Thursday, September 28, 2006

Fantastic new Red Steel screens





Click on the pics for larger views.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

*Rumor* October 9th Gamestop taking Wii pre-orders


"I just got the call my friends. Mark your calendars! October 9th, for one day only, Gamestop will be taking pre-orders on Nintendo's forthcoming console Wii. You heard it here first gamers. GET READY!!

Apparently Gamestop employees have received an email today regarding the preorder issue. Not too many details were given other than the 9th of October is going to be the magic date."


Link to Game On site

If this is true Monday October 9th is going to be a crazy day trying to get your Wii pre-ordered because that would be the ONLY day Gamestop is doing them. Game On is a friend of mine and I do trust what he says, but I don't want to scream that this is completely true until we hear from Gamestop themselves. This sounds like it could be it though.

Official Wii Box Art




Many people were posting the "other" Red Steel box art as official, yet there was never any word from Ubisoft to its validity. Now these are the official box arts direct from IGN Wii. Marvel is looking pretty attractive I must say. Click on the link to see the rest of the box arts.


Link

Monday, September 25, 2006

Just how comfortable is the Wii Remote? Find out here



"Working the wiimote in my right hand and then picking up the Nunchuck attachment with my left hand, I felt very natural and comfortable playing. One of the greatest oddities the controller brought forth was the fear of pulling the two controllers apart at the cord. Seriously, I had a fear I'd rip the nunchuck controller right outta the wiimote and look the fool, but it never happened. So no worries for those who were concerned you'd be snapping the little bugger out of the bottom of the wiimote.

The best example of using the nunchuck attachment would be from playing Trauma Center (which I'll be reviewing shortly) and needing this little guy for completing tasks. See the great thing about the wiimote and nunchuck controller being two pieces, is that you can have your hands off to your sides and just feel relaxed.

To understand better what I'm talking about, take your hands and place them relaxed upon your legs, left arm left leg and so forth. Sit like you would on your couch or lay-z-boy, legs probably wide apart and you're looking like a true man watching the football. Now pretend you're holding a wiimote in both hands, they're both leaning in to the middle probably and you're just slouching there. Comfortable? Only have to use your thumb to press buttons? Yeah, that's how chill and relaxing it is to play with this thing. You can sit like a man and now play slouched like one too! Women, you'll soon have to massage us even more so, so we don't end up looking like a hunched over couch guy with our hands lazily off to the side.

If you can't get how the controller feels or acts after reading that completely ridiculous paragraph, then you've got some imagination problems and need to um, just wait and buy the dang thing."



READ THE REST OF THE IMPRESSIONS HERE


That is one of the best ways I've heard to explain the way the Wii-mote feels to hold and to play with. It sounds very comfortable and easy to use. I don't see myself getting tired after playing for while either. You CAN get tired since the Wii-mote allows you to do wild arm movements if you want, its all about being realistic with it.

Wii is #1 on CNET'S most wanted list

CNET also lists the PS3 at #12 on the list. The Wii is the talk of the Internet, even PS3 forums are talking about it. Everyone wants to try the controller for themselves and that will probably cause a lot of impulse buying for a lot of people, just so they can get it to their home and play it all by themselves.


Source

Saturday, September 23, 2006

Wii-mote battery issue solutions


Duracell 15-Minute Battery Charger with 4 AA Batteries: $34.99 at Circuit City

The Duracell 15-minute charger provides maximum power performance in a minimal amount of time. The new charger is capable of charging four 2400 mAh AA cells in just 15 minutes — delivering up to four times as many photos as an ordinary alkaline battery with every charge. In addition, the Duracell 15-minute charger will power all standard AA or AAA NiMH batteries.




They have also released a new USBCELL battery that plugs into your USB slot on your computer for re-charging. This is brand new and will retail for $24.99 for 2 AA batteries. It has been found out that these batteries do not last as long and take a long time to charge however. Also trying to charge them may be a hassle for many if you have a ton of USB slots already taken up by other devices. I'm not sure where you can buy these since they are so new. Interesting none the less.

Source for USBCELL

For me, I think I'd just pick up the 15 minute charger with the 4 AA's. The reviews for that have been extremely good and they say that the batteries last longer than regular Alkaline. While the USBCELL could take 5 hours to charge and even then would not last as long as the Duracell. I do think the USBCELL idea is very cool and maybe in the future they will make a little bit faster to charge and less expensive as well.

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Far Cry Vengeance fully revealed

(Wii version shown)

"Ubisoft have officially revealed the Wii version of the first-person shooter series Far Cry, including some tasty screenshots and some artwork from the title. Titled “Vengeance” the game releases alongside the Wii this Winter.

The first instalment of the franchise on the Wii is an exclusive, featuring unique controls, storyline, maps and weapons over the original – taking full advantage of the Wii’s interface and hardware. Ubisoft revealed a little bit more into the title today, speaking to IGN about porting the series to Nintendo’s tiny wonder.

- The Wiimote is used for movement, as announced before, for driving, shooting, jumping, climbing, attacking and more – including Far Cry's Feral attack.
- Various weapons are on offer, from pistols to knives, machine guns to grenades.
- Players can move around on vehicles like the original with the ability to surf the waves on hovercrafts, Jet Skis, and in land trucks for the ultimate strategy.
- Environments come packed full of unique features, where players can use stealth to sneak up on their prey. There are three new maps - Tourist Resort, an abandoned World War II base and a petrol refinery.
- Far Cry features a fully kitted out multiplayer mode, but with no map editor or online mode to compliment this.
- Vengeance runs at a steady 30fps. 60 wasn’t used to ensure stability as with past Far Cry titles."


Source

Bet you thought I was going to show those crappy pics from IGN didn't you? Well this one that I found on Cubed3 was a bit better and didn't look so washed out. It's just my gut feeling but it seems like those pics for Far Cry on IGN were extremely bad because they are just low quality screen shots. I compared the regular Xbox version with the Wii version and the difference is that the Xbox version has clean and clear pics to show the game. The Wii version pics are muddy and blurry and low res. The actual models in the game look to have the same polygon count and detail, you just have a hard time telling that. Granted those pics make the Wii version look like total crap and I do hope we get some better(clearer) pics of the game soon. I have a feeling they will be much improved over what was shown today at IGN. The details on how the game plays sound interesting and we'll have to wait and see for some hands-on impressions. The developers did say in the IGN interview that online play was being considered and that they were testing it out. Take that anyway you want to take it, but at least they are trying something with online for the Wii since most if not all of the games don't have online for launch.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

My thoughts on the Wii(posted on Gonintendo as well)



The Wii has gotten a little bad press lately because of the price. Mainly its been from sites like 1up and Joystiq that seem to like to start rants on that to up their site hit count.

How can people be shocked at the $249.99 price point? Nintendo never lied or said what the price could be beyond just saying “it will not exceed $250.”

The media should be blamed for getting everyone’s hopes up for a sub $200 price point. They were the ones that were saying $170, $175, $199, and even $150. Everyone seemed to forget about Nintendo’s one statement about it not exceeding $250. They said that price for a reason and the reason was that it was “probably” going to be $249.99 but they just were not quite ready to say that price because of issues with pricing the controller and the pack-in game or the inclusion of the DVD playback. So once they got all that straight they could settle on that $249.99 price point. It doesn’t bother me at all.

Perrin Kaplan said that the Wii “is a Ferrari under the hood”. All the sites just throw out the “Why are we paying this much for a Gamecube 1.5″ stuff and I don’t really think they can truly know that right now. The Power PC CPU they are using in the Wii is the latest in power efficiency. Not just in using less power in your household, but in processing power too. 729Mhz will perform more like a 1.5Ghz CPU without the HD. So I would say that the Wii is plenty powerful and capable of way more than Gamecube. The ATi GPU is another story that is more of a mystery, but I guarantee that they didn’t just add 100Mhz and be done with it. The Wii is a very deceptive console in terms of its power and I can’t believe that these people on these sites just pass it off as GC 1.5, or just a Gamecube with a new controller.

I think that the Wii is totally worth the money. State of the art motion sensing tech. and state of the art architecture built into a small console the size of 3 DVD cases. I don’t know about you, but that is extremely impressive to me.

If anyone complains at all about the launch lineup(some sites have dared to) because of no Metroid or no Mario or Smash, they need to stop right now. Close to 20 games on day one, and over 30 by the end of the year. Zelda is supposed to take you close to 100 hours to complete, that makes the number of games seem even more because that is a lot of playing time for one game. The Third Party lineup is so strong too:

Red Steel
Far Cry
Splinter Cell
Rayman
Tony Hawk
Call of Duty 3
Madden 07
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance
Dragon Ball Z
Monkey Ball
Trauma Center
Need for Speed:Carbon

Each of those games could be very worth buying and I know I’ll be getting a few of them myself on launch day(besides Zelda).

I’ve seen developers trying to do more than just make crappy ports from the current gen(Marvel) and that will add to sales of those games too. People aren’t stupid, they can tell when a company is just releasing a game with no effort and trying to make a quick buck.

The controller has already proved that it IS revolutionary(Wii Sports, Mario Galaxy, Metroid, Madden 07). Many games have proved successful using it and fine tuning for others is all that is needed. The controller is no doubt the selling point of the Wii and it is going to sell the system out come launch day. How could you not want to play the Wii after seeing all the other people on those videos playing it and swinging their arms all about. Everyone will want a piece of that action, no doubt.

The Wii is also the most talked about console on the internet, and its starting to even get spots on local news channels(I saw a report on the Wii on my local news last week) as the “next big thing”.

My thoughts are that the Wii will be awesome and that this launch will still be the best in videogame history regardless if Metroid is there or not. I will be playing this system this year and I’ve never been more excited to play a videogame system since the NES and THAT is saying a lot.

Link to Gonintendo

Saturday, September 16, 2006

New 19 minute Perrin Kaplan video interview



Source

Perrin talks about the choices Nintendo made in thinking out the launch of the Wii and the reasons for the price of the console. I like one of her comments about the Wii's power: "Make no mistake, this is a Ferrari under the hood." She said that as she tapped the top of the Wii console. The guy interviewing her asked a lot of pointed questions and she answered each one very well. Good interview.

Mario is not messing around anymore...



Source

Ever wonder what a hardcore Mario would be like? Or a Mario with just a totally different art direction? Well just take a look at that art pic above. It is so strange yet so cool all at the same time. Would anyone want to see that in a game?

Actual The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess box art?


Sorry I don't have a link, but I found this on the Nintendo of Amercia forums yesterday and didn't have time to post it at that time. Looks real but I doubt that it will be the final case picture for the game. It seems the "Wii" on the top is going to be how it really looks for the DVD cases for the games.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

New Red Steel screens and fact sheet





"Red Steel Fact Sheet

PRODUCT DESCRIPTION:

Red Steel is an exclusive Wii launch title that takes full advantage of the console’s innovative controller and puts players directly into the action-packed first-person experience with the weapon in their hand – literally.

An engaging storyline unfolds as you learn that your fianc̩e has been kidnapped and her father Рa Japanese mafia kingpin Рmurdered by a rival gang. The only way to save your loved one and defend your honor is to journey from Los Angeles to Japan and confront the Tokyo underworld.

By learning the ancient art of Japanese fighting with your katana and the focused precision of modern firearms, you will progress and adapt yourself to this foreign environment, where skills alone may not guarantee you victory.

KEY FEATURES

• Exclusively for Nintendo’s new-gen system Wii Red Steel is the only original first-person action game built from the ground up for the Wii.

• The Weapon Is in Your Hand
Take full advantage of the revolutionary Wii controller, and control the action like never before. You’ll replicate sword-fighting movements and eliminate enemies quickly by directly targeting and shooting them.

• Master the Deadly Steel
Execute deadly combo moves using multiple swords or choose from a variety of firearms for longer-range attacks.

• Focus Is Key:
Learn to harness your mental power to unleash powerful attacks in dire situations, and use the “focus system” to freeze time and effectively target several enemies at once.

• Become a Modern Samurai:
Learn the art of Japanese fighting, and then use these skills to take out your enemies or gain their respect and loyalty by sparing them.

• Multiplayer Modes:
Challenge friends with various split-screen multiplayer modes to see who the real master is."

Source


Now that is the improvement in graphics we were all looking for. Those character models look much improved and the textures look more detailed as well. Shoot and use your sword at the same time? Looks very interesting, can't wait to see a video of the new build soon.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

EA hard at work on Madden Wii, Wii day almost here





"IGN Wii: Let's talk about graphics. Right or wrong, Madden for Wii is undoubtedly going to be compared to the GameCube build. Meanwhile, we've been playing a lot of the 360 version. In terms of visuals, where does the Wii incarnation fit in?

Jason Armenise: We get the graphics question all the time. Every time we talk about the game we get the graphics question. A lot of people - even passionate Nintendo fans - are kind of dismissing the graphics, saying, "We know it's going to be third, yadda, yadda, yadda." We didn't take that attitude. Right from the beginning, we said, "You know what? We need to make this game look better than Xbox at the very minimum. And if possible, we need to challenge the Xbox 360 version." That was our goal from the first day.

So we've done a whole host of things that put the game far in advance of the GameCube and we think better than the Xbox. And in some cases, we're challenging the Xbox 360 on graphics. First of all, the game is HD compliant. You can play 480p and 16:9 widescreen. That means everybody who has a HDTV can play the game with their component outputs and play in 480p and 16:9 widescreen while running at 60 frames per second, which is awesome. Additionally we've upped the texture quality on players. Textures are a higher quality. In many cases, they are higher than the Xbox version. We've added a whole host of features like depth of field. We've added a feature we call cinematic lens effect, which is like when you look through an actual television camera and straight lines get a little bit bowed in real life. We've increased the shadows. The shadows are better. We have something called contact shadows so that if two players get close to each other you'll see the shadow of one bleed onto the shadow of another. We've increased the grass. Our grass looks like it has more depth to it. It looks more lush than GameCube. It's definitely a much better looking game than on GameCube and we think that it really is challenging Xbox 360 in some places."



Full interview here

It's nice to see yet another developer not satisfied with just making this game look just like the current generation model. The list of features that EA is including in just the graphics alone is really encouraging. If you read the entire 7 page interview with IGN Wii you will see how crazy this game plays too. Everything is revealed except for online play, which seems EA knows about but will not comment on anything that has to do with it just yet; that may be a good thing.



Wii DAY

If you live in the United States and the West Coast AND know how to speak Japanese, tomorrow the 13th at 5pm PST/8pm EST. You will be able to follow the Nintendo Wii conference being held in Japan.

It starts at 5pm and ends at 11pm, again at Pacific Standard Time. It is 8pm-2am Eastern Standard Time. Too bad for me since I don't speak Japanese but live in San Diego, California! I'm hoping for some leaked video tomorrw from the show, it may be late in the night before we get to see anything but it will be worth it since Nintendo is planning another surprise for this show. If we can't get the info tomorrow, then Thursday will be THE day for sure.

Starting Thursday, September 14th at: 7am Pacific and 10am Eastern Standard Time in New York, Wii day begins.


Friday, September 08, 2006

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance Xbox360, Wii, Xbox screen comparisons

XBOX360 VERSION BELOW




Wii VERSION BELOW





XBOX VERSION BELOW




Note that the Wii pics are actually confirmed by IGN Wii as being the first REAL Wii version shots in action. In my opinion, the Wii version looks closer to the 360 version than the current gen version. The Wii version was supposed to be using the same engine as current gen as well. If it is the current gen engine, I must say that they are doing a really good job of making it look close to next gen and not just the same old same old for current gen systems. Nice to see Activision putting 16:9 and pro-scan in the game as well.

Want to know how the Wii version plays? Go here for the story

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Far Cry: Vengeance details revealed in podcast

(PC Version shown)

- Renamed Far Cry: Vengeance
- Jump with nunchuck by lifting it

- Slash Wiimote to make a feral attack, nunchuck to hit enmies in the back, ect.
- Move Wiimote forward to zoom
- Slash across screen for knife attack
- Focusing both on graphics and gameplay, not straight port from Xbox versions.
- Unvealed on the 14th.
- Widescreen, 480p
- "Stable 30 FPS, like all prior instincts games"
- Splitscreen multiplayer
- paraphrase: 'We've heard some online information from Nintendo, but we can't comment.' (funny, cause he did. Look below )
- Proposing possibilities to Nintendo Wii24connect
- Single Player: 20+ hours
- "We're testing online right now"
- "Is there a possiblity online play will show up in retail version?" (quick response) "Yep Yep."
- Downloadable content is a possibility.

Link to IGN Wii post

Link to podcast from VGM daily

Sounds like we will be hearing tons more info concerning Far Cry on September 14th at New York, when Nintendo reveals most if not all of the Wii info left to ponder. I'm curious to see how the aiming system will handle after hearing about the new options Ubisoft is giving for the game. Online sounds like it has a really strong chance of happening right out of the gate as well and that just makes the game more worth buying if you ask me. Excited?

