Consoles, Games and Emulators.

EX3 may feel a bit rushed in some spots, but overall it’s a fun and great-looking fighting game that won’t disappoint longtime EX fans.

Capcom’s Street Fighter EX series, developed by Arika, takes the standard Street Fighter 2D gameplay and throws it into a 3D world, adding a few new characters and moves along the way. The original Street Fighter EX fared pretty poorly in arcades, but after a few revisions it found a greater audience at home on the PlayStation. Street Fighter EX2 added a few new moves and characters, but it never really made much of a splash. Street Fighter EX3 takes the gameplay and additional moves of EX2, adds a tag-team element similar to that of Tekken Tag Tournament or Capcom’s own Marvel vs. Capcom, and drops it onto the PlayStation 2 for a quick and dirty fighting game that seems a little rushed but still manages to be a lot of fun.

The game’s main mode is original mode, where you’ll pick one character and dive right into a short but sweet fighting quest. Your first match is against three competitors - all at the same time. After winning this, or any, match in this mode, you’ll be asked if you’d like to recruit one of your opponents. You can recruit up to three partners as you progress through the six-match quest, which comprises tag battles, team battles, and a two-on-one match. Completing the final battle nets you a screen full of text and the ending credits. The ending credits serve as a sort of bonus stage, where your main fighter is put on the screen with six or seven generic fighters whom you can beat with only one or two hits. The game gives you an infinite combo meter and keeps track of how many of the generic bad guys you can knock out before the credits end. The other fighting modes in the game let you set up tag battles, dramatic battles, team battles, and four-player matches at will.

The game’s other real bonus is the character edit mode, which is an extention of the expert mode that appeared in EX1 and EX2. Instead of having a set number of missions to complete with each character, EX3 gives you Ace, a generic-looking fighter who looks a bit more like a fighter out of the Rival Schools universe than a Street Fighter. When you first start playing, Ace has no special moves whatsoever - he is a completely blank slate. As you complete the expert mode-like tasks (block all attacks, perform a three-hit combo, execute a combo that does over 90 points of damage, and the like), you earn experience points. You use these points to buy Ace’s special moves and super combos, which you’ll need to complete tasks later in the edit mode. Once you’ve beefed up Ace, he’ll be able to hold his own in the game’s other modes.

While the character graphics used in EX3 look pretty amazing when standing still, the animation is the same as it was in EX2. Granted, you can’t exactly add lots of frames to all the special moves and keep the game’s timing as faithful to the Street Fighter series as EX3 is, but now that the 3D Street Fighters don’t look all blocky and pixilated, the jerky animation really stands out. Also worth mentioning is the appearance of B.A. Baracus himself. Yes, what appears to be Mr. T’s picture adorns the walls of one of the arenas. It’s a strange yet heartwarming tribute to such a master thespian.

The audio portion of EX3 is packed with great effects, such as deep, bassy whooshing noises that accompany super-combo fireballs and the like. All of the hits and misses sound terrific, and the character voices are nice and crystal clear. The music, however, doesn’t always fit the action. Also, in an annoying demonstration of audio streaming, the music changes tunes on the fly when other characters get tagged in, so you never listen to one song for long - one track fades into another as soon as the action on the screen dictates a change.

Street Fighter EX3 is the game that EX2 should have, and probably would have, been, had this kind of hardware power been available sooner. The tag-team fighting adds a nice new element that the previous game totally lacked. EX3 may feel a bit rushed in some spots, but overall it’s a fun and great-looking fighting game that won’t disappoint longtime EX fans.

A superb single-player story mode and online support for up to 16 players make this the best Grand Theft Auto game yet.

Stepping off a boat in the shoes of illegal immigrant Niko Bellic as he arrives in Liberty City at the start of Grand Theft Auto IV, you can tell immediately that Rockstar North’s latest offering is something quite special. Yes, this is another GTA game in which you’ll likely spend the bulk of your time stealing cars and gunning down cops and criminals, but it’s also much more than that. GTAIV is a game with a compelling and nonlinear storyline, a game with a great protagonist who you can’t help but like, and a game that boasts a plethora of online multiplayer features in addition to its lengthy story mode. It’s not without some flaws, but GTAIV is undoubtedly the best Grand Theft Auto yet.

One of the many things that set GTAIV apart from its predecessors is Liberty City, which is more convincing as a living, breathing urban environment than anything that you’ve seen in a game before, and bears little resemblance to its namesake in 2001’s GTAIII. Liberty’s diverse population believably attempts to go about its daily business, seemingly unaware that several criminal factions are at war in the city. Niko has no such luck. He’s compelled to start working for one of the factions shortly after arriving, when he learns that his cousin Roman has some potentially fatal gambling debts. Niko’s military experience makes him a useful freelancer for employers in the business of killing each other, and though his reluctance to carry out their orders is often apparent, he does whatever is asked of him in the hope that completing missions for other people will ultimately give him the means to complete his own.

