gameplay
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Bloody beautiful Silent Hill trailer [Update 3]
A few hours ago, we revealed the very first footage of the game in motion. Now, Konami has revealed an official trailer from the Games Convention in Germany Konami's Gamer Day, and it is absolutely mind-blowingly beautiful. Comparing the game to Resident Evil 4 seems apt, not only because of the gameplay, but because of the insane quality of the graphics. Watch and be amazed.[Update 1: Footage actually from Konami's Gamer Day, not Games Convention. Also, Gamespot has added two excellent gameplay videos to their site. They seem to feature some awkward hit detection and camera, but hopefully that'll be worked out soon. Check out video 1 here and video 2 here.][Update 2: A video interview with the producer reveals that the playable build is very early, with most everything being placeholders. So, yes... the graphics and the animations are going to be much better. Players of the original Silent Hill be able to experience how the town became the way it did, but the main character of the game is not responsible for it. The town will be a mix of old and new, with two thirds of it being new. The game will be large: "a good size PSP game." The game features 4 vocal tracks, one of them being featured in the trailer.][Update 3: Another video of the game in motion, now featured after the cut.]
Silent Hill Origins gameplay footage [Update 1]
PSP Fanboy once wrote: "So how about a port of Resident Evil 4? The new over-the-shoulder camera style would be perfect for the handheld!"Well, we might not have Resident Evil yet, but it looks like Silent Hill Origins will fit the bill just nicely. This first gameplay video (delivered by Playstation Portable.de) leaked from the floors of the Games Convention in Germany doesn't show off any enemies, but it shows some particularly nice graphics (the fog looks great), atmosphere and familiar controls. Hopefully we'll discover more nuggets of gameplay over the course of the convention, so keep it locked in to the Fanboy.[Update 1: According to PSP World, the game will offer "a cinematic experience comparable to the previous games, but framed within interactive moments." That sounds a lot like Resident Evil 4's button-mashing cutscenes to me.][Via IGN Boards]
Every Extend Extra video blowout
As if going crazy with Ultimate Ghosts 'n Goblins wasn't enough, Gametrailers.com has posted three new videos of Every Extend Extra on their site. (And you can download the iPod-formatted videos to your PSP!) You may have already seen 1UP's beautiful coverage of the game, but unless you've imported the game, videos are the best we have until the game ships in a month (for only $30, too!). From what I've played, the game isn't that much better than the original Every Extend, but it certainly is a lot of fun regardless. Spencer Yip, from Siliconera, seems to agree with that sentiment as well. After watching these videos, feel free to read his extensive import review.
An extensive look into Killzone: Liberation
GameVideos.com has a beautiful, lengthy video of Killzone: Liberation in action. Not only will you see some great gameplay footage, you'll get to see some truly beautiful real-time PS3 footage CG movies. If that made you long for more, don't forget to check out previous coverage of the game. The killing comes to us at the end of October.
Killzone: Liberation gameplay movies
Pictures may say a thousand words, but gameplay movies make your jaw drop to the floor and shut the h*** up. Readers inquisitive about the top-down perspective of this PSP-exclusive can now see for themselves how it can translate into some exciting run-and-gun on the go. Check out Killzone: Liberation at GameTrailers.com and don't forget to download the iPod-formatted MP4's: they'll work on your 2.8 firmware PSP. Videos: Squad Tactics Trench Warfare
Intense first Pokemon Diamond/Pearl footage: walking around
No, it's not the most amazing of clips. Still, we get to see the new pseudo-3D art style and hear a bitchin' remix of a traditional Pokemon fanfare. Nintendo has been relatively tight-lipped about its sure-to-sell-a-million-units franchise, but Pokemon Diamond and Pearl are well on their way to becoming yet another triple-A DS title. There are a lot of those, these days.[Thanks, Dwarpdesign!]
Media roundup: Chromehounds, Dead Rising
Here's a media update for those of you looking forward to big mechs and messy zombies. The guys at Xboxyde have some good media worth checking out, including a 720p video of gameplay from Chromehounds. But if the screenshots of Dead Rising seem a little over-the-top to you, then just think about possibilities that the image above conjures up.[Chromehounds, screens + vid][Dead Rising, screens]
Girl gamers applaud choice
One of the features in the upcoming Mass Effect is the ability to choose your gender. For a game which revolves around one central character (Commander Shepard) and the related storyline, it's an interesting addition, though not entirely novel.However, it may have more appeal than a first glance would imply. We spoke to several female gamers at E3 who insisted that being able to play a female character is a crucial differentiator between games they like and games they love. It doesn't strike a game from the favourites list -- many of these women loved Halo 2 -- but it's a selling point that turns out to be surprisingly important to the female audience.
Breakfast Topic: Gaming the game
It's a late breakfast today, and the topic is play styles. What do you do when normal WoW playing becomes too easy for you? You start creating meta-games, challenges within the game that add new levels of achievement and complication to the equation. Whether you've roped in some friends to see who's the first to 60 on a new server, or you're trying to beat your own high scores in terms of number of pulls or HKs, there are times when we all set arbitrary targets for ourselves ingame.Especially if you've already taken one or two characters to 60, the game content becomes less of an interesting distraction and more a means to an end. You know all the best grinding spots, areas with decent drop rates and fast-spawning mobs that are especially susceptible to your class skills. You're gaming the game -- plotting the most efficient route through a minefield of quests and levels. If you don't level by the end of today's session, you consider it an inefficient use of your time.Do you find you fall into this behaviour? Do you try to beat your own times to level 10, 20, etc? Or do you sit back and enjoy the ride, whichever character you're on, not caring much about what you get done in a single session?
More info about GameSpot and Gameplay HD
Voom recently launched their newest HD station, Gameplay HD, and it was aimed at gamers. The inital announcement indicated that CNet and Gamespot will be providing content for the channel but the dets' we sketchy at best. More info has surfaced and we thought you would like to know.Gamespot will be producing two shows for the gaming stations. One is called GameSpotting that will cover gaming news, previews and reviews. The second will tell the story of games through the cut-scenes and selected game play will be called CinemAddicts. They both sound cool and Gamespotting seems like something we would like to watch. As for CinemAddicts, it really does not interest me personally but I am sure some of you will love it.
Breakfast Topic: Quest Questions
Love 'em or hate 'em, quests are an integral part of life in Azeroth. However, they come in many different types -- from the "mindless quota killing" sort to the "cross your fingers and hope for a drop" variety. When I'm levelling, I always try to incorporate quests -- travelling from place to place to turn them in might reduce my XP per hour, but it ultimately makes the game more interesting for me and drives me to seek out new places.What's your preferred play style? Do you try to stack up as many quests as possible for efficiency? Sprinkle collection quