Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti is perhaps one of the more “buzzworthy” bands so far this year, garnering a “9.0” review from Pitchfork and landing on many other music blogs’ “Best of 2010 so far” lists. At $15 for a ticket including fees we’re in the impulse zone where there’s not a substantial risk even if you’re not a diehard fan of the band.
I’m all about seeing live music, especially at affordable prices, so I gave it a shot. I had given Before Today a couple of listens and while it didn’t “wow” me as much as the “Indie Blogosphere,” it also didn’t repulse me either. “Round and Round” has some pretty infectious melodies contained within and I will admit to waking up some mornings with the song in my head.
Some bands are just not meant to do live shows.
Ariel Pink cavorted around stage like a lifelong wino in an outfit that can best be described as a cross between Mario’s red overalls and Borat’s one-piece swimsuit. His voice cracked more times than an 18-year old going through puberty. Their set sounded lifeless and amorphous. None of the Before Today’s eclectic lo-fi charm came across on stage.
I stayed through each successive song with hopes of finally hearing the performance that would redeem the band. After about 45 minutes or so, it became apparent that this was never going to happen. I cut my losses and headed up to Two Boots for some delicious pizza.
Hey, for a $15 investment it wasn’t any worse than walking out of another shitty summer movie.
Disclosure: I was about three scotches in by the time Ariel Pink took the stage, so I had the musical equivalent of “beer goggles” going for me. Despite this I could still tell that the band was putting on a forgettable show.
I snapped a video of “Round and Round” in which you can hear this for yourself below:
Tonight, LeBron James will reveal which NBA team he will play for in a one-hour television special on ESPN. “LeBron’s Choice” some are calling it. I’d prefer not to, if only for the disturbing word association it invokes to a film about a unfathomable decision.
Then again, it kind of is a no-win situation for Lebron isn’t it? Choose to stay at home in Cleveland and he gets railed for running to stand still. Choose to go anywhere else and he becomes Ohio’s Judas for All Eternity.
It’s truly amazing that no one has gotten advance knowledge of his final decision, especially in this day and age of twitter, SMS, and instant broadcast media. In fact, one could say LeBron’s been almost Apple-like in keeping his most valued secret. (Well, prior to this year’s BarPhone scandal anyway.)
Think about it, how much speculation does the internet generate before every Apple keynote nowadays? It’s a goddamn free for all out there. Anything within reason gets blogged, tweeted, shared, much like all the different free agent scenarios thrown about with LeBron the past week. Why do we do this?
Because we love this shit.
We love speculation and we love drama. It’s in our DNA as red-blooded humans. We eat it up. It’s fun to analyze every little clue thrown to us. We’ve even made pseudo stars out of the best “detectives” out there. I’m sure Brian Windhorst over at the Cleveland Plain dealer has massively increased his audience lately, becoming the Jon Gruber of the sports media world.
Do you remember what Apple revealed at keynotes prior to the iPhone announcement in 2007? Yeah, neither do I. How about E3’s before the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and Wii were announced in 2006? Mmmhmm.
Now, we expect the spectacular announcment every year during those shows. We want the circus of rumors, gossip, and speculation to culminate in an orgy of event live tweeting and blogging. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if the planned TV announcement special becomes the norm for any superstar free agency decision in the future. As American Idol and reality TV have proven over the years, we’re willing to sit through “results” shows where we watch 59 minutes of fluff to get to content that could be over with in one minute. Why wouldn’t LeBron do what he did? There’s already a precedent for it out there.
Personally, as someone who doesn’t have a particular rooting interest in where LeBron goes, I kind of want him to go somewhere else. I want the NBA landscape to be changed. I want to participate in the avalanche of Twitter posts and comments troll hate. More importantly, I want my fascination over this dog and pony show to have been for something. Because what’s shittier than sitting through an Apple keynote only to find out that they’re just selling faster Macs?
