Consoles, Games and Emulators.

Earlier today, during a meeting with representatives from Blazing Lizard and Gamecock, we had an opportunity to get our hands on Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball for the first time. Currently scheduled for release via Xbox Live Arcade early in 2008, the game pits two teams of up to four players against each other on battlefields where the deadliest weapon is a brightly colored ball with a smiley face on it. You already know about the pirate and ninja teams. While theirs is certainly a battle that could rage for all eternity, extra variety will come courtesy of zombie and robot teams.

Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball’s single-player game will purportedly be story driven, and we’re told that each of the four playable teams will have its own version of said story. But we’re not sure this is a game that you’ll be playing for its storyline. While you’ll need to spend some time playing solo or in co-op mode to unlock a couple of the teams, we suspect most of the fun will be had with the competitive multiplayer matches. Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball will support up to four players on a single console, and that number holds true in online matches where up to eight players can do battle simultaneously.

Regardless of which teams you’re playing as, every player in the match will have a different special ability. For example, one of the pirates has a wooden leg that he can pound into the ground to stun nearby opponents, while another has a pet parrot that will retrieve the ball for him at any time. Ninja skills that we got to see in action included teleporting the ball into a player’s hands and a “cloak” ability that made one of the players almost invisible. At first glance, almost all of the character-specific powers might appear to be a little overpowered, but you need a full stamina meter to activate them. You also use stamina every time you jump, throw a ball, or perform a regular attack, so you won’t get to use the specials very often. Incidentally, none of your attacks can actually harm other players–only the ball can do that. Your attacks are simply used to incapacitate opponents and gain possession of the ball.

When you’ve got the ball, your goal is obviously to throw it at one of your opponents. But it’s not quite that simple because there are a number of different ways you can go about doing so. For example, if you try to throw the ball while you’re running, it’ll just go in whichever direction you’re facing, but if you remain stationary, your shot will hone in on an opponent. Furthermore, if you throw the ball at the apex of a jump, you’ll do so with much more power–making it much harder to defend against. You can defend against incoming balls either by hitting them back at the thrower or by catching them, which replenishes some of your health.

The matches that we played today took place on a beach and in a snow-covered forest, which are the home arenas for the pirates and ninjas, respectively. Environmental objects, such as the trees in the forest, promise to make every arena play a little differently and should make the headstone-filled graveyard of the zombie team especially challenging. The robot team’s home arena, which we’ve yet to see, will have the appearance of a futuristic factory. We’re told that at least two additional arenas will be made available for download after Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball’s release, along with a fifth playable team.

We’ll bring you more information on Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball as soon as it becomes available.

Project Sylpheed is a mission-based space shooter in the spirit of the Wing Commander series. You’ll fly around space, dogfighting with other spacecraft and launching big missiles at larger capital ships, just as you’d expect from a game in this vein. The action is surrounded by pre-rendered cutscenes that give the whole game a bit of anime flair, for better and for worse. Ultimately, this game is brought down by its short length, poor control, and bad technical performance.

In the game, you fly as a guy named Katana. You’re one of the Terrans, and you fight for the side of Earth. At the other end of the conflict is the ADAN resistance, a group of humans from other worlds who have joined together to fight what they see as tyranny on the part of Earth’s government. As the story progresses, you’ll protect your carrier against ADAN attacks, take the fight to the ADAN forces, and ultimately destroy ADAN’s Death Star knock-off. Along the way, you’ll get cutscenes that deal with a few of the interpersonal relationships. In true anime fashion, the ace pilot on the other side is a mysterious figure from your past, which makes the conflict feel a bit more personal. The storyline isn’t terrific, but it moves the action along in ways that usually make sense.
Project Sylpheed makes a bad first impression, but it gets a little better as you go.
The gameplay is what brings Project Sylpheed down. While you’re given three different control schemes that either attempt to make things easy to handle or give the game a flight simulation-like quality, none of them really do the job, as various commands require you to double-tap buttons, or hold them down, or just press them once, and so on. It feels like each button has two or three commands, depending on how you press it, which makes the tutorial mode more confusing than it should be because it quickly rushes you through all of your ship’s functionality without actually telling you why any of it’s useful. On top of that, many of the commands at your disposal–such as a three-stage special move that can slow down time, another that causes you to boost forward to bash through enemies, or one that fires all your weapons at once–are almost entirely useless.

Though the game’s harder difficulties require you to be a bit more on top of things, most of the game is spent lining up shots with your HUD and targeting computer, and firing homing shots to take care of business. The only thing you really have to worry about is making sure that your support ships or the ships you’re escorting don’t get shot down. On top of all that, the game is quite short, and it’s probable that most players will get to the conclusion of the story in around three to six hours of flight time. Obviously, raising the difficulty stretches that time out, but fighting tougher foes doesn’t really make the gameplay any more rewarding.

Project Sylpheed doesn’t look bad when it isn’t moving. It’s got some nice-looking star fields, and the ship design is OK. However, anytime the area gets crowded, the frame rate suffers a huge hit. In some of the later levels, where the opposing forces collide with their full fleets in tow, the game is almost unplayable. But the explosions look nice and the sound effects are passable, too. The game uses a good amount of voice acting, both in-game and during cutscenes, and it’s of the typical English-speaking anime quality, meaning that the characters are occasionally overdramatic or a little too upbeat and cutesy for their own good. Ellen, the girl who flies as your wingman for the entire game, is especially stupid.

While modern game machines haven’t seen very many space shooters like Project Sylpheed, this one probably isn’t going to satisfy anyone looking for a Wing Commander or X-Wing-like game because it’s just too basic to hold anyone’s interest for very long. At the same time, anyone looking for a basic shooter will probably be put off by the needlessly complicated controls.

Playing Splinter Cell with vampires isn’t as cool in reality as it is on paper. Despite an absolutely fantastic concept that transforms Sam Fisher’s spies and saboteurs into postmodern bloodsuckers called Nightwalkers, insta-death difficulty and confusing level design make Vampire Rain nearly unplayable. Developer Artoon hits some high notes with guts and gore, but the frustration factor kills whatever pluses the game has going for it.

About the only good thing about this game is that it doesn’t waste your time; it broadcasts its awfulness right from the very start. The campaign story tells the ludicrous tale of John Lloyd, member of a team of plucky commandos fighting a secret war against vampires that are somehow taking over America and will outnumber regular citizens with pulses in precisely 908 days (vampires must be really good at mailing in their census forms). It’s never explained exactly how this is happening, though. Even though the game is loaded with nonstop cutscenes, virtually all of the leaden, comic-book exposition is devoted to the repetitive explanation of mundane mission goals. Average folks are still walking the streets at night without a care in the world, too, so it’s tough to worry about the undead swarming in to take American jobs or whatever.
Aside from some gory moments like this innovative use of a stop sign, there isn’t much horror in Vampire Rain.
Even with the vampire plague left unexplained, Artoon could still have built a creepy atmosphere. You don’t need context to send chills up spines when hunting vampires in the dark, after all. But the developer doesn’t do anything with the horror-movie vibe aside from throwing in the odd cutscene featuring a–wait for it–creepy little girl with stringy hair and buckets of gore (including one memorable moment where you discover that a few of your buddies have been turned into bloody performance art courtesy of some stop-sign poles). Lloyd looks exactly like Sam Fisher, right down to his black spandex Underoos and night-vision goggles. Mission objectives are straight from the Third Echelon playbook. You get a lot of high-tech scavenger hunts in alleys, office buildings, underground parking garages, and warehouses, and goals like taking down cell-phone towers, recovering electronic data, and shooting baddies with sniper rifles.

So aside from fanged foes ripping your throat out when you lose, there aren’t any serious differences between Vampire Rain and a typical espionage-style sneaker. Gameplay certainly mirrors Splinter Cell and its clones. The basic structure of the game is identical in that you creep through alleyways, climb ladders, slide down wires and poles, and do all sorts of odd creeping around in a desperate attempt to avoid the vision cones of patrolling bad guys displayed on your minimap. Still, this isn’t exactly a by the numbers stealth game, as Artoon introduces new ideas in almost every area, all of which do nothing but mess up what should have been a pretty straightforward game design.