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Crytek thinking about bringing Crysis to Wii?


GI: It’s assumed that if you do console development it’ll be on the most powerful systems – Xbox 360 and PS3. What do you think of Wii?

Yerli: I love the Wii (laughs). When I was at E3 and playtested it, I loved it. I thought about how we could do games for this platform and what kind of games they would be, and what kind of shooters we could do on it, and work it to our own needs here. Yes we’ve had some thoughts, but Crysis is not part of the plan at this stage, but that may change. We are a company that takes one step at a time, and once we achieve the goal that we want to achieve then we take the next step and see what the next platform we go with next. We did not decide if we’ll do PS3 at all. We have all of the development kits, and we have research going on. We have the Wii, Xbox 360, and PS3, we work as researchers and test them, essentially. We have parts of these systems running because there is going to be console development in our company, but if it’s going to be Crysis or not is a step ahead of us. Because if we go to fast we sacrifice quality on PC, and I want to make sure it’s the best PC shooter we can do. With our company our goal is to make it the best shooter of all time. Once we achieve that, our achievement is we do our best and that’s it. Whether we do it our not is to be determined. Once we are there, then we’ll take the next step.

GI: Crytek is known to have made stunningly beautiful games, and while you can sort of experience them on lesser hardware, if you have the quad-SLI setup, and three gigs of RAM and a super fast processor it’s going to look incredible. With looking at what the Wii has under the hood, does that discourage you as a developer?

Yerli: No, not at all, because I think we can make great visuals by different means. Look at the PS2. Some PS2 games still look fabulous. And there are games that are just stylized perfectly. You can achieve anything with every hardware. I think it’s a matter of artistic direction, how you use the limitations. That ultimately is the experience you want to give. The experiences in Crysis drives the art direction. The experience of the frozen environments, the experience of interactivity, then we decide how we want it to come across visually. What do we need to do, how far do we need to go? With the Nintendo Wii the approach will be similar. We have this great controller, we have the limited power of the console, How we can make a confined space or large outdoor level, whatever, how can we make the best out of the controller that’s giving the experience that we want to give? Completely fluid interactivity – how can we do that? I think it would be a completely different approach, and it deserves to be as well. So, if it our decision to make Crysis for Wii, if and I don’t want to be quoted saying we’ll do it. But if – if we would do it, it would have to be a completely optimal version, but it would be great. (laughs)

Link to Game Informer

Epic games could learn a thing or two from this interview. Crytek doesn't seem to be worried at all about the Wii's power, they are optimistic about doing pretty much anything on the Wii-even Crysis. Considering that Crysis is by far the best looking game in existance as of right now, a Wii version would have to be watered down no doubt; but Crytek said they have development kits for the Wii so maybe they know a bit more about it than most? They could have easily said no way in hell would they even try this game on the Wii, but thats not the case. Could the Wii have enough power to run a version of the game that looks very similar only in Standard-Def? Crytek almost seems to think so....

Resident Evil Wii news

"reH brings you another exclusive, voice actress Tara Platt is to voice Jill Valentine in the upcoming RE:Wii game. She confirmed to us that the game will feature zombies (or at the least, zombie-like enemies) and plant creatures, as well as a wide array of weaponry. The fact that Ms. Platt was aware of the weapons in the game infers that she is voicing a playable character and is not just doing a cameo. Jill being the main character increases the likelihood of seeing Carlos or Barry turn up as well."

Link

Also from Gamespot's forum:

Read this from a games magazine in HK today - its called Biohazard : Umbrella Corp Chronicles and fills in the story on Umbrella before and leading to BH4. Gameplay is a mix between using the Wiimote as a light gun and BH4 style elements e.g. action buttons pressing X for a dramatic scene. It features scenarios from BH1 (museum), BH2 (police station), BH3 (raccoon city), BHCV and BH4 (village) and ties in the gaps especially BHCV and BH4. Characters include Chris/Claire, Leon / Ada, Jill / Carlos, Rebecca, Hunk and Wesker . There are two gameplay modes - scenario mode and arcade mode. Proper announcement to be made by Capcom at TGS

Link

While its disappointing that Resident Evil 5 is not in development right now for Wii, it is good news that we will be getting a RE game that will have a good place in the Resident Evil story and not just a tacky add-on game. The second news part is not confirmed but I like the chances of it coming true. The actress that plays Jill is confirmed so its looking good regardless.