If there’s one thing I learned from my extended visit to the Disney Interactive Studios booth at E3 2010, it’s that Warren Spector’s (Deus Ex, System Shock, Ultima Underworld) has gotten the people at his new studio, Junction Point, to drink his game design Kool-Aid.
Multiple times throughout my demonstration of Epic Mickey, the point of player choice and consequences was hammered home at almost every section of the game. And why wouldn’t it be? It’s Spector’s signature game design element. Give the player the freedom to choose how to solve in game problems and give these choices weight through tangible consequences in the game world. It was a huge part of what made Deus Ex so beloved and it’s clearly an integral element in his first title for Disney, Epic Mickey.
Epic Mickey is an ambitious action-adventure-platformer title being developed exclusively for the Wii. The gameplay can be broadly described as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time meets Super Mario World with the water spray backpack from Mario Sunshine. Mickey will have access to paint and paint thinner, which allows him to manipulate the game world by erasing or creating objects and environments. None of these mechanics can be trumpeted as truly original, but their blended execution is what makes this game stand out.
Visuals:
I was told that the overarching aesthetic theme of the game is “lost and forgotten” Disney characters and places, including Walt Disney’s first creation, Oswald The Lucky Rabbit. Disney buffs should also be ecstatic to see the attention to historical detail that Junction Point has poured into this game. I’ll admit to being a bit of a “casual” Disney fan, so I could only smile and nod as the Junction Point rep repeatedly pointed out structures (such as the Swiss Family Robinson’s Treehouse) and landmarks in the game that were once actual buildings and rides decommissioned from the real Disneyland itself. “Tickets” are also used as a form of currency in the game as a nod to the days in which you actually needed tickets to go on the rides at Disneyland.
Even the cutscenes are animated like an old Disney cartoon from the 50’s. You definitely get the feeling that you’re playing through a labor of love with this game. The attention to detail and presentation is just jaw dropping. What impressed me even more was the excitement and passion with which the Junction Point rep used to describe the game for me. Out of all the games I played at E3, Epic Mickey was the one I spent the most time on simply because the developer had so much to say and show from it.
Gameplay:
The E3 demo was broken up into three distinct areas: Ventureland, Skull Island, and Steamboat Willy. Each of these “maps” seamlessly transitioned with one another despite having vastly differing gameplay elements.
Ventureland was a lot like visiting a town in Zelda. The focus on this “quest map” was on NPC interaction and problem solving. Here, the choice and consequence mechanic was clearly on display. One of my first tasks was to help Smee the Pirate win over a ladyfriend in exchange for a quest item. He’s unsure as to what kind of gift to get her. By doing a little investigating around town, I figured out that she loves roses, so I told him to get her some roses and boom, Cupid played, quest item received. Had I been lazy and just told him to get something else, she would have been less than impressed and taken it out on poor Smee who in turn would have charged me money for the quest item, rather than handing it over in gratitude.
Another situation involved Tiki Sam, a shop keeper, who tasked me with collecting three masks in exchange for another one of the quest items. Now, here’s where attention to detail can pay off as a player. If you pay attention to the screen as you’re talking to him, you’ll notice that there’s a few masks on the floor behind him in the shop. When you exit the shop, you can actually see a little opening behind some bushes that will lead you to the back door of the shop. Once inside, you can nab a mask without him noticing. If you try to take all the masks, though, he’ll catch you and impose a stiff penalty on obtaining the quest item you need.
I find stuff like this fascinating because they blur the line between “good” and “bad” in a game. Too often, games will purport to offer players a choice, but really only have one style of play be “right.” Epic Mickey looks to add a little grey area in how you approach things. The situation with Tiki Sam is one in which stealing his mask actually ends up saving you time and money compared to the “morally right” choice. The Junction Point rep explained the reasoning for offering an “evil” choice as getting back to Mickey’s roots as a “mischief maker.” Sure, I’ll bite on that. It’s certainly no bigger stretch than games that force a character to act on the straight and narrow all the time.