First of all, Nightwalker vision cones are only a rough approximation of what the beasties can actually see. This seems realistic, as the distance is never beyond the realm of possibility and the vampires do have to be looking right at you. Shadows are more authentic zones of darkness here, not the magic cloaking fields seen in the Splinter Cell and Thief games. A good rule of thumb is that if you can see them, they can see you, which seems pretty fair. But even though you get used to this over time, not being able to trust the vision cones forces you into a lot of tedious trial and error, as you never know what you can get away with. Sometimes you’ll go to great lengths to get around a sentry that you’re positive will be able to easily spot you, only to eventually give up on alternate routes and discover that you can dart around it unseen. Other times you’ll try to walk by a guard well out of his range of sight and be picked up immediately. To make everything even more annoying, you can’t even activate vision cones on your minimap without identifying passersby as bloodsuckers with the necroscope function of your goggles.

Second, Nightwalkers are virtually impossible to kill. When you’re spotted, you’re dead. Weapons through much of the game are worthless. It takes a full clip of the automatic rifle or the submachine gun to take down one of these Drac-pack refugees, while they move so fast that they seem to be beaming from one place to another and can kill you with two swipes, the first of which generally incapacitates you. And once one gets you in its sights, it goes on the hunt until one of you is dead, so there’s no running away or hiding. A sniper rifle and a UV knife show up later in the game and make killing Nightwalkers easier, although these new-and-improved devices require rare ammo (yes, even the freaking knife) and disappear at the end of each level. At any rate, vamp numbers rise so dramatically that it’s suicidal to fight them no matter what weapons you possess. And even though Nightwalkers are so deadly, being hunted by them feels very artificial. Vamps never talk to one another, shuffle their feet, cough, wander over to see what might be lurking in the shadows, or even mutter about noisy rats. Instead of any interaction, you get a flashing-eyes special effect that lets you know you’ve got a couple of seconds to get under cover.

Level design causes more headaches. Paths forward are relentlessly linear in the campaign missions. Even though street scenes in the game appear wide open with all sorts of alleys to explore and ladders to climb, you’re hemmed in by invisible borders. Everything is also so dark that it can be tough to figure out which way to go. Shadowy visuals boast incessant rain effects that set an appropriately depressing mood, although the scenery is so murky and indistinct that fine details are swallowed up by the gloom. You often can’t even be certain of the presence of vampire sentries until you get so close that they can spot you. Night-vision and necroscope goggles can pierce the blackness, but the battery powering them runs down every few seconds. You spend more time waiting for recharges than you do hunting down hidden ladders and vamps. Sound effects don’t help, either. Vamps frequently don’t say anything when they spot you, and their footsteps are so muted that they might as well be walking on air. The only noteworthy aspect of the audio in the whole game is the squelching sound of a vampire mowing down on your carotid artery–and, of course, you hear that only during the brief cinematic that plays every time you get killed.
The sniper rifle and necroscope make for a devastating combo, at least while you’re on rooftops a mile away from any Nightwalkers.
Gameplay modes outside of the campaign are unimpressive as well. Trial missions that give you short objectives to solve, like playing tag with all the other members of your team or grabbing a weapon from under the nose of a vampire, are often more entertaining than the full-blown story levels. Still, they’re too short and limited to be all that involving. Multiplayer is dull, and the Live server is sparsely populated much of the time. The only multiplayer option that stands out is Death or Nightwalker, a deathmatch variant where a killed player can turn into a vamp. Of course, all this does is give the player the absurd speed and strength of the vampires in the game, so games end up totally unbalanced. It’s probably best to stick with the uninspired alternatives, which include deathmatch, team deathmatch, and a capture-the-flag clone where you capture a flame.

It’s entirely reasonable to look at Vampire Rain’s concept and hope for something good to come of it. It may be a Splinter Cell also-ran, but the bloodsucking enemies and gorier moments give it a sufficient level of intrigue for the horror crowd. Too bad that any unlucky souls forced to trudge through this masochistically awful adventure would likely drive a stake through their own heart less than an hour in. Here’s hoping someone sees the potential in future genre mash-ups like this one–ideally someone with a better game design.

