Tag Archives: Exclusives

Fusion: Genesis – Half of Twenty Questions With Starfire Studios

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(Or: Conquering Space in a Packed Online Universe, One Player at a Time)

Thanks to my one-man army status and rather ridiculous tower of stuff to tackle, It’s been a little while since I’ve interviewed someone for a DAF feature. Fortunately, I’m ending that quiet streak in a nice way. Every so often, I play a really cool game that demands a bit more attention and a little Q & A time, so here you go. Starfire Studios’ upcoming Xbox Live Arcade exclusive Fusion: Genesis is set to launch November 9, and it’s looking like one of those games that’s bound to gain a dedicated following as more gamers discover its stunning visuals and easy to pick up but highly challenging gameplay.  With their first release done and ready to roll, I shot a few basic Q’s over to the fab four at Starfire and got a speedy response from two of the team, Phil Dunne and Chris Tilston (plus a musical guest star)… Continue reading →

Raving Rabbids: Alive & Kicking Trailer: UbiSoft’s BIG Conspiracy In Action

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Listen up! Before you start in with the “Awww, cuuute!” stuff, you REALLY shouldn’t let any Rabbids into your home, especially if you have a Kinect. Why not? For starters, they multiply like, well… Rabbids, they’ll eat all your canned food (and probably part of the cabinets they were stored in) and you’ll never get a second of rest once you start chasing them around and stomping them before they can destroy something else! Anyway, that’s my good deed for the day – consider yourselves warned. Fail to heed my words and it’ll be trouble. That lamp that just went flying across the room? That wasn’t YOU swinging your arms and kicking wildly in front of the Kinect that did it. It just looked that way.  Those darn Rabbids can fool you into doing all sorts of insane stuff. I think UbiSoft has been overrun by the little buggers, since they created them a few years back and came up with this game to get rid of their infestation! So now, they’re shipping them out all across the globe and actually CHARGING people good money for the privilege of flailing away in front of their TV sets like spastic chimpanzees. Oh, the humanity!

Remember, You have been warned.

Heavy Rain “Director’s Cut” Coming November 8th. Buy It (Even If You Own The Original Already).

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One of the best and most cinematic games this generation for any console gets another reissue, this time with pretty much everything you were expecting. Almost. It’s not really a Director’s Cut if you try and think of it EXACTLY like a film, but given that David Cage is a great game director (and really needs to make more games), I’ll let this slide a bit. Basically, you’re getting the award-winning dramatic adventure game in it’s Move Edition format plus a bunch of sweet bonuses:

 

  • Complete, original game, Heavy Rain
  • Heavy Rain Chronicles: Episode 1 – “The Taxidermist” DLC
  • Heavy Rain Original Videogame Score by award-winning film and television composer, Normand Corbeil (16 tracks)
  • New front-end menu and interface with built-in Move support
  • A series of 8 “Making of” Bonus Videos
  • Three Dynamic Themes (Heavy Rain, Heavy Rain ARI Forest, Heavy Rain ARI Mars)
  • 15 additional pieces of new concept art
  • 2 bonus Trailers (Thank You Trailer, Love Trailer)

 

As a Greatest Hits reissue, that bargain price is sure to get a few more people playing this truly innovative game. And hopefully, it’ll make Quantic Dream a few bucks more as well. As much as I love my indie games,  we need developers like QD to save the gaming scene from becoming an all-app, all the time wasteland of a few gems in the rough buried under piles of garbage. Let’s hope we see something from Cage and his team on the Vita at some point as well…

Review: Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Collection

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Platform: PlayStation 3

Developer: Team Ico/Bluepoint Studios

Publisher: Sony

# of Players: 1

ESRB Rating: T (Teen)

Official Site

Score: A

In certain cases, wistful nostalgia can indeed kick you around the room hard once the reality sets in that perhaps things weren’t as great as you recalled. However, both ICO and Shadow of the Colossus have withstood the test of time as two truly memorable game experiences not to be missed. Team Ico with (a solid assist from Bluepoint Games) have polished up both games to a nice HD finish, added Trophy support, optional 3D and a nice set of bonus features for one truly great package (at a mere $40) that’s an absolute must-purchase title (and yet another solid PS3 collection). For those that remember these two classics, replaying them in this collection will offer a few nice surprises along with a few old quirks. For those that have yet to experience these two masterworks (elements of which have turned up in many games over the past decade), expect to be amazed… provided you have the proper perspective.

