Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorneyvideo game heads to
Nintendo WiiWare Next Week!

post from Gamezplay.org - Video game updates daily on 06 January 2010 03:16:48 PM. © Gamezplay.org - Video game updates daily

In celebration of the brand new year Capcom are starting things off with the release of a must-have...[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]] [...]

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-wright-ace-attorneyvideo-game.html

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Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing To Have
Customisable Vehicles

post from Gamer Grenade News Blog on 06 January 2010 03:15:00 PM. © Gamer Grenade News Blog

Sega have revealed a few more details about the upcoming Sega crossover racer. Annouced via their offical facebook account, Sega have revealed you will have the ability to customize and build you own vehicles.

“Did you know that you can build your own custom vehicle in Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing? What kind of vehicle are [...]

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-have-customisable-vehicles/

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The next Kojima game on the PS3 will have longer
cut scenes

post from Gaming Nexus on 06 January 2010 03:10:00 PM. © Gaming Nexus

by: Nathan Murray
NEWS - That's the fear of many a gamer as Blu-Ray.com has revealed that Panasonic and Sony have developed a new optical disc evaluation technology (i canz read disk) which will allow the layer capacity to jump up a notch making 33.4 GB Blu-Ray disc layers possible. As Edge pointed out Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots was the first game to use a full 50GB dual layer which wasn't even enough room to include every element of the game in an uncompressed format. Looks like Hideo Kojima has had his wish fulfilled and will be complaining about there not being enough space on a 66.8 GB dual layer Blu-Ray disc in the coming years. The direct impact on video games? Well, none really. Many games don't use the full capacity of current technology. However, a higher capacity disc means that 3D blu-ray movies (maybe games?) at a higher quality.

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ger-cut-scenes-/Item15716.aspx

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Review: Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces

post from Destructoid on 06 January 2010 03:00:00 PM. © Destructoid

Review: Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces screenshot

When I first heard about Innocent Aces, I scratched my head. It seemed like a bit of a strange title to turn into a flight sim, especially after hearing one of my writers over at Japanator discuss how the story is more about the characters and relationships than all the fighting. Still, when X-SEED put the game in my hands, I wasn't going to say no to tackling it.

After all, I tend to pick the really bad games to review.

But, I was sorely disappointed. Sky Crawlers turned out to be a rather skillfully put together title, especially for a flight sim on the Wii. I found myself so entranced by the game that I ended up running through it twice. So why not join me after the jump and check out what's probably the best flight sim on the Wii.

Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces (Wii)
Developer: Project ACES (Namco)
Publisher: X-SEED
Released: January 12th, 2010
MSRP: $39.99

Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces is a flight sim game based off the anime film Sky Crawlers by Mamoru Oshii and Production I.G. (the people behind Ghost in the Shell), and is all about fighter pilots in war... sort of. See, the world is actually at peace, but in order to keep up the spectacle, private companies host their own war games, and it's become a sport of sorts amongst the public. Think of it like football, but with guns and bombs.

You take the role of Lynx, the Sky Crawler's new recruits, a fresh-faced youngin' who has yet to prove himself. Naturally, you're a star and shoot right up there to become the star of the team. Everything is fine and dandy until upper management shifts around, bringing on a few new pilots who are nothing more than kids. Things start to take a darker turn from there.

What's interesting about Innocent Aces is that it doesn't follow in tandem with the anime's storyline. Instead, it acts as a supplement, only touching here and there on the story, and instead expecting you to have watched the film already and know what's going on. It can be a really big turnoff for those who haven't watched the film.

When it comes to piloting the plane, I was wondering just how well these controls would work. Even after tackling the tutorials, it took me several full missions to get a natural grasp on the controls and actually get things to work as I wanted them to. The great emphasis is on motion controls, with the nunchuck controlling pitch and yaw, while the wiimote controls speed. The buttons handle the plane's weapons and maneuvers (barrel rolls, U-turns, etc).

Once you're in the heat of battle, all that practice goes out the window -- at least for me. I found myself doing the same action with both hands as I played. So, if I braked (pulling back on the Wiimote), I'd also turn upwards (back on the nunchuck). It became problematic the more frantic the fights got, and I would peg that to the wide range of controls necessary to the game butting heads with Wiimote play style.