Rock the Rhythm, Lead, and Bass Guitar tracks in the follow-up sequel to “Guitar Hero.” Form your guitar duo and shred riffs cooperatively or go head to head in all new multiplayer modes. With over 55 tracks to rock out to, you’ll go from Guitar Hero to Guitar god in one press of a fret button. Choose from multiple rock characters and jam at concert venues that grow in size as your rock career progresses. You’ll start your rock career playing small clubs and bars, but if you play well you’ll work your way up to stadiums and arenas. Guitar Hero II takes the guitar rock experience to new volumes by allowing players to play 3 different guitar tracks: Rhythm, Bass, and Lead. Guitar Hero II introduces all new multiplayer modes like: cooperative, pro-face off, and face off, letting 2 Guitar Heroes conduct their own symphonies of destruction. Shred School: Guitar Hero II features an all new practice mode, allowing Guitar Zeroes to become Guitar Heroes with enough practice. With Guitar Hero II for Xbox 360 rock rhythm, lead, or bass guitar tracks with downloadable content and the new X-Plorer controller, designed specifically for the Xbox 360.

They’ve got your spaceship, so blow up anything in your path to get it back. Completely hand-drawn high-definition graphics coupled with old-school game play results in ultimate mayhem. This side-scrolling shooter features cute, quirky humor and adjustable cartoon gore. Alien Hominid HD features jump-in-anytime multiplayer action, immersive environments, award-winning bosses, and over 30 fashionable hats. This 2-D console experience comes jam-packed with seven mini-games, including several four-player party games. All You Can Eat, Neutron Ball, and PDA Games will keep the party going for hours on end. All 16 levels and seven mini-games are included in this version, in addition to 720p HD support and 150+ brand new PDA mini-game levels. Two players locally in the main game, and up to four players offline or on Xbox Live in mini-games. Per-player difficulty: Difficulty settings can be adjusted on a per-controller basis.

As the creators of the Call of Duty franchise, developer Infinity Ward has been lauded for making one of the most intense, cinematic WWII first-person shooters ever. The game took the world by storm, as did the sequel that was released on the PC and Xbox 360 last year. When it was announced that Call of Duty 3 would be released this holiday season on virtually every platform except the PC, many gamers were up in arms. Why had Infinity Ward forsaken them? Would the series be leaving the PC world for good? Once we found out that the game would be developed instead by Treyarch (the team responsible for the other console-only entries in the series), everything became crystal clear. With Infinity Ward hard at work on what we can only assume is Call of Duty 4, could their “minor league team” (as some have called the company) make a next-gen game worthy of the CoD name?

 Like the other games in the franchise, Call of Duty 3 presents the battles of the Big One from a number of different perspectives. This time out, you’ll play as an American soldier, a British commando, a member of a Polish armored division, and a Canadian highlander. The action takes place during the Normandy Breakout, the operation that took place just after D-day and led to the liberation of Paris. While it’s tough to say that the game is story-driven, you do meet a few memorable characters as you progress, and you’ll see them change during their ordeals. The dialogue is actually pretty sharp, too, as certain nationalities make clear their dislike of others (i.e. the Brits make fun of the French for their tendency to surrender). Still, the narrative’s main purpose is largely to drive the action from one battle sequence to another, something it does quite well.

Basically, if you’ve played any of the other Call of Duty games, you know exactly what to expect here (although there are a few gameplay additions). The action is intense from beginning to end, and the grand set pieces are almost cinematic in their presentation. You’ll be tasked with one objective after another, and each will be indicated on your on-screen compass, which also shows you the position of your friends and foes. While most of the objectives involve your character fighting his way from location to location, you’ll also be asked to take out mortar teams, spot MG nests for tanks, and mark enemy tanks for your big guns to obliterate. Just like the previous games, Call of Duty 3 perfectly conveys the chaos found on the battlefield, particularly when you’re frantically trying to find cover from enemy gunfire. 

Since the folks at Treyarch undoubtedly know that the WWII shooter genre is quickly becoming stale (or already is, depending on who you ask), they’ve added a few new wrinkles in an attempt to keep things interesting. Every so often, you’ll take part in a “Battle Action,” which is essentially a mini-game that must be completed to progress. They range from hand-to-hand combat with an enemy to placing an explosive, and they all involve pressing whatever button flashes onscreen or rotating the analog stick in a certain direction or rhythmically tapping the triggers. While these are a nice little distraction at first, by the end they start to get repetitive.Call of Duty 3 also features a few in-vehicle sequences, something that Treyarch brought to the table while developing the current-gen iterations in the series. During some of the missions, you’ll be tasked with driving from point to point while one of your squadmates handles the mounted weapon. These segments aren’t particularly challenging (unless you’re counting the handling, which feels a bit off), but they do keep the action feeling fresh. The tank sequences are enjoyable, too, and they feel a lot more authentic than the ones in Call of Duty 2 for the Xbox 360. 

The area that sees the biggest change is the revamped multiplayer mode, which has evolved to become an experience that’s more Battlefield 1942 than Call of Duty 2. Up to 24 players will be able to hop on Xbox Live (the game also supports 4 player split-screen and system link options) for some intensely addictive action. Unlike the previous console game, Call of Duty 3 supports vehicles, so you’ll likely spend much of your time zipping around the expansive maps on a motorcycle, in a tank, or carrying your pals around in a truck. In addition to old favorites like Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Capture the Flag, the game has an extremely enjoyable gametype simply called War, in which your team must capture and hold a random area for as long as possible. The game seems to run very well on Xbox Live, although we did notice an occasional hiccup here and there.The best element of the multiplayer mode is the fact that it now features class-based gameplay, meaning you can choose to be everything from a heavy gunner to a support man, and it seems like each and every one of them is perfectly balanced. For instance, if you fall in combat, you can call out to a medic, who can then (if he or she so chooses) come over to heal you. All of your stats will be tracked, and you can gradually make your way up the “chain of command” by doing everything from killing foes to healing friends to capturing flags. We were very happy to see that, unlike last year’s Call of Duty 2, players won’t be kicked out to the lobby at the end of every match. Finally, you and your friends can spend the whole night together on the battlefield!

Although Call of Duty 3 feels exactly like the other games in the series, it’s definitely the best looking WWII game we’ve seen. There’s a ton of little details to help make the proceedings feel very realistic, from the depth of field blur that happens every time you use the iron sights on your weapon to the amazing smoke effects. The foliage looks great, too, especially the trees, which sway in the wind, and the grass, which actually gets matted down a bit as you and your squadmates trample over it. The game also features more destructible environments than the previous games, although we’re a bit perplexed as to why certain wooden objects splinter and explode, while others can be used for cover. Hopefully, that’s something that’ll be answered with the inevitable Call of Duty 4.

As was the case with the previous games in the series, Call of Duty 3’s audio is excellent. You can hear each and every bullet whiz by your ear, and the effect when a grenade goes off near your position will have you running for cover. The score is awesome, too, crafted by Joel Goldsmith, the son of legendary composer Jerry Goldsmith. There are some sweeping orchestral movements that only help to make the game feel more cinematic. Our only big qualm with the audio portion of the game is the voiceover work, which occasionally moves into the realm of stereotypical banter. You’ll probably notice a bit of repetition from time to time, too, particularly during combat.

While the action in Call of Duty 3 feels a bit stale (but really, can anyone make a totally original WWII shooter?), this is another great entry in an excellent series. The graphics and audio work are both top-notch, and the multiplayer should stay fresh and exciting for months to come. Still, we can’t help but wonder how many more games we’ll see in the Call of Duty series. Will we be seeing a new theater of war in the next game? How about a different war altogether? Maybe an alternate universe in which the Nazis invaded the United States is the shot in the arm the series needs. No matter what the future holds, this is one game that fans of the genre should definitely pick up. 

I’ve been puzzled for a while, why game reviewers generally shun comparing a game across different formats. And now I perhaps have discovered one reason for this apparent oversight.

Eurogamer have conducted an in-depth review of both Ps2 and xbox 360 versions of PES6 and the news is not all that encouraging for Xbox 360 owners. Xbox 360 the next generation console, the console of choice for the next geneation ….cough!….. sports fewer multiplayers, fewer stadiums (8 compared to PS2’s 33), no shop options, no replay saves. Rushed release? I didnt’ say that!

“With so many features missing, a poor online implementation and a tragic unwillingness to treat this as a next generation project, Konami has taken a hefty gamble with PES6 on the 360.”

Notwithstanding that the game received a score of 80%, though you might want to bypass the xbox 360 section in your local game shop. Out in Europe due for release in US January 2007