dealings in the Tokyo underworld. It’ll be sweet when the jazz rock starts playing. That heady day will only end when I’m woken up in my study, a firm bionic hand on my shoulder and a disapproving voice asking if I’m “dreaming of that Celestial roustabout” again. I will lie, of course. A white lie to soothe my beloved Commando’s nerves. But I will treasure that dream all the same.

Yakuza 3, as you can see from this trailer, looks totally frigging rad. As to what’s happening here, I have no clue. Kazuma Kiryu is hanging out with some kids, which I assume are from the orphanage he patronizes in Yakuza 2, on a beach, there’s a protest of some kind, some political intrigue, the flashy graphics are shown off, and many familiar faces appear, much to my delight. At one point, it looks like Kiryu’s beating the crap out of Albert Wesker from Resident Evil. I want this to be the case very badly. If you have yet to try either of the Yakuza games on PS2, this might look like a boring cutscene fest. Let me assure you, there is a monumental amount of game in the Yakuza series. There are many lengthy cutscenes, but Yakuza is one of those very rare instances when they’re actually a treat. The stories, while more than a little melodramatic and overblown, are well written and exciting, provided crime drama is something you enjoy.

Sega, please bring this here. Please.

(Link: Siliconera)

Previous Trailer Reviews:

Dragon Quest IX
TGS Trailer Time: Resident Evil 5
Retro Game Challenge
Golden Axe: Beast Rider
House of the Dead: Overkill
Riz-Zoawd
Idolm@ster PSP
The Last Guy
Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff
Captain Rainbow
The Past and Future With Mega Man 9 and Chrono Trigger DS
Densetsu no Stafi 5
Sonic Unleashed
Infinite Undiscovery
Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood
Street Fighter 4
The Conduit
Mirror’s Edge

Trailer Review: Dragon Quest IX

John Constantine — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 22:00:00 GMT

As October wears on and the fruits of game season, grand experiences like Dead Space and Fable 2, start to illuminate my living room with an incandescent and warming light, I find myself not looking forward, but back. 2008 has been, to date, a year overflowing with great games and even though it’s been less than a month since I finished it, I’m already looking back at Dragon Quest IV fondly. The characters, the leveling, the music; it was glorious. But, as it is with JRPGs, it will be a very long time before I ever attempt to complete that particularly glorious remake again. (If ever. Role-playing games are a steep time investment as is, a fact I’ve discussed many times in the past.) But this trailer, only recently presented in high-quality after its debut at Tokyo Game Show, fills me with hope for the future. Dragon Quest IX will be awesome. Oh yes, it will be so, so awesome.

Which isn’t to say it hasn’t previously. It’s just that this is the first look at what the game is going to look like in a complete state. The 3D engine does a truly impressive job of replicating DQVIII’s luscious cel-shading and the character designs, the mix of super-deformed characters and more human proportions, have evolved nicely since 2005’s Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker. It’s still up in the air whether or not DQIX’s multiplayer will be a quality addition or distracting from Dragon Quest’s inherent, and generally solitary, merits. But the trailer assures us of two things: the game will be beautiful and it will be chock-full of Dragon Questly goodness. Bring on the slimes, Mr. Horii.

Previous Trailer Reviews:

TGS Trailer Time: Resident Evil 5
Retro Game Challenge
Golden Axe: Beast Rider
House of the Dead: Overkill
Riz-Zoawd
Idolm@ster PSP
The Last Guy
Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff
Captain Rainbow
The Past and Future With Mega Man 9 and Chrono Trigger DS
Densetsu no Stafi 5
Sonic Unleashed
Infinite Undiscovery
Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood
Street Fighter 4
The Conduit
Mirror’s Edge

TGS Trailer Time: Resident Evil 5

Bob Mackey — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:00:00 GMT

A trailer for Capcom's upcoming Resident Evil 5 debuted at the Tokyo Game Show, and--fortunately for you--watching it is now mandatory. Note to Capcom: if you're going to introduce a female character by first showing us her butt, you might as well go all the way and throw in a cartoony thumping bass drum for full effect.

This is the most story we've seen out of RE5 yet, which may be why this preview reminds me so much of Metal Gear Solid (mainly when the stirring music kicks in). And the real return of longtime series villain Wesker should delight all of the RE fans who poo-pooed 4 for essentially being a side-story. Yes; there are seriously people who didn't like RE4 because it was only tangentially related to the series' tortured, ludicrous continuity--and they walk among us, so watch out for that.

If you really need to see how awful and nonsensical the connections are between the first four games in the series, head on over to the Let's Play Archive and check out The Dark Id's annotated playthroughs of the Resident Evil series. You'll be glad you did.

Back to the trailer: really, no big surprises here--but the RE series has never been full of unpredictable twists and turn. Duh moment #1: Wesker is behind all of this (he became even more evil when he picked up a British accent at some point during the series); duh moment #2: This whole mess is once again caused by his God complex--seriously, getting impaled by a bio-weapon was the best thing that could happen to the guy. This time around, it looks like he has a sexy British (or vaguely European) sidekick, who, for some reason, is giving me flashbacks to season 2 of Dexter. I guess that's a good thing.

It looks like RE5 isn't going to miss its March 13 release date, and I really hope it doesn't; four years is far too long to wait for a game that appears to be of Resident Evil 4's caliber.

Related Links:

Games to Film to Games to Film: Resident Evil Degeneration
Interview Round Up: Suda 51, Shinji Mikami, and Mikami’s Replacements on Resident Evil
Rumors, Rumors, Riz-u-mors: Resident Evil 2 Wii and The Glory of Speculation

Trailer Review: Retro Game Master

John Constantine — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 23:00:00 GMT

You know, not to be glib, but this is some meta shit right here. Follow me down the rabbit hole of abstraction, won’t you? Game Center CX is a show about a comedian pretending to be Japanese middle-manager who plays NES games in marathon sessions, with typically hilarious results. The show’s Americanized name is Retro Game Master, though the show currently has no distribution in the United States. XSEED games, a fairly new US game publisher that specializes in Japanese quirk, is publishing Retro Game Challenge, an English localization of GameCenter CX: Arino no Chōsenjō, a videogame made up of pretend NES games based on a show about a pretend man who plays real NES games. It boggles the mind!

Limited as the audience for Retro Game Challenge might be here in the States, I’m delighted that XSEED is bringing it over. I’ve been lusting for its collection of fake NES games since its Japanese release last year, and this trailer is hardly making the wait any easier. After catching a localized episode of the show last summer, I’m wondering how well the brand’s sense of humor is going to be translated in this little package. Does XSEED’s localization of the game preserve a strong tie to the show? Who knows. Check out the goods and let us know what you think in the comments.

(Link: Siliconera)

Previous Trailer Reviews:

Golden Axe: Beast Rider
House of the Dead: Overkill
Riz-Zoawd
Idolm@ster PSP
The Last Guy
Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff
Captain Rainbow
The Past and Future With Mega Man 9 and Chrono Trigger DS
Densetsu no Stafi 5
Sonic Unleashed
Infinite Undiscovery
Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood
Street Fighter 4
The Conduit
Mirror’s Edge