The heat of battle, though, is great. It's enjoyable like you wouldn't believe. You're given objectives to take out, such as enemy ships or supply planes, and then deal with the fighters and AA guns that are in your way. The game gives you the ability to upgrade and customize a wide array of planes with all sorts of materials and guns, letting you tweak each battle experience to how you think it might work best.

Combat starts off simple, but things quickly escalate ever so elegantly. A sudden wave of enemies appear, the music swells, and you're off to save one of your wingmen. Before I knew it, I was standing up, yelling at the enemies as I shot them down, and felt my heart pumping. It was a bit of a surprise the first time I noticed it.

For all the possibile controls in the game, it's a shame that even on my second playthrough, I found myself relying almost exclusively on the game's repositioning system. If you spend a certain amount of time within a sphere around a nearby fighter, you can press A to reposition yourself right behind them. It makes shooting down enemy planes infinitely easier, but I feel like I'm missing out on something more. The thing is, there's no easy way to do the maneuvers necessary to get yourself repositioned like that, and so you almost have no choice but to use it.

Going into Sky Crawlers, I honestly had pretty low expectations. I haven't had a lot of great experiences with games adapted from anime, and I was having trouble imagining a flight sim on the Wii. The game pleasantly surprised me with a smart (but difficult to master) control scheme, combat that was fun, engaging and difficult, and some great visuals. It's hard to nail down just what made this game as fun as it was, which speaks to the good combination of all the elements of the game. Even for someone who's not really into flight sims, this game is a fun play. If you decide to pick up this game, then be sure to pick up the movie as well -- it's well worth the watch, and will make the game leagues more enjoyable.

Score: 8 -- Great (8s are impressive efforts with a few noticeable problems holding them back. Won't astound everyone, but is worth your time and cash.)

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2010 CES Swag-a-thon commences tomorrow!

post from Gaming Nexus on 06 January 2010 02:45:00 PM. © Gaming Nexus

by: Ben Berry
NEWS - Life is symbotic.

As a completely commercial and plastic implementation of this universal truth of life: I present the 2010 CES Swag-a-thon.

It's simple really. Vendors make "chotchkies" for you to take as mental reminders of the fact you just looked at their newest product. So, I take them. I mean, it's what they're there for. If I dont take one, it will just sit there, and eventually wind up in the hands of the 10 year old son of a middle manager who got stuck with taking home a box of the leftovers from the show.

So I'll be taking them, and sharing what I get with you.

The rules:

1. No paper. paper is useless. Unless it is money (highly doubtful), or worth money (mostly doubtful) I wont be taking paper as it wastes a natural resource that frankly I dont want to get weighed down by.

2. Only one of each thing... unless it's awesome. I'm not above visiting a booth twice to get something I really want. Especially if I know my wife will claim it if I bring home only one.

3. It all has to fit in my spare suitcase. That's correct. I take a spare suitcase specifically for the purpose of carrying home the swag I gather.

I'll take pictures of each days haul and post them.

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All objections overruled concerning Phoenix
Wright on WiiWare

by: Nathan Murray
NEWS - January 11th is the date your Wii can get a dose of justice as Capcom is making their popular Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney video game available to download over Nintendo's WiiWare service. This is the original game that started the series on the Nintendo DS with all new motion controls. If you missed the original on the DS or just want to play one of your favorite DS games on a larger screen all it will cost you to relive Phoenix Wright's original adventure is 1,000 Wii Points.

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Quick Hit Football: A football strategy RPG

Quick Hit Football: A football strategy RPG screenshot

According to the NFL, about 40 million Americans watch football on a regular basis; around 20 million people play some form of fantasy football, and EA Sports’ Madden NFL games sell between 3 and 5 million copies each year. So obviously, there exists a huge gulf between the people who enjoy football and the folks who go deeper with their love of the sport through some kind of game.

Quick Hit Football seeks to address that segment of the population -- as the game’s Director of Design, Brandon Justice, told me last month, “We’re trying to build a football game for people who like football, but don’t necessarily like football games.” (That’s you, Destructoid readers!) Quick Hit is an online, Flash-based, free-to-play football game that’s perhaps best described as a strategy RPG: you create a team and play football games with it as its coach, handling all the playcalling duties, and you earn experience points with which you can level up your players.

Just as there’s a sizable segment of football fans who don’t play football games, there are plenty of people who do play online “casual” games -- the kind of simple stuff you’d find on sites like Kongregate and AddictingGames -- and Quick Hit is looking to capture part of that market with a much deeper experience. Hit the jump to learn more about it.