Actually, Niko doesn’t have to do everything that is asked of him. On several occasions as you play through his story, you’ll be presented with decisions that afford you the option of doing what you think is right rather than blindly following instructions. You don’t necessarily have to kill a target if he or she promises to disappear, but you have to weigh the risk of your employer finding out against the possibility that the person whose life you spare might prove useful later in the game, or even have work for you in the form of bonus missions. To say anything more specific on this subject would be to risk spoiling one of GTAIV’s most interesting new features, but suffice it to say that every decision you make has consequences, and you’ll likely want to play through the game at least twice to see how the alternatives unfold.

Grand Theft Auto IV’s story mode can be beaten in less than 30 hours, and there are so many optional activities and side missions to take part in along the way that you can comfortably double that number if you’re in no hurry. The majority of the story missions task you with making deliveries and/or killing people, and play out in much the same way as those in previous games. With that said, most of the missions are a lot easier this time around, partly because Niko is a more agile and efficient killer than any of his predecessors, and partly because the LCPD seemingly has better things to do than hunt down an illegal immigrant who’s gunning down undesirables all over the city. Some of the more imaginative missions sprinkled throughout the story include a kidnapping, a bank heist, and a job interview. The cinematic cutscenes associated with story missions are superbly presented and are the sequences in which the game’s characters really shine. Without exception, the characters you encounter benefit from great animation, great voice work, and superbly expressive faces. They’re not always so impressive when they join you on a mission and refuse to do what they’re supposed to (for example, not following you on an escort mission, or failing to negotiate a doorway). Nevertheless, these problems are few and far between, and they’re made less painful by the new “replay mission” option that you’re presented with whenever you fail.

New abilities in Niko’s arsenal include scaling fences and walls anywhere he can get a foothold, shimmying along ledges, and, most importantly, taking cover behind objects. The ability to stick close to walls, parked cars, and the like at the touch of a button makes GTAIV’s gunplay a huge improvement over that in previous games, and, in tandem with the new targeting system, it also makes it a lot easier. Enemies are rarely smart enough to get to you while you’re in cover, and given that you can lock your targeting reticle on to them even when they’re hidden, all you have to do is wait for them to poke their heads out and then pick them off with a minimum of effort. Locking on to enemies targets their torso by default, but you can use the right analog stick to fine-tune your aim and kill them more quickly with a headshot or two. Playing without using the lock-on feature make things more difficult, but you’ll need to master the technique so that you can shoot blindly at enemies from positions of cover when you dare not poke your own head out to line up the shot.

Given the amount of trouble that you get into as you play through the story mode, it’s inevitable that the police are going to get involved from time to time, even when their presence isn’t a scripted feature of your mission. Liberty City’s boys in blue are quick to respond when you get flagged with a wanted level of between one and six stars, but they’re not nearly as tough to deal with as their counterparts in previous GTA games. They don’t drive as quickly when pursuing you, they rarely bother to set up roadblocks, and you’ll need to blow up practically an entire city block before the FIB (that’s not a typo) show up. Furthermore, you’re given an unfair advantage in the form of your GPS system; when you’re not using it to plot a valid route to any waypoint of your choosing, it doubles as a kind of police scanner. Any time you have a brush with the law, the GPS shows you the exact locations of patrol cars and cops on foot in your area, and highlights the circular area (centered on your last known whereabouts) where they’re concentrating their search. To escape, all you need to do is move outside the circle and then avoid being seen for 10 seconds or so, which is often best achieved by finding a safe spot and just sitting there. It’s not a bad system in theory, but in practice it makes dodging the law a little too easy, especially when your wanted level is low and the search area is small.

When you’re not running missions for criminals, taking part in street races, stealing cars to order, or randomly causing trouble, you’ll find that there are plenty of opportunities to unwind in Liberty City. Some of these optional activities offer tangible rewards that can prove useful in missions later on, whereas others are just a fun way to kill time and take in more of GTAIV’s superb humor. For example, you can watch television, listen to numerous different radio stations, check out some genuinely funny shows (including some big-name acts) at cabaret and comedy clubs, and use a computer to surf the in-game Internet.

GTAIV’s Internet is filled with spoofs of all the kinds of Web sites that you’d only ever look at accidentally or when you know there’s no danger of getting caught. Some of them can be found only by clicking on links in spam e-mails, whereas others are advertised prominently on the search page. There’s plenty of amusing stuff to find if you spend some time in one of the “TW@” Internet cafes, but the most interesting site by far is an online dating agency through which you can meet women who, if they like your profile, will agree to go on dates with you. Dating and socializing with friends is something you can spend as much or as little of your time doing as you like, and though the people you meet can occasionally be demanding to the point that they become irritating, keeping them happy invariably benefits you in some way.