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New Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor Trailer Makes Me Want To Knock Down a Wall…

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…So I can actually (and finally!) get my own Kinect and play the game. My living room is nicely-sized, but in the wrong way that I’d need to have my TV near the front door and blocking access to the kitchen in order to play any Kinect games. I can do Move stuff just fine, though. Oh well. Go, From Software! I’d say Capcom will have a nifty niche hit here provided that some folks get over the fact that more types of games can be done well on Kinect outside of dance, exercise and “family” titles. So far, color me very impressed with this game (even as a work in progress). I’d be even MORE impressed if Capcom added the original Xbox game and sequel to the disc as bonuses so those who missed out can finally play them without having to pay an arm and a leg for that MASSIVE custom controller (and find out the second game needed a single-player campaign which it didn’t have as an online-only expansion pack).

Ni No Kuni Japanese Box Art Is Pretty… Boring (But Pretty Nonetheless)

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While this watercolor image for the Japanese version of the game is indeed a truly lovely piece of art, it’s also pretty generic to a fault. At best, It looks like a greeting card for some made up holiday (Happy Festivus!) or a menu from some renaissance fair salad bar and at worst, like a roadside sign advertising a fairy farm (Come Pet Our Unicorn. Please. Thank You).

Given the lush backgrounds found in both the DS and PS3 versions, I was hoping to see a Level-5/Studio Ghibli combo cover to end all covers. Or at least art to match the beautiful images found on the official PS3 and Nintendo DS sites for each system’s respective games. Here’s a link to a recent trailer as well so you can see that the game is absolutely a LOT more gorgeous than this placeholder-looking cover image. Oh well. It’s not THAT bad. Still, I guess it’ll be up to Namco Bandai to give us a North American version with a cover image that soars. As long as they use art from the dev team or Studio Ghibli-provided assets, it should be a winner.

Fusion: Genesis – Hands-On With Starfire’s Sure-Fire XBLA Hit

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One of the nicer surprises at the VERY packed New York Comic Con was actually hidden in plain sight at the Microsoft booth. While packs of gamers waited in lines to play the spectacular Mass Effect 3, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary and a few other AAA games, right next to those was Fusion: Genesis, a sprawling, top-down space shooter/RPG/MMO hybrid by Starfire Studios headed exclusively to Xbox Live Arcade later this year. You probably haven’t heard of Starfire just yet as this is their first title under that name, but the four-man team is comprised of Chris Tilston, Mark Edmonds, Philip Dunne and Ross Bury, all ex-Rare talent with credits that range from GoldenEye, Killer Instinct, Perfect Dark and Kameo. Fusion looks and plays like none of the above games at all, but it’ll definitely seem familiar to fans of PC classics such as Starflight, Star Control or even the Sega Dreamcast sleeper, Armada. The game also tips its cap to classic arcade shooters, Star Wars and Star Trek in spots, but I don’t want to spoil too much in this preview… Continue reading →

Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Collection Arrives On An Already Crazy Week

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Oops. Like the Avengers trailer post, I typed this post out yesterday and clicked “Publish”, but something went goofy with my PC. Anyway, I’m adding it back at the time it initially was supposed to go in, grrr.

Well, alright – Now, I just need to find time to get a review in. I’ll probably skip the last day of NYCC and play through both games so I can have a review up by next Monday or Tuesday at the latest. I know Ico is the overseas version and has some areas that are different than the US version and I’ve played SotC enough to know how to take down those Colossi pretty quickly (although it’s been a few years since I’ve played both games). Still, I’m planning to go back to both games in the collection more than once as soon as I have a lot more free time on my hands… Which at this point won’t be until 2012…

Ratchet & Clank All 4 One Team Up Trailer

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Yes, it’s almost too darn cute and funny for words, but then this would be a really short blog post. Insomniac’s latest is on the way (October 18th), so here’s a look at the short version of the latest trailer. Hmmm… wait, that WAS a short post, wasn’t it? OK, initially I wasn’t sure I’d be a fan of the multiplayer-centric gameplay, being an antisocial cuss and all, but it looks as if playing solo will be just as fun. Insomniac DOES know what they’re doing, folks. So that’s that, I guess… We’ll see next week how it all turns out…

Yakuza: Dead Souls US/Europe Bound in 2012

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Thanks again, Sega! Known as Ryū ga Gotoku OF THE END in Japan, this offbeat (and more action-oriented) side story to the long-running franchise known as Yakuza in the west will be hitting the PS3 in March 2012. The game uses the same engine and locations found in the PS3 Yakuza games, adds plenty of zombies to the mix and lets players take on the roles of four characters as they try and put an end to the undead plague. No doubt Sega of America will get this out with as few changes as possible, as the US version of Yakuza 4 was a more solid game than the thanks to the wise decision to NOT chop out some of the more, shall we say, “controversial” content. I’m guessing this may show up at a press event at some point. If it does, I’ll get a hands-on preview up.