Quick Hit Football (PC, Mac)
Developer: Quick Hit, Inc.
Publisher: Quick Hit, Inc.
To be released: 2010 (currently in open beta)

I met with Justice and Samantha Smith, the company’s Director of Communications, at a Starbucks in New York City. It literally took us fifteen minutes just to get the Wi-Fi up and running, and Justice promised that “it’s easier to get into a game of Quick Hit, I’ll tell you that.” Sure enough, you can go to quickhit.com right now and set up a team within a few minutes -- just pick a name, a logo, colors, and fill in a biography to tell opponents what your team is all about. The game will give you a full team of players, each with his own experience level, and you, as the team’s coach, will have a coaching level.

The Quick Hit team is made up of developers who have experience with sports games (Madden, NCAA Football, NBA 2K, NHL 2K, NFL Tour) and others who have worked on MMORPGs (Ultima Online, Asheron’s Call, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Lord of the Rings Online). That combination has led to a game that is designed to satisfy football fans and fantasy football players, but Justice made sure to note that the key philosophy behind Quick Hit is accessibility. EA Sports released two NFL Head Coach games, but they were largely sterile experiences that were built for the most hardcore of Madden players: the Franchise mode stat-heads who wanted to manage their players rather than control them on the field.

Quick Hit offers a similar kind of experience, but it’s a much less esoteric and complicated one, and you don’t need to buy a videogame console to play it. Once you’ve created your team, you can take on one of 27 different CPU teams. Some of the teams are led by former NFL coaches; Quick Hit has signed legends like Bill Cowher and Jimmy Johnson, as well as former NFL players like Barry Sanders and Kordell Stewart, to lend some authenticity to their game (you’ll eventually be able to purchase these legends for your own team). In addition to playing the computer, you can also jump into the game’s multiplayer lobby and face a user-controlled team; Smith told me that there are usually about 200 people in the lobby, and the number jumps to two or three times that number on the weekends.

When I asked about microtransactions, Justice was quick to note that you can play the game and earn stuff through it, or you can buy it -- but because the game’s matchmaking is based on skill and not experience, you won’t be penalized if you don’t spend money. If you decide to buy a legend, for example, your team rating will go up, and you’ll get matched against higher-level teams even if you haven’t put as much time into the game as them. Smith mentioned that the top 20 players have played for, on average, 200 hours; accordingly, the developers have placed a great deal of focus on the community. The development team recently released an update to the beta that added features that the community had been clamoring for, such as the ability to pause games and a system for punishing quitters.

The game itself shows an aerial top-down view of the field, and it renders full 11-on-11 gameplay. This is a strategy game at heart, but there’s more to it than a calculation on a server somewhere: you call the plays, and you see the action unfold on the field. As you play more and more games, and you get attached to your players, you become more and more invested in their success or failure -- just as in any RPG, like Fallout 3 or the Road to the Show mode in Sony’s MLB The Show series. You feel pretty damn cool when you make the right calls and score; there’s a great “I did that!” feeling that’s very rewarding.

Perhaps just as significant is the game’s potential to teach users about the game of football. Just like gamers who have spent two decades playing Madden have built up a considerable knowledge of the football, Quick Hit will help you to better understand the sport itself. I didn’t know what a Cover 2 defense was before I started playing Madden, and I couldn’t tell a fly route from a curl. Football watchers may be familiar with such terms on the surface, but since the playbook in Quick Hit allows you to see what your players will do when the ball is snapped, playing the game will help football fans learn more about the sport they love. And who doesn’t love being an armchair quarterback, yelling at the TV that the coach should’ve called a quick slant on third-and-short?

Of course, Quick Hit isn’t trying to compete with Madden. And Justice acknowledged that longtime sports videogame players are perhaps unlikely to enjoy a less interactive game that offers substantially less control over the outcome of a play. But football is just as much a cerebral game as it is a sport based on athletic talent, and Quick Hit’s strategic approach is both faithful to the sport and accessible. Justice said something that day that stuck with me: “This is really a game for football fans, more than anything else.” Whether you spend hours every week analyzing football games to figure out whom you should start on your fantasy football team, or you watch your favorite team every Sunday, you might want to give Quick Hit Football a try.

Quick Hit Football is currently in a public beta at quickhit.com. At this time, it requires you to install Adobe Air on your computer, but the team is working on a browser-based version of the game that you won’t need to install at all; they hope to roll it out later this year.