UEFA Euro 2008 plays a better game of football than anything else on the market, but only just.

UK REVIEW–First things first: UEFA Euro 2008 plays a better game of football than any other game currently available for either the Xbox 360 or the PS3. EA Canada’s gameplay team has been hard at work on the core engine since it finished FIFA 08, and its work shows. UEFA Euro 2008 isn’t that far ahead of the latest FIFA offering, but minor improvements are apparent all over the pitch.

As you’d expect, Euro 2008 features a much smaller roster of teams compared to FIFA, only featuring the international teams that are eligible for the European Championship, without any reduction in the sticker price to compensate. The football is slightly faster than in FIFA 08, the animations are smoother, and the addition of a manual celebration mechanic lets you control your player after scoring. All of these things add up to make UEFA Euro 2008 a slightly better match experience than FIFA 2008, but not that much better.

Euro 2008’s single-player modes are as varied as could be hoped given the limited nature of the licence. You can play through your chosen team’s qualifying campaign or just jump into the finals with your team. You can also play through in the Be A Pro mode or its new cousin, Captain Your Country.

The Captain Your Country mode expands on the Be A Pro mode introduced in FIFA 08. You create a player and control him during the course of the qualifying campaign rather than in just one match. The aim is not only to see your team through to qualification, but also to rack up a large enough number of good performances to be made captain by the time you reach the finals. The weaker the team, the easier it is to become captain, but the harder it is to make it to the finals. Your personal score for each match is based on how well you perform in your allotted role; as a defender, you can run forward to knock in goals, but you’re more likely to do well staying at the back and waiting to put in that goal-saving tackle instead.

You compete against three other players bidding to make the transition from B-team unknown to captain, with your scores out of ten displayed as you go along. This leads to some interesting gameplay, as there are a number of factors to bear in mind. Firstly, you want to perform as well as you can in your chosen position. Secondly, you want your team to get through to the finals and then win. Finally you want to do better than your fellow captaincy candidates, which can lead to a certain amount of gamesmanship as you try to ensure that they don’t get the chance to impress. This is an interesting take on co-op play, and it works really well in both single player–where the other players are AI controlled–or in multiplayer, where the mode really takes off as the competition hots up.

The football itself is very similar to FIFA 08, complete with its advanced trick system that allows more skilful players to skip past multiple defenders when mastered. As with FIFA 08 this system can seem overpowered in multiplayer games when one player has mastered it and the other has not, but the online skill matching does a good job of ensuring that this is rarely an issue.

In addition to regular matches and competitions there are a number of scenarios to play out, which put you in control at moments from the actual qualifying campaign that were particularly significant. For instance, you might be tasked with coming out on top after having been dumped into a game 2-0 down with 10 minutes to go, or you might be required to replicate Scotland’s famous 1-0 victory over France in Paris. Winning the European Championship with any side unlocks a batch of new scenarios from Euro 2004.

In previous midseason football titles released to coincide with major championships, playing through the full qualifying campaigns was a nigh-on pointless experience when playing as a high-ranked team, because you would steamroller the poorer international sides, but that isn’t the case here. The opponent AI changes are noticeable from the get-go of your campaign, with weaker teams defending in numbers and making your life in front of goal very difficult indeed. Crowds are more vocal than before, too, and are more hostile both home and away. When you’re already a goal down in a match that you have to win, hearing even virtual fans chanting “We want our money back” does nothing for your confidence. These changes do really give the game a lot of added value as it

The other significant gameplay factor that has been tweaked is the weather, which now plays a more significant role than before. Rain has noticeable effects on the speed the ball skids over the surface; if you hit wet turf, your pass will fly off faster than you’d expect, but if you hit a muddy patch, you will howl in dismay as the ball slows down and a defender slips back to cut out that seemingly perfectly weighted pass to your advancing centre-forward.

The multiplayer game has also received a certain amount of attention. The most obvious change is presented to you front and centre: UEFA Euro 2008 features a metagame that will tally up the performance of the various European nations throughout the tournament, with daily prizes for those who perform best. This performance is measured with a new in-game scoring system that attempts to quantify the skill you’ve shown. This is based on not only the number of goals you score and let in, but also on pass completion, shot accuracy, and more. It’s adjusted for the skill of your team and the skill of your opponent’s team. This may help to address the main problem FIFA 08 has had online–where Barcelona, the best-rated in-game club side, are the most popular team to play because they’re so good–but we’re sceptical. More significant is the introduction of quick 16-player tournaments, which can be set up among friends or with random people over Xbox Live or the PlayStation network. This is a compelling addition to the series’ basic multiplayer modes and is something we hope to see replicated in FIFA 09.