The Steamboat Willy stages act as a sort of transition in between game maps. These are “Super Mario”-esque platform stages with a very slick black and white “Steamboat Willy” presentation. In the demo, Mickey passes through one of these to get from Ventureland to Skull Island. At first glance they definitely give a *wow* impression, but once you got past the very cool visuals the gameplay is pretty standard 2D platform fare. Mickey can jump on enemies’ heads and even double jump to reach platforms and collect items. The actual level structure itself was fairly pedestrian. It might be interesting to see more inspired “platform map” designed in the full game, but I won’t be heartbroken if there aren’t simply because the visuals are so cool.
Finally, Skull Island showed off the “action map” portion of the game. It plays similarly to the overworld in a 3d Zelda game except Mickey is armed with his paint and thinner rather than a sword and shield. In fact, Mickey’s even followed by a little Navi Faerie-like companion named Gremlin Gus. He offers you little hints and comments as you come across places of note. I found it really interesting that he acts as a sort of conscience too. Use your paint thinner to eliminate a lot of enemies and he’ll say something like “Hmm, you’ve been using your paint thinner a bit liberally, is it really necessary?” I can see it getting annoying for some people, but personally it made me question my actions a little bit. Was there a better way of handling these creatures? Am I really murdering the lifeblood of the game world?
When all is said and done, any game starring Mickey freaking Mouse that gets me to question the morality of my actions is doing something right in my book.
For live gameplay videos with Warren Spector narrating, check out the 2 videos below:
Shinji Mikami may not be the household name in video game circles that Hideo Kojima or Shigeru Miyamoto is over here in the States, but he deserves to be. Mikami-san designed a little game called Resident Evil, have you heard of it? (For retro game players out there, he also designed the Aladdin game on the Sega Genesis – remember how awesome that game was?)
His latest game is Vanquish and the best way to describe it is if Gears of War and Virtual On had a love child in a Matrix program set in a futuristic Cold War. It’s a third-person action title using elements of cover with fast moving mech-suits and a little bit of “bullet time” thrown in for good measure.
I was excited about the title before the show and my hands-on time at E3 did not disappoint. Gameplay centers on the ARS (Augmented Reactor Suit) your character wears. Similar to Crysis‘ nanosuit, it bequeaths upon you some extraordinary powers. For example, you can use it perform some very slick sliding manuevers to quickly move from cover to cover. The ARS also allows you to slow down time when you’re sliding around or vaulting over obstacles. As “played out” as time-slow abilities have been in recent games, trust me, you’ll be glad to have them in Vanquish because there will almost always be a crapload of things happening around you. It can get pretty challenging to aim and fire from the hip while zipping around a level willy nilly at 100 mph.
Which brings us to a defining feature of Vanquish – its sense of speed. The game runs at a silky smooth 60 frames per second. This game is fast. Within moments of picking up the controller you can easily tell the game is no mere Gears of War clone. Rocket propelled sliding will bring back memories of adrenaline rushing while jetting across a map during a dizzying Virtual On match. It’s almost become a signature feature of Japanese action titles to incorporate 60FPS as we’ve seen with Bayonetta and Devil May Cry. (Interesting note: Mikami has had his hands in both of those titles as well) It makes me wonder how awesome a 60fps Halo title would be, but I digress.
In addition to providing you with fun powers, the ARS also acts as your defacto “life bar.” There’s a shared meter between your time slows, slides, and shields. This introduces an interesting strategic dynamic into the game. Do you slide out, John Woo style, attempting to take out all the enemies at once, but leaving yourself to being killed if you’re less than perfect? Or do you take it more conservatively, but risk getting overwhelmed while under cover? It’s an interesting trade off, allowing the more gung-ho to make gutsy moves while not making strategy trivial.
If all of this sounds like a lot to take in, well, it sorta is. I admit to being a bit overwhelmed once the friendly Sega rep handed the controller over to me. Like Tony Stark taking his Mark-1 Iron Man suit out for the first time, I stumbled my way across the battlefield initially. I slid when I meant to take cover. I jumped when I meant to slide. There’s definitely a learning curve to this game. It’s no Ninja Gaiden, but it’ll definitely take some practice before you’re sliding and shooting with the grace of a gun-toting ballerina. I can’t say i figured it out completely in the fifteen or so minutes I played the game, but I most assuredly envisioned a short-term future in which I was Optimus Prime starring in Hard Boiled.
Vanquish practically begs for a cooperative and/or an adversarial multiplayer component. Unfortunately, the game is single-player only. Still, it won’t prevent me from including the game from my most anticipated list of 2010. I’m all for developers concentrating on making polished games and if that means omitting potentially half-assed components, then more power to them.
Japanese game designers may have been slow over the years in “getting” how a proper first/third person action shooter works, but you’d be hard pressed to remember those days after some time with Mikami’s Vanquish. Definitely look for this original title when it comes out this fall on 360 and PS3.
Dance Central is the killer app for Microsoft’s Kinect.
Now, I know what you might be thinking.”Dance games are for kids and girls! They’re silly and lame!” Hear me out here. You know those choreographed dances in a Lady GaGa or Justin Timberlake music video? Say what you want about the music itself, but you gotta at least admit that the moves are kinda cool to watch, especially when a bunch of people are doing them in unison. What if I told you that there’s a game that would not only teach you and your friends how to dance like that, but would do so even if you had ZERO dancing ability to begin with. Isn’t that something that at least piques your interest?
Harmonix’s Dance Central is that game.
Think of it kinda like Rock Band, only your body is the instrument. (Well, if you want to get technical, the Kinect is actually the plastic instrument you have to buy.)
Dance games have been attempted before, but they were generally confined to sequences of steps on a mat (Dance Dance Revolution) or waving around an input controller (Just Dance). As many people would attest to, this is “dancing” as much as Guitar Hero is “playing the guitar.” Let’s face it, if you walk in on a room of people are playing DDR, they’re going to look pretty silly. However, if you walked into a room of people playing Dance Central, you might think they’re actually training as a real dance crew.
Using the full body tracking abilities of Microsoft’s Kinect, Dance Central lets you do a full range of motions with your body and hands free while scoring you on how accurately you perform the routine presented to you during each song. Honestly, I couldn’t have cared less about my score. It was just so much fun performing the moves that I found myself ignoring the score tally and just losing myself in the music and figuring out the moves. If the game didn’t even have a scoring system, I doubt a lot of casual players would notice. Nevertheless, I imagine once the novelty wears off, scoring highly will be a strong motivator to perform better as a dancer. As a gaming connoisseur, this excites me because it’s a game genre that has heretofore been impossible to fully replicate in a home environment. As a human being, this will excite you because its so intuitive and easy to get into.
All the songs in the game are original, licensed music. I had a hands on demonstration with Lady GaGa’s “Just Dance“ and Lipps Inc’s “Funkytown.” Other tracks I saw on the menu screen included Beastie Boys’ “Body Movin’,” No Doubt’s “Hella Good” and Bel Biv Devoe’s “Poison.” Harmonix promises a song selection that spans a diverse set of genres from hip-hop, to funk, reggae, pop, and more. The Harmonix producer I spoke with also touted the fact that many of the dance routines include the same moves from songs’ original music videos.
Now, I couldn’t dance my way out of a box, but after my hands on with Dance Central at the Harmonix booth, I felt I had a decent shot within seconds after starting up “Just Dance.” The dance moves are intuitive and generally easy to understand. Granted, I was on “easy” difficulty, but I’ve also never danced a step in my life that didn’t involve the number “two.” Gameplay involves a sequence of dance moves that scroll on the right side, kind of like the wheel on The Price Is Right. Your goal is to duplicate the highlighted move in the center, while preparing for upcoming moves by looking further down the wheel. The game will give you feedback in the form of red highlights on your on screen avatar’s body depending on where you’re messing up. Perform moves accurately and your score will go up along with Harmonix’s standard 5-star rating system. Many songs also incorporate a “freestyle” section as well, where everyone dancing just kinda does their own thing, as a psychedelic background plays on screen. The Kinect camera records all the action and shows you on screen. It felt a little gimmicky, but was still a neat feature.
I ran into a couple of instances where I couldn’t really tell what a particular dance move entailed. While a friendly Harmonix dancer was there at E3 to coach me on what to do, there clearly won’t be a bundled dancer when the game ships this holiday. Fortunately there’s a practice mode called “Break It Down” where you can practice each individual dance move more slowly and in detail. These instances are few and far between, especially in easier difficulty settings, so I wouldn’t worry too much about difficulty putting a crimp in your dance party gatherings. Most of the moves are very intuitive and easy to perform.
My only other concern was with the menu system, namely the fact that it took multiple confirmations and long, methodical hand swipes to pick a song and difficulty. This may be more of an issue with the Kinect in general as I noticed similar issues with other titles as well. It’s not a dealbreaker; it’s just kind of annoying because using a controller to pick options would just be plain faster. Hopefully this is something Microsoft and Harmonix work on before the Kinect launch.
While many people were on stage dancing at the same time, the E3 demo of Dance Central only tracked one player for the game. It was able to track a person behind in silhouette form as well, but only the first player was scored. Harmonix mentioned that there would be “multiplayer dance battles,” but it sounded as if this would be limited to two scored players. It’s kind of a bummer, but not as much of a deal breaker as you would think. You can still have a group of friends do a routine with you in front of the camera, they just won’t be scored. Think of them as your backup dancer crew. It’ll probably be a good thing at parties, too, as it’ll be more welcoming for some of the more shy people to get involved.
Add all of it up and you have a strongly compelling game experience if you have any interest in music or dancing. The only thing that might keep you away is the $150 Kinect device buy-in price or if you really have no desire to move your body under any circumstance. If you’re at all intrigued by Kinect, though, you owe it to yourself to take a good long look at Harmonix’s Dance Central.
Oh, another Rock Band game coming out this year? What’s next, are you going to tell me that they’re releasing a new Madden title too? hi2u Captain Obvious!
If I didn’t know any better, those would be my first thoughts about Rock Band 3. While a new entry in the franchise may not be the most surprising piece of news to someone, the number of tangible improvements Harmonix has brought to the series is.
Before E3, it was announced that Rock Band 3 would contain a “Pro” mode where players could essentially play the real notes of a particular song on updated guitar controllers. On top of that, the new plastic “pro” instruments would double as functional MIDI instruments for actual music creation.
Now, Harmonix didn’t have playable pro guitars available at their E3 booth this year, but they did provide a live demonstration of them in action:
What really blew my mind was when the guitarist plugged the guitar controller he was using into an amp and played real musical notes while playing a game. It’s one thing to read that these things function as real instruments and another to actually hear it for yourself. It doesn’t sound fake or bee-boo-bop-beep-y, folks. It’s not quite the same as Jack White on stage, but it’s definitely close. The music/tech geek in me had the same childlike feeling of wonderment as it did when I played the first Guitar Hero game.
(You can definitely tell the difference in the video below, but it’s nowhere near the audio fidelity you get from hearing these things played live.)
Bear in mind though, Harmonix dude is an accomplished guitar player. Unless you’re a plastic instrument playing prodigy, you shouldn’t expect to be shredding right out of the box. Nevertheless, the game does have the makings of being the most fun guitar teacher ever. I’m not sure if I’d actually stick with the game long enough to get good at it, but I’ll be damned if coming out of a video game progression cocoon a real guitarist isn’t downright compelling.
I did have the opportunity to try out the new keyboard instrument, though. Of course I picked “pro” mode because I used to play some piano back when I was a wee lad.
I clearly failed as a kid.
I had a hard time even on medium difficulty in a song with a simple keyboard part, “Power of Love.” When i did hit the right notes, though, it was much more gratifying than if I had just hit some colored buttons on a game controller because in the back of my mind I knew that i was playing the real notes of the song. On a related note, I noticed that the keyboard parts in many rock songs are pretty friggin’ simplistic. Unless we get a song like U2 – New Years Day, I wouldn’t expect for keyboard virtuosos to be playing long, complicated solos in this game even on pro-mode.
