Mike Schramm
Articles by Mike Schramm
Samurai Showdown 2 slices into iOS, Android
The classic Neo Geo fighting game, Samurai Shodown 2, is now on the iOS App Store and Google Play. The port features customizable controls in the form of virtual touchscreen buttons, which can be placed outside of the game's visual area in "window mode." All 15 characters are included, and multiplayer matches can be played over Bluetooth. Slicing things up with Haohmaru, Jubei and the rest of the gang costs a relatively premium price of $8.99.
Edge of Space available now, thanks to Steam Early Access
After getting approved by both Kickstarter and the Steam Greenlight program, the indie sandbox survival game, Edge of Space, is playable by the public, thanks to Steam's Early Access program. The game can now be purchased for an early access price of $11.99, just a few bucks off from the eventual $14.99 launch price. Anyone buying the game for early access will also get a set of "First Responder Armor," with some extra bonuses as you leave your crashed spaceship and attempt to survive in an alien world. This release of the game is still in beta, and the developers promise there may be other early adopter rewards beyond encounters with "genetically-evolved polar bears."
Minecraft belongs in a museum, according to MoMA
New York's Museum of Modern Art has announced that it is adding six video games, including Minecraft, and a console to its famous collection of contemporary art. The Museum chose to honor fourteen games last year (including Pac-Man, SimCity 2000, EVE Online, and Portal) based on their traits of behavior, aesthetics, space, and time. This year, the museum is adding Atari classics Pong, Space Invaders, Asteroids, Tempest, and Yar's Revenge, as well as Mojang's modern hit, Minecraft. MoMA's also adding the Magnavox Odyssey to the collection, remembering it not only as the first commercial home video game console, but as "a masterpiece of engineering and industrial design." As part of the museum's collection, all of these games and the console will periodically show up in exhibits put together by MoMA's Architecture and Design department.
EA's Wilson wants to 'reestablish Origin as a service to gamers'
EA's Vice President Andrew Wilson told GamesIndustry International at E3 this year that the company plans to "really re-establish Origin as a service to gamers, not as a means to drive transactions." Wilson was on the initial team that planned out Origin, which he said was originally designed as "a service that makes your EA games better." Over time, however, as Chris Roberts (from the same team) told Joystiq earlier, Origin became less about adding functionality, and more about selling games in a branded store. Origin's role, according to Wilson, is as "a complementary service that enhances your game experience irrespective of where you made the transaction. That's the shift you're going to see from us." Wilson admits that the change will take time, but would like to send a clear message to EA's Origin users: "We get it. We understand it. We have heard, we have made some changes already in terms of how we do things, and we're looking at more changes that we'll talk about over the coming months that really are gamer-focused."
Double Fine's Massive Chalice finishes Kickstarter campaign with $1.2 million
Double Fine's Massive Chalice has finished its Kickstarter campaign, funding the project and earning a total of $1.2 million (minus Kickstarter's various fees) for production. In addition to the core game, which sounds like an intriguing mix of turn-based strategy and large-scale kingdom building, the team promised to grow the project's scope based on the funding received rather than rely on stretch goals. Other features and platforms will be determined as the project goes along. Development is being led by the smiley Brad Muir, above, who also designed tower-defense shooter Trenched, later called Iron Brigade. This is Double Fine's second successful Kickstarter; the first was the Adventure Game project, which resulted in the upcoming Broken Age. Massive Chalice's $1.2 million isn't quite as big as the $3.3 million earned for the game that became Broken Age, but the latest project began with a goal of $725,000, much larger than the Adventure Game's initial goal of $400,000. Massive Chalice will now start production, so it'll likely be a while before we see the game ready for release.
Target offering magic cards with Skylanders Swap Force pre-order
Activision has announced that Target will be passing out magic cards with pre-orders for the upcoming Skylanders Swap Force. Portalmasters who pre-order the game at Target will get an exclusive physical trading card that grants upgrades in the game when placed on the new Portal of Power. Swap Force's marquee feature is that it uses characters with two parts that can be mixed and matched, but these specially branded trading cards will work as well. There's also an ongoing deal (at all retailers) that grants a free "Lightcore Hex" Skylanders Giants character when you pre-order a starter pack. This Giants character, like all of the other characters in the series so far, can also be used to play through Swap Force content. If you're a parent of younger children, it's also something else for you to trip over.