Despite its smaller scope, Euro 2008 replicates the drama of a major international cup competition very well. The gameplay isn’t a significant enough an improvement over FIFA 08 to make it easily recommendable as an upgrade given the sticker price, but if you’re yet to experience EA’s football offerings this season then now’s the time to start.

Chosen One isn’t what Skee-Lo had in mind when he wished to be a baller.

EA and Midway share the rights to NBA-licensed arcade basketball games. As a result, the NBA Ballers franchise is released every other year, with EA’s NBA Street series occupying the year in between. This year is NBA Ballers’ time to shine and that didn’t happen, which means it’s a down year for arcade hoops. NBA Ballers: Chosen One has some interesting ideas, particularly with regards to its presentation, but it’s ultimately a disappointment thanks to repetitive gameplay and needlessly complex controls.

You can single-play games of 1V1, 2V2, and 1V1V1, or sharpen your skills in practice, a shootout, or three-point contest. You can also play ranked and unranked matches online using your custom character, which is pretty cool. The bulk of Ballers’ content, however, is found in Story mode. Here you create a player, give him a nickname (we went with “Beans”), and choose from hundreds of different shirts, pants, shoes, jewelry items, and more to customize his appearance. You’ll unlock more gear as you progress, but you can make a truly unique baller with just the stuff that’s unlocked from the outset. Your created player will be terrible at first, but his attributes will improve slightly after each game. These attribute boosts are supposedly based on your performance in the previous game, but they seem more random than anything else. Story mode’s premise is simple. Each year after the NBA playoffs, the top players in the league take part in a street ball tournament, the winner of which will be known as the “Chosen One.” Story mode is divided into six episodes, each of which contains five chapters. Episodes are introduced by short video segments that feature Public Enemy’s Chuck D as a host of an NBA Tonight-like show. He doesn’t have anything particularly riveting to say, but the segments are nicely produced and add a bit of realism to the mode.

Although the game’s six episodes have diverse themes, they don’t feel that different from one another. Most of the time you go up against other players one-on-one and try to beat them. Sure, dunks might be worth three points in a round, you may have to pull off a particular special move, or you might play to 21 instead of 11, but after a couple of chapters you realize there’s not much variety, or at least variety that matters. Even the media mogul chapter, where you’re vying for a spot in a soft drink commercial, isn’t interesting. You spend most of the chapter beating guys head-to-head and then the last chapter performing specific moves against LeBron James while the commercial is filmed. But this just ends up feeling like the rest of the game because the moves are presented in list form before the round (once you start playing, you can’t reference them again, either), you’re doing the same combos you’ve been doing for the last few hours.The “commercial” that plays when you’re done doesn’t even look like a commercial, nor does it feature the moves you performed while shooting it.

Most people don’t expect a great story or a lot of variety to the game modes when they play an arcade-style basketball game. They want the best players, over-the-top dunks, hard fouls, diverse court locales, as well as fast-paced, fun gameplay. Chosen One delivers most of these. There are more than 80 current NBA players as well as legends such as Wilt Chamberlain, Moses Malone, Daryl Dawkins, Dr. J, Larry Bird, Magic, Bill Russell, and more. The basketball courts are spread out among a number of interesting locations including an airplane hangar, a penthouse suite in Boston, the Chicago lakefront, a rooftop in Dubai, South Beach, and the mountains of China. Dunks are suitably outrageous. Even someone like Steve Nash can throw down some crazy dunks and pass the ball to someone standing courtside for a long-distance alley-oop. Toss in plenty of blocks, steals, and physical play, and you have a game that should be a lot of fun, at least on paper.

But NBA Ballers: Chosen One isn’t fun, and there are a number of reasons for this. To start with, the controls are much too complicated for this style of game. You can juke with the right analog stick or a face button, but you can also hold down any of the shoulder buttons to further modify your jukes, dunks, and alley-oops. Eventually you’ll learn all of the moves, but you’ll still have a difficult time performing them thanks to frequently unresponsive controls, especially when you’re forced to hold two shoulder buttons in conjunction with another button. Like in NBA Street you must perform flashy jukes and dunks to fill a meter. The twist here is that this meter serves to fill another meter, which, depending on how many levels are full, gives you a guaranteed steal, successful juke, made shot, block, or game-ending super dunk.

These super moves, particularly the game-ending super dunk, are so effective that you’ll spend most of your time trying to fill your meter with the game’s worst feature: act-a-fool combos. You begin an act-a-fool combo by holding a shoulder and face button together while standing near a player. Once the combo starts, button icons appear onscreen, and you must press them as quickly as possible. The defender can also try to press the buttons, and if they do so before you, the combo ends. The AI won’t stop you very often, though, and once the combo has ended after five moves, there’s usually an open path to a dunk, which will be worth five points thanks to the bonus points awarded from the combo. Not only do you get bonus points for the combo, but you fill your meter as well. It takes just three or four successful act-a-fool combos to fill the meter to the point that you can end the game with a super dunk. Playing the game this way is cheesy and boring, but you’re forced to do so because some of the challenges, like coming back from 20 points down with three minutes to go, and beating T-Mac in a game to 11 without letting him score, are absurdly difficult.

The problems don’t end there. For some reason there are fouls in the game, and though you aren’t penalized for the first four, when you get your fifth foul, the other player gets a foul shot that’s worth three points and they retain possession. The defensive fouls may be annoying, but they do serve to keep you honest. The fact that you can get called for charging is just plain annoying and has no place in this kind of basketball game. One particularly terrible game variation gets rid of the checked-ball rule, so you don’t have to take the ball back on a change of possession or after you score. The game devolves into both players standing under the basket trying to catch the ball as it goes through the net, and then immediately putting up a shot when they do catch the ball. It’s mind-numbingly stupid. Toss in inconsistent goaltending calls, repetitive cutscenes for super moves that often end with you facing away from the basket, and horrific clipping problems that see the ball go through the rim on dunks so that you don’t even know if you made them or not, and you’re left with a flashy-looking game that isn’t much fun.

NBA Ballers’ strongest aspect is its presentation. Even the menus are attractive. The cutscenes that introduce players like Kobe, Agent Zero, and LeBron look cool and inspire a sense of awe when they play before a big matchup. It’s a shame that big-name players like Shaq, Kidd, and Gasol, who were recently traded, aren’t on their current teams. Nevertheless, players look lifelike and have a swagger to them that only NBA players seem to have. There’s little variety to more routine actions like running, diving for the ball, and shooting from one player to the next, but there’s no shortage of great-looking dunk and juke animations. While the “normal” moves generally look great, the developer got carried away when it comes to the cutscenes for special moves. These noninteractive clips that play for every special move are repetitive and do nothing but interrupt the flow of the game. To make matters worse, there’s no way to turn them off.

Chosen One’s audio is surprisingly subdued. The soundtrack by Just Blaze stays mostly in the background and doesn’t stand out as particularly good or bad. In addition to hosting the TV show in the game, Chuck D also provides play-by-play. He gets a little repetitive, but he’s better than most of the announcers found in other street games. Plus, hearing him yell “They call him Mr. Beans!” when our player threw down a dunk never got old.

NBA Ballers: Chosen One deserves credit for trying to bring some new ideas to a genre that isn’t known for mixing things up. But while many of these ideas may have seemed good during the design phase, they don’t work in the context of the actual gameplay. There’s no reason to pick this one up, regardless of how bad you need a basketball fix–there are plenty of cheaper, better options available.

Imagine the Landmake system from Legend of Mana (where you basically take little bits of land and create your own custom world), but in full 3D with much more ability for customization.

Sony’s Dark Cloud is a 3D role-playing game that sports incredible graphics (no surprise there) and an interesting game system. Basically, try and imagine the Landmake system from Legend of Mana (where you basically take little bits of land and create your own custom world), but in full 3D with much more ability for customization.

Basically, you create your own world and then explore it. The viewing distance from what we’ve seen is amazing - the game switches from the overhead ‘creation’ map to the actual 3D world on the fly (there’s no changing of screens or anything - it just zooms down until you’re in the actual world). It’s very cool. For those of you who care, SCEI is calling this a “Georama RPG,” which we can only imagine means “geographical drama RPG.” What will they think of next?

We can’t answer that, but we can tell you that when more Dark Cloud details are available, you’ll read them here.

Dark Angel takes place 13 years since the Warlord Yagma, lord of the land of Gothos, first came to power after making a pact with the Vampire underworld, casting the people of Gothos into oppression.

Because of the industry consolidation that has been going on in the past 18 months, new publishers have been few and far between. One of the exceptions is a new San Jose, Calif. based company called Metro3D. Founded with private money prior to E3 by former senior Capcom executives George Nakayama and Joe Morici, Metro3D has announced its intent to support Nintendo and Sega platforms in its first year via the Game Boy Color, the N64 and the Dreamcast. Some of the more notable titles include Bubble Bobble for the Game Boy Color and Armada, which is due shortly after the Dreamcast launch. However the most intriguing title in the Metro3D stable is Dark Angel: Vampire Apocalypse, a fast-paced action-RPG.

Considering its title, Dark Angel: Vampire Apocalypse (hereafter DA) is not surprisingly a Gothic fantasy story. It takes place 13 years since the Warlord Yagma, lord of the land of Gothos, first came to power after making a pact with the Vampire underworld, casting the people of Gothos into oppression. Your character is Anna, a young woman of unusual strength and endurance. The implication of vampires and superhuman strength is obvious but not stated. The inhabitants of Gothos are dying from a slow and painful unknown disease whose victims are transformed into hideous gibbering mutants.It is Anna’s mission to discover her origin, find out why she has such superhuman powers, and defeat Warlord Yagma.

As is the case with most Dreamcast games, the DA team is building the game engine from scratch, working specifically within the strengths of the machine. Metro3D’s engine supports standard 3D collision and physics along with “inverse kinematic components and special effects similar to the sword-slash streaks in Soul Calibur.”

Leading the Metro3D team is ten-year industry veteran Mark Jordan, best known for Star Command: Deluxe. His 21-person team is composed of a large number of experienced members, including some ex-Atari and THQ staffers. The team has also worked on Armada, but this is its most ambitious title to date.

We asked Jordan why he chose this particular story. “The story of Dark Angel grew out of our fascination with gothic fantasy, our love of stylish characters, and our desire to make an epic game,” he said. “It is what the team wanted to make, a fun, fast-paced game filled with intelligent allies and enemy creatures.”

These allies and enemy creatures feature a lot of animation sets. Each monster has roughly 16 of these animations. The standard moves are walk, run, attack, shake (from a hit), and die. The Imp character, however, will also cower in fear, sneak up on you from behind, jump on the back of a large monster and ride it, climb walls, and, when cornered, beg for its life. Mark gives such titles as Diablo, Strider, and Fallout as some of the previous games that inspired the team. This is particularly noticeable in the overall structure of the game. Unlike the many level-based games currently scheduled for the Dreamcast, DA is structured like Fallout in that you can travel to a large number of locations, and save anywhere during gameplay.

The locations in the game run the gamut from indoors to outdoor - with caves, dungeons, forest, oceans, and mountains all being featured. Also, the infected inhabitants turn up in a secret laboratory where a mad scientist tries to transform them into monstrous soldiers. Weather is also an important part of the presentation, with lightning storms are told to be particular quite impressive. Correctly implemented, these weather effects will allow the same landscape to become two different playing experiences.

Gothos is not a static land, and neither are its people. As Anna moves throughout the different locations in the game, events can occur to a place after she has already left it. A thriving city she has visited recently can fall victim to a plague by the time Anna returns. Similarly, the people will remember each interaction with Anna and react accordingly the next time she visits. Better to leave a place on good terms than to cause trouble only to discover that an important part of the story must be resolved in a place you’d prefer not to return to. The game features no specific additional in-game cutscenes, but rather the storyline will unfold during the natural gameplay.

Your view will change depending on the situation; Zelda 64 was cited as a game that changed the player’s perspective in a similar way. Similarly, overall weapon combat will have a Zelda 64 or Tenchu feel, if not somewhat a quicker one

There’s also a lot of speech in the game and a strong character-interaction emphasis. Again Jordan explains, “There will be a couple hours of speech in the game, but we do not lock up your gameplay while people talk. just talk to you when you are near and fade out if you walk away.”

The Dreamcast Visual Memory Unit (VMU) is certainly starting to impact game design. Here, the VMU will let you build up the ability and skill of Anna, along with special items such as new melee weapons, special magic tools, and spells. Multiple spells are available within the game, including those that make Anna a blur of motion or turn her invisible, and the special magic tools feature such items as the staff of healing. There are ten weapons in all, including a shadow knife, soul hammer, demon blade, and skull -cleaver. All these items can also be traded to other players using their VMUs.

Nakayama, who serves as the president of Metro3D, and Morici, who is the company’s VP of sales and marketing had an impressive track record at Capcom with the successful launches of such franchises as Street Fighter II and Megaman. Metro3D’s ability to understand the market and become a player in the profitable handheld segment, while also investing in new technologies, bodes well for this fledgling publisher. Ultimately, the strength of the product will be the deciding factor. Filled with classic RPG and adventure-game ingredients, such as good vs. evil, epic battles, mystery, and even romance Dark Angel: Vampire Apocalypse has every opportunity to make a name for Metro3D.
-Gam

Set in an age of Civil War in Japan, when Nobunaga Oda ruled, the highly anticipated new game will bring Resident Evil gameplay to the medieval age.

Flagship, Yoshiki Okamoto’s company, is developing Onimusha. The game’s premise revolves around your kidnapped cousin who needs to be rescued. To save your cousin, you must explore an ominous castle. And in typical Resident Evil fashion, this castle will include an abundance of traps, puzzles, and other obstacles.

Onimusha will be released this fall in Japan, with a US release date expected to follow sometime shortly after.

We travel back in time and assume the role of a saber-toothed squirrel as we check out the Wii version of this movie-inspired platformer.

Released for last-generation consoles earlier this year, Ice Age 2: The Meltdown is an enjoyable platform game that’s inspired by (rather than closely based on) the movie of the same name. In the game you’ll spend the vast majority of your time playing as Scrat–a saber-toothed squirrel with a penchant for all things nutty and a rare talent for getting himself into trouble. We recently had an opportunity to spend some quality time with the upcoming Wii version of the game, and we’re pleased to report that we had a lot of fun doing so.

Assuming the role of Scrat at the start of the game, your first task will simply be to collect as many nuts as you can find in the first area. The nuts are generally arranged in such a way that they lead you through each location in a linear fashion, but exploration is definitely encouraged and, more often than not, rewarded. To progress from one area to the next, you’ll have to locate all of the golden walnuts in the level, which invariably means straying from the most obvious path and putting all of Scrat’s skills to good use.

Early on, Ice Age 2 does a good job of easing you into its control scheme, which has been completely reworked to take advantage of the Wii controllers’ unique capabilities. Basic movement and jumping is handled using the Nunchuk’s analog stick and the Wii Remote’s A button, while the camera can be repositioned at any time using the directional pad. Attacks are performed by moving the Wii Remote in any direction, and by combining attacks with jumps, it’s possible to perform rolling and stomping moves. A powerful spinning attack is also available, though only when you’ve powered up your energy bar by collecting fruit. Initially, the only use you’ll have for attack moves is smashing open blocks of ice to collect the nuts encased inside them, but it’s not long before enemies such as boars, bats, beetles, and bears start showing up. Other controls that you’ll be introduced to as you progress through the first few areas include using the C button to read signposts and to sniff out hidden nuts, moving the Wii Remote left and right to dig up buried items and to climb slippery surfaces, and throwing pebbles at enemies using the trigger buttons. Ice Age 2: The Meltdown’s controls are uncomplicated, and at least in the early portion of the game, onscreen icons and signposts will appear quite regularly as a reminder of how certain actions are performed.

In addition to all of the running around and nut-collecting that you’ll be doing, Ice Age 2 boasts a number of minigames that you’ll be required to beat before you can progress through the story. For example, the first is a simplistic stealth game in which you’ll have to collect nuts inside a cave while avoiding rustling bushes and the gaze of an irritable saber-toothed tiger. Anytime the tiger turns around to look at you, you’ll have to press a button to play dead until he turns his back again. Other minigames that we played during our time with Ice Age 2 included 10-pin bowling with penguins instead of pins, a shooting-gallery-style game in which we were tasked with throwing pebbles at monkeys, and a perilous ride down a lengthy ice slide littered with obstacles.

Ice Age 2: The Meltdown for the Wii looks really promising right now and is certainly a good example of how Wii-specific controls can be worked into existing games. We look forward to bringing you more information on the game as its December release date closes in.

We attended a special Nintendo UK event to play Wii Sports Boxing.

Wii Sports is set to be one of the most played games this Christmas, given that it will launch free with the Wii console in the US and Europe. For those who have never heard of the title, it’s a compilation of athletic-themed mini-games which take advantage of the new motion-sensitive controller. In the months since E3 2006, we’ve had a chance to play the majority of the Wii Sports mini-games, but so far Boxing has eluded us. However, at a recent Nintendo preview for the console, we were able to get a hands-on with the missing piece of the puzzle.

Making use of both the Wiimote and nunchuck controller, Boxing is one of the most intuitive games in the Sports package, if not the entire launch line-up. As you’d expect, you hold both the Wiimote and the nunchuck in the upright position by default, and you’re able to use both left and right hooks as well as uppercuts by making those motions. As with real boxing though, half of the sport is keeping yourself protected, so you need to keep the controls in the upright position to stop yourself from getting hurt.

Wii Sports boxing also supports Mii, the character that you create in the main menu to represent you through a variety of Wii games. Boxing itself follows a traditional fighting game model, with a bar at the bottom of the screen to show your health, and a timer that counts down to the end of each round. If your health falls below a certain level then you will become dazed and more prone to attack, and if your opponent lands a knock out punch you’ll be sent falling to the ground. Once on the mat, the referee will count to 10 and you need to wave the controllers frantically in order to recover.

Boxing is pretty undemanding stuff, but that doesn’t stop it from being great fun in the two-player game that we had with a Nintendo representative. You can create your own in-game taunts by spreading your arms apart and welcoming attack, and it’s easy to link up damaging combos from the start. True, the game occasionally misinterprets your movements, but as long as you’re protected when your opponent is coming at you then you can’t go far wrong. We managed to win our first game, and while it was certainly demanding on the physical side, we managed to earn two straight knockouts in that time. Luckily, we’ve got just enough time to get in shape for the full game’s release towards the end of the year.