Ironically enough, the five iconic rhythm game colors are how Harmonix organizes keys on the keyboard controller:
The keyboard section on the game screen will shift from left to right depending on where your fingers should be on the keyboard. For example, if you see blue and green bars on your screen, you’ll want to have your fingers on the right side of the keyboard. If the game needs you to be on the left side, the screen will shift to show red and yellow bars. The colors essentially act as octave markers, if you’re musically trained. Notes will still scroll down towards you in the same way, there’ll just be more button possibilities to deal with. It sounds confusing on paper, but it’s easily picked up in seconds once you jump into playing.
I asked Harmonix whether they designed the keyboard to be played flat or if it was to be worn like a keytar. Both methods of play would work just fine, they answered, although I get the feeling playing it like a keytar is more suited for show than for functionality. It’s definitely a lot easier to play the keyboard “normally,” but hey, nothings stopping you from acting out your Nu-Wave keytar fantasies.
Game Improvements
Most of the talk surrounding Rock Band 3 centers on pro mode on the new hardware instruments and deservedly so. There’s also a ton of little things Harmonix is putting in the game as well. Stuff that will make the game easier to enjoy and make you wonder why they weren’t already there.
Here’s some of the things Harmonix highlighted:
True drop in/drop out functionality – Anytime. No more quitting out of songs or navigating multiple menus to remove/add someone.
Extensive song browsing/filtering capabilities – You can drill down with such detail filters such as song length or family-friendly songs.
Song ratings and recommendations – We’re getting into online music store client features here. You can assign 5 star ratings to all the songs in the library and search/filter by your preferences. The Rock Band music store will even use these to serve up recommended songs of what you may like.
Playlist building/sharing – There’s enough songs playable on the Rock Band platform now that this makes a lot of sense. I mean, shit, there’s even REAL music streaming services that don’t offer playlist sharing functionality yet.
Party Shuffle – Basically a random track shuffler. It’s simple, but makes complete sense for party play when people just want to play with the least amount of menu navigating possible.
Another goal that Harmonix mentioned was to make progress-oriented multiplayer gameplay more self contained. In other words, if you have a regular band that you play with on the campaign mode, you’re probably tired of playing an inordinate amount of sets on a seemingly never-ending world tour. Harmonix’s solution to the problem is to incorporate “tours” that you can reasonably finish in a couple hours of gameplay for the night. In essence, the goal is to make you feel like you’ve “beaten Rock Band for the night.” It’s a legitimate concern that I’ve definitely run into while playing Rock Band with friends. I’m glad to see that attention is being given to making progression oriented players feel like they are completing something significant each session.
The biggest challenge of the music gaming genre is making new products that aren’t just glorified song-packs each year. While I’m definitely for less frequent title releases, it’s hard to argue that Rock Band 3 isn’t shaping up to be worth upgrading to when it ships later this year.
Sonic the Hedgehog’s gone through a rough time since the glory days of the Sega Genesis. We’ve been given so many unfulfilled promises of “This is the return to the Sonic you know and love!” each year that the announcement of a new Sonic game is akin to an announcement that there’ll be a new Madden game out in the fall.
Well, after having checked out Sonic 4: Ep 1 at E3 this year, I’m gonna go ahead and say this is the return of the Sonic you know and love!
All joking aside, if there were a game for that cliche to actually hold, it would be Sonic 4. The developer I sat down with reiterated that they tried to keep the feel of the old Genesis-era Sonic titles and that if you were to put this game in the timeline, it would fit in right after Sonic and Knuckles. (yes, the one with the crazy add-on cartridge) Since that’s the last time I remember having actual fun with a Sonic title, I’m gonna go ahead and say that’s a good start.
The game certainly plays as such and is a fairly delightful (if not entirely familiar) romp down memory line. I can say the game looks sharp on the iPhone and will probably look better on the iPhone 4. It’d probably be my platform of choice as it’s a great game to play on the go in bursts. The tilt controls were pretty awkward and difficult, though. You can check out the video walkthrough further down for a better idea on how the game looks.
An interesting thing you may notice about the game is the ominous “Episode 1” subtitle attached. Sega promises 16 levels in EP1 with more episodes to follow after. Now, I’m not so sure why a platform game that’s light on story needs the episodic title treatment. One reason might be to release new level packs soon after, but my efforts to narrow down the timeframe for new episodes were unsuccessful. The best I got was tentative agreement that they would come out faster than Half-Life 2 Episodes. I think we can all agree that’s not saying much.
Regardless, if you’re in the mood for a nostalgic 2D platformer, this game should excite you. Sonic The Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 will be released on the iPhone, XBLA, PSN, and WiiWare “later this year and priced competitively.”
This morning, Hulu announced plans for a paid version of their popular video streaming service entitled, “Hulu Plus.” Among the added features is the ability to access Hulu through different mobile and home theater devices.
Now, the first thing I noticed on the devices page was this large discrepancy in time between the service’s availability on the Xbox 360 and other set-top devices:
If I were a betting man, I’d certainly put some money down that Sony ponied up something fierce to have Hulu available on their game console first. It’s a big deal. Consumers have been pining for Hulu on consoles for a long time now. Sony should be coming out the huge winner in this. If I was in a monogamous relationship with the Xbox 360, I’d be pissed and wanting a PS3.
Not so if I had only read this statement from Microsoft community evangelist Major Nelson:
We are happy to announce that Hulu will be coming to Xbox LIVE as part of their Hulu Plus experience. In the announcement today, Hulu announced a preview of their Plus service, along with a series of partners of which Xbox LIVE is one of them. We’re working hard on creating customized experience for Xbox LIVE members, which means that Hulu Plus will be coming to Xbox 360 in early 2011. We are taking the time to ensure that the Hulu Plus experience for Xbox 360 is the best on TV and like our other entertainment experiences it will not be a port, but rather a custom experience that leverages the Xbox LIVE community features.
I’d be thinking, “HOLY SHIT!! Hulu coming on my Xbox 360?! And they’re making it special just for me!”
This isn’t an AAA exclusive game, folks. Since when have 3rd party services on a game console been anything but a port? It certainly won’t take over a year of additional development time to get Hulu streaming on an Xbox 360. All signs point to a timed exclusivity deal between Sony and Hulu here.
It’s amazing how effective marketing spin can be in coloring how we react to news.
When a gyroscope was announced as one of the new features of the iPhone 4 a few weeks ago, I was admittedly a bit nonplussed. After all, didn’t we already have tilt gaming on the iPhone?
Like the Wii Motion Plus, all it took was some hands on gameplay experience before I “got” it.
Eliminate: Gun Range is a simple shooting gallery game that requires the iPhone 4. (supposedly a 3GS version is on the way) You’ll earn credits by hitting a certain target number threshold on a given range scenario. Credits can then be used to unlock more guns and challenge levels to play. The game itself not very original, but the method of control is.
Aiming in Gun Range utilizes the iPhone 4’s gyroscope to present a 1:1 movement to graphics representation on the screen ratio. Think about how fluid the screen display is when you use the camera app to take a picture. Now imagine that smooth display in a game. That’s basically how Gun Range feels. The graphics are also very nice, taking advantage of the Retina Display, but the star of this show is the control scheme.
It’s almost more of a tech demo than a fleshed out game, but there’s enough entertainment in this $0.99 package that it’s worth keeping around to play even after you’re done showing off your new iPhone 4 to your friends. I can’t wait to see where this leads iPhone game developers. If nothing else, we’ll have a great way of aiming in iPhone first person shooters.
I gotta admit to poppin’ a little stiffy when Bungie revealed that the Halo Reach campaign would incorporate space combat in the vein of Wing Commander or Colony Wars. I love a good space dogfight and can only hope there’s more of it in the full campaign than the couple of minutes we were shown at the Bungie booth at E3 2010.
Bungie confirmed that up to four players playing the campaign co-op will be able to pilot a Sabre in the game. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to do so in player vs player Matchmaking. Yeah, I’m disappointed too, but Microsoft’s got a hell of a spinoff game idea if they ever wanted to, you know, print some money.
Campaign Space Combat Gameplay Video:
“Firefight 2.0”:
Building on ODST’s Firefight game type, Bungie’s added a lot more customizeability to Reach’s Firefight. Some the things we’ll be able to change are the number of rounds in a game, the types of enemies we face, and the weapon/armor ability loadouts that we take into battle. From there, we can save the customizations and upload them to our Bungie File Shares for others to download.
At first I was concerned that this would fracture the player base, but Firefight’s four player focus on cooperative survival means that each game will be fairly self contained. Each player is going to be dealing with the same conditions in a given play session. I just hope there’s a better way of discovering and playing the best user generated gametypes. I always found it difficult in Halo 3 to find and play custom gametypes that weren’t available in matchmaking buckets.
In the live gameplay video below, you’ll also see the unimaginatively named new weapon, “Target Locator” in action. Frankly, they could have called it “stapler” for all I care. Nuking stuff from orbit never gets old.
Finally, for those who played the beta, “Generator Defense” actually turned out to be a test for Firefight 2.0. I’m glad it turned out to be a gametype tuned for AI enemies. As a player vs player gametype it got very one sided and frustrating at times.
How Lebron’s Choice Is Like An Apple Keynote
Tonight, LeBron James will reveal which NBA team he will play for in a one-hour television special on ESPN. “LeBron’s Choice” some are calling it. I’d prefer not to, if only for the disturbing word association it invokes to a film about a unfathomable decision.
Then again, it kind of is a no-win situation for Lebron isn’t it? Choose to stay at home in Cleveland and he gets railed for running to stand still. Choose to go anywhere else and he becomes Ohio’s Judas for All Eternity.
It’s truly amazing that no one has gotten advance knowledge of his final decision, especially in this day and age of twitter, SMS, and instant broadcast media. In fact, one could say LeBron’s been almost Apple-like in keeping his most valued secret. (Well, prior to this year’s BarPhone scandal anyway.)
Think about it, how much speculation does the internet generate before every Apple keynote nowadays? It’s a goddamn free for all out there. Anything within reason gets blogged, tweeted, shared, much like all the different free agent scenarios thrown about with LeBron the past week. Why do we do this?
Because we love this shit.
We love speculation and we love drama. It’s in our DNA as red-blooded humans. We eat it up. It’s fun to analyze every little clue thrown to us. We’ve even made pseudo stars out of the best “detectives” out there. I’m sure Brian Windhorst over at the Cleveland Plain dealer has massively increased his audience lately, becoming the Jon Gruber of the sports media world.
Do you remember what Apple revealed at keynotes prior to the iPhone announcement in 2007? Yeah, neither do I. How about E3’s before the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and Wii were announced in 2006? Mmmhmm.
Now, we expect the spectacular announcment every year during those shows. We want the circus of rumors, gossip, and speculation to culminate in an orgy of event live tweeting and blogging. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if the planned TV announcement special becomes the norm for any superstar free agency decision in the future. As American Idol and reality TV have proven over the years, we’re willing to sit through “results” shows where we watch 59 minutes of fluff to get to content that could be over with in one minute. Why wouldn’t LeBron do what he did? There’s already a precedent for it out there.
Personally, as someone who doesn’t have a particular rooting interest in where LeBron goes, I kind of want him to go somewhere else. I want the NBA landscape to be changed. I want to participate in the avalanche of Twitter posts and comments troll hate. More importantly, I want my fascination over this dog and pony show to have been for something. Because what’s shittier than sitting through an Apple keynote only to find out that they’re just selling faster Macs?