Project X Zone gets 'Ghost' demo on eShop next week
Fanstravaganza Project X Zone already has an "Imperial" demo available for download on the 3DS eShop, but the game's official Nintendo page says there's another demo coming on July 2. The second demo is called "Ghost" and will give players a look at a completely different segment of the game. Project X Zone (pronounced "Project Cross Zone," because Japan) is a turn-based strategy RPG that mashes up characters from Namco Bandai, Capcom, and Sega franchises. The game came out in Japan last year, and just recently arrived here in North America.
BioShock Infinite Premium DLC now available separately on Steam
Steam has released the BioShock Infinite "Columbia's Finest" DLC as a separate download, available now for $4.99. This DLC was initially included with the Premium and Ultimate editions of the game at launch, and adds 500 Silver Eagles and 5 lockpicks to your stash, along with six exclusive gear items. You'll also get two weapon upgrades: Comstock's China Boom Shotgun, and Comstock's Eagle Eye Sniper Rifle. This content is not part of the season pass that Irrational Games announced back in February, which promises access to three separate pieces of downloadable content in the future.
Atari requested Baldur's Gate: EE removal from iOS, Oster says
Beamdog CEO Trent Oster has said that Atari is the "unknown publishing partner" behind the removal of Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition from the iOS App Store. "At the request of Atari legal we removed the game from sale on Beamdog and the App stores," Oster told Game Informer recently. "Atari is still selling the game through their channels." Those "channels" would be the official Atari site, Steam, and Amazon.com, where the game is still available for sale. It's unclear why Atari wouldn't want the game selling in other places, but Oster has said both a patch and an enhanced sequel have been put on hold due to the dispute. "We're trying to remedy the situation and I'm hopeful we can come to an arrangement," he said to Game Informer. Joystiq has reached out to Atari for more information, and will update here if we hear back.
Subway map artist and Naughty Dog settle The Last of Us complaint
Naughty Dog has apologized for the unauthorized use of an unofficial Boston subway in The Last of Us. The map, examined intently by protagonist Joel above, wasn't made by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority or Naughty Dog. It's the work of a Portland-based artist named Cameron Booth, who posted earlier this week that it was used "without permission or payment." e attacked Naughty Dog for stealing the work, and wrote (in a since-deleted post version) that he believed it unacceptable "to casually appropriate someone else's work and incorporate it into their game without any discussion." Since Booth revealed his complaint, Naughty Dog has reached out to him and Booth has now deleted his initial post, replacing it with the news that an agreement has been made. "It seems as if matters will be resolved to everyone's satisfaction shortly," Booth now says. Booth also apologized for his "initial vitriolic post," adding that both sides share "a lot of mutual respect for each other's creative work."
Keeping your eyes open in the cold of Company of Heroes 2
After navigating a troubled road alongside former owner and publisher THQ, developer Relic Entertainment has found a new home for its library of titles with Sega. Though shifting to a new company with different policies and directives could hurt a studio's progress, a recent mission playthrough at E3 tells us that Company of Heroes 2 has not suffered in the transition. Last December, Relic previewed the seasonal combat on show in the multiplayer mode (which has been in open beta for most of June), its E3 demo for Company of Heroes 2 focused on a single-player mission, one based on the historic Battle of Leningrad between the Russians and Germans in World War 2. In addition to Relic's RTS design expertise in action, the mission had a new technology on display: a feature known as "TrueSight." Using this new system, darkened areas of a map only become visible based on the realistic line of sight a soldier has on the battlefield, with terrain and objects able to obstruct their views to the dangers that lie in wait.%Gallery-191374%
Solstice Arena is an inventive mobile MOBA from a surprising source
This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go. Solstice Arena appeared on the App Store last week. It's a MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) game in which you choose a hero and play a top-down 3v3 match. Using various spells and abilities, you attack the opposing heroes and try to take out their towers before they do the same to yours. It's deep, well-balanced, and it's an inventive take on the burgeoning genre, designed from the ground up for mobile platforms and touchscreens. And oh yeah, it was published by Zynga. The mention of Zynga may conjure up more thoughts of smarmy farm animals and dessicated drawing games than it does words like "deep" and "inventive," but that's kind of the point. Zynga picked up the developer A Bit Lucky last year, and then immediately put them to work on something that could change the company's reputation, a "mid-core" title that did more right than it did wrong. And though you may be surprised, Solstice Arena succeeds at that task. It's probably not the next League of Legends (though Zynga wouldn't mind if it was), but it does represent the inklings of a new leaf for a huge casual game publisher on the wane.
Ex-BioWare writer reveals alternate endings to Mass Effect trilogy
Potential Spoiler Warning Mass Effect fans! Toronto's AM640 did a radio interview recently with former BioWare scribe Drew Karpyshyn, in which he chatted about some of the alternate story theories and endings that BioWare tossed around for the Mass Effect series. Eurogamer has the highlights, including the theory that the Reapers were trying to stop organic life because they were somehow making use of "Dark Energy" (an element only mentioned briefly throughout the series) to bring about the end of the universe. "It's very vague and not fleshed out," says Karpyshyn, adding that "it was something we considered but we ended up going in a different direction." BioWare also played with the idea that Shepard might be an alien at one point, though eventually deemed that too close to the story of Revan in Knights of the Old Republic. Karpyshyn also says BioWare thought about turning Shepard into some combination of organic and cybernetic, a theme that did eventually get generally included in the ending of Mass Effect 3. But in the end, says Karpyshyn, these ideas were just ideas, and should be judged as such. "It's like vaporware," he says. "Vaporware is always perfect, anytime someone talks about the new greatest game. It's perfect until it comes out." Karpyshyn says that even if fans are disappointed with the story as it is, a story that included these other considered ideas, "whatever we came up with, it probably wouldn't be what people want it to be."
Rogue joins the gallery of guest stars in the Deadpool game
Cable, Wolverine, Psylocke, and Domino were already announced as making appearances in the upcoming Deadpool game by High Moon Studios (due out on June 28), and now you can add one more X-(wo)man to that list. Rogue is joining the team, and as you can see above, she's brought a new look with her.%Gallery-191728%
Gunpoint success allows dev to become independent, Mac and Linux ports on the way
Writer and developer Tom Francis originally planned his game, Gunpoint, as a showcase piece to earn him a job at a game development studio, but after seeing the success of the title so far he says he doesn't need to join another studio. As you can see above, Francis hit his initial goal for the game from preorders alone, and sales have only gone up since then, to the point where Francis now says designing the game was "so commercially successful that I'll never need" to work for someone else. Since the only real monetary cost of the project was a $30 purchase of Game Maker 8 a few years ago, Francis says Gunpoint "recouped its development costs" in just one minute and four seconds. That's after three years of work, of course, but the point remains that Gunpoint was very successful indeed. The next priority, says Francis, will be to port Gunpoint to the newer Game Maker Studio, where it can then be released for Windows, Mac, and Linux. He's looking to hire someone for this task, so he can get moving on actual updates and another project eventually. It sounds like a tough job, essentially taking over the core game's development for other platforms. "But as the graphs above should suggest," says Francis, "I can pay."
Plants vs. Zombies 2: it's about time we talked freemium vs. premium
PopCap Games is known for making games that appeal to a mass audience, and perhaps none are more so than Plants vs. Zombies. The cute 'n clever tower defense game has connected with players of all ages and origins. A sequel, then, was inevitable, and after an announcement last year we finally got to see the game in action at E3 last week. It's unfortunate, however, that much of the discussion around Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time, at least during the game's iOS launch, probably won't be around any of the great new content. There are new zombie enemies, new plants, three new worlds set in different time periods, touchscreen-centric powerups that allow you to throw zombies around or pinch them apart, and even a new "plant food" buff that gives each plant an extra burst of ability when used. At launch, they'll probably all get lost in the mix, because there's one other big difference between the first Plants vs. Zombies and its sequel: PvZ 2 is a freemium game.
Navigating the Castle of Illusion with a 3D Mickey Mouse
When players look back on the platformers of yore, it's easy to forget one important thing about them: They're tough. Modern platformers allow infinite retries and plentiful checkpoints, but old-school platformers, like Disney's Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse, required precise jumps over one-hit enemies and sent you back to the beginning of a level, or even the game itself, when all your lives were lost. Sega has preserved that difficulty in the remastered version of the game, as seen on the floor of E3 2013 last week. Sega Studios Australia has teamed up with the original game's creator, Emiko Yamamoto (who still works for Disney in Japan), to recreate the game in 3D and add new elements. %Gallery-191375%
May NPD: 3DS steals top console spot
The Nintendo 3DS finally edged out the Xbox 360 in May 2013 as the best selling console across hardware and portables, according to the NPD's monthly report on the retail sector. In what the NPD claims was a slow month overall, the 3DS landed three different games on the top 10 (including Donkey Kong Country Returns at number three, Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon at number five, and Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes at number 10), and saw a sixty percent growth in software sales overall since last May. 3DS hardware sales were only even year-over-year, but that was enough to finally supplant the Xbox 360 as the top-selling platform. The other consoles didn't fare quite so well, with Injustice: Gods Among Us keeping the top spot for video game sales. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 jumped back up into the number two spot, and Battlefield 3 reappeared at number nine. Metro: Last Light had a relatively successful showing in the number six spot, while Trion's Defiance MMO fell right off the list, after starting off at number five in April. Accessories saw a six-percent drop to $115.3 million, according to the NPD, with most of that money coming from Skylanders.
Total War: Rome 2 is a 'completely reworked vision' from The Creative Assembly
Rome: Total War is one of those games that a certain, very dedicated audience loves, while the rest of the gaming world is left outside admiring the craft but not quite understanding the dedication. The first Rome: Total War was critically acclaimed and spawned a line of expansions and updates, and now strategy giants The Creative Assembly are returning to the game with a full sequel, not to mention switching around the title to Total War: Rome 2. What's different? "Just about everything, really," says lead battle designer Jamie Ferguson during an interview at E3 2013. "In the ten years since we did Rome 1, we've completely overhauled the game. The game engine isn't even the same." TCA has released a number of Total War sequels and spinoffs throughout periods of history, and updated the original title with new features and systems already. But even despite those improvements, Ferguson says the new game has even more updates and improvements. "When we call it Rome 2, it might be a bit of a misnomer in a way," he says. "We might call it Rome Redux, I guess. It's a completely reworked vision of the game."%Gallery-191377%
Harmonix's Fantasia: Music Evolved is made of pure magic
I can name the exact moment that I fell in love with Harmonix's latest game, Fantasia: Music Evolved, at this year's E3. Periodically throughout the game, you're presented with an on-screen globe, and you can wave your hand over it to create a tune. The science of how it works isn't exactly clear (you're adjusting the pitch and rhythm of a tone somehow), but the tool is simple, it works, and the game will periodically play back your creation to you, and then allow you to redraw it over if you don't like it. Once the tune is set, you can swipe both your arms outward to zoom out to the game's "overworld" level, which in this case was a beautifully rendered, very animated robot factory, with various pipes and pistons jumping up and down in time with a rhythm. This was the moment Fantasia showed me just how magical it was. As I tried to navigate around the stage and solve a problem by manipulating the world with the Xbox One's new Kinect sensor (a group of robots needed to get into a small doorway, so I had to swipe over some magic to shrink them down to fit), I suddenly realized that I recognized the tune that the pipes and valves were dancing to in the background. It was the one I'd just made, subtly mixed into the rhythms of the stage itself. %Gallery-190255%