We talk about 2K Sports’ alternate take on the MLB with producer Dan Brady.

When Take Two secured exclusive third-party publishing rights for Major League Baseball games last year, baseball fans knew it was only a matter of time before 2K Sports began expanding its hardball reach with new titles. The first of those new games is the just-announced arcade baseball title, The BIGS. Heading development of the game is Dan Brady, general manager of the development house behind the BIGS, Blue Castle Games. Brady is no stranger to baseball games, having previously served as technical director for EA Sports’ MVP Baseball series. We recently spoke with Brady about just what to expect from the upcoming game, and how his experience on more-realistic baseball games has informed the making of The BIGS.

GameSpot: What is The BIGS, and how did Blue Castle Games become involved in the project?

Dan Brady: The BIGS is a brand-new take on arcade baseball. In The BIGS, you are going to see all of what makes baseball spectacular, all the time. Our goal is to make the major league players look like heroes when they make the big play, and to make you feel like a king while doing it.

How did Blue Castle become involved? There is a bit of a story there.

Blue Castle Games was formed in early 2005, with the intention of gathering together truly amazing development staff to make great games. As it turned out, the original staff was composed of a significant portion of the senior members of the MVP titles, and some of their really talented friends. We had all worked together over the years, but had been sent in all sorts of different directions as time had passed. Blue Castle represented one more chance for us to reassemble and get back to making great games again.

In the middle of 2005, Blue Castle was contacted by 2K to do something new in the baseball genre. Up until that moment, we were exclusively focused on IP prototyping. We hadn’t considered working on another baseball product, but 2K really impressed us with [its] energy and passion for bringing fresh ideas to the baseball category. Over the last 16 months, we have grown quite a bit. A lot of the former MVP team has joined us, and we have really rounded that out with some extremely talented newcomers. Right now, we’re really excited to be making The BIGS, and to be back in the baseball market.

GS: Your team brings a good amount of baseball game experience to the table. How does your experience on the more realistic MVP series tie in to what you’re creating here?

DB: We learned a lot when we wrote the first MVP title. While it was a great starting point for the franchise, many development mistakes were made that really handcuffed us in future years. Development of The BIGS has gone much more smoothly, and we have a much higher-quality engine than we had before. MVP and The BIGS are very different games. You will feel a sense of familiarity in the design choices that we have made, but our target is something very different.

GS: What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned from previous games that can be applied to The BIGS?

DB: Keep the game to a manageable scope. Always have the game in a playable state. Tune, tune, and then tune some more. At the same time, you always need to listen to the fans, understand the requirements, and stay true to the sport.

GS: Are you starting from scratch with The BIGS, or is there any sharing of technology between your team and Visual Concepts?

DB: The BIGS was started completely from scratch. While we aren’t sharing anything with Visual Concepts, we do have a fantastic dialogue with them. Visual Concepts has an incredible team, and there is a great deal that we are learning from each other.

We’re really excited about the engine that we have created for The BIGS. You’re going to have to take my word for it, but it is better than anything that we have had to work with before. I am really looking forward to showing off the quality of the engine over the next several months, as we move toward final. Some of the details that the team is able to put into the game are absolutely outrageous.

GS: What game modes will be included in The BIGS?

DB: The main mode in The BIGS is called the BIGS League Challenge. The challenge is completely different than a traditional season or franchise mode. You are going to play games, train your players in a number of action-oriented training minigames, earn power-ups, and ultimately struggle to win the World Series. When you play this mode, each team that you face will feel like a unique team. If that team is known for their fielding, then you are really going to feel that in the game–much more so than in other sports games.

To round out the experience, we have a new multiplayer mode, exhibition, online (up to four players), minigames galore, and the standard create-a-player. We also have some quick action-oriented modes in the game. While it is still too early to give out details, there is one that I am particularly excited about: Imagine blending pinball and baseball, and then taking it all to a completely new level.

GS: Tell us about the controls in the game. Are they similar to what we’ve become used to in 2K MLB games, or are you going for something different?

DB: Many of the recent baseball games have felt like they played themselves, while the user merely provided timely decision making. The BIGS really goes the opposite direction. The action is very twitch-based, and when you play the game, there is a sense of direct connection between you and the game that just hasn’t been present in baseball games before.

We’re also pushing hard to create a different feel between the athletes. You’re going to see a lot of uniqueness in the animations, and when a big play happens, it feels huge. Similarly, when you don’t make the big play, your failure is going to be equally spectacular. I really think our game stands on its own as a very different entry to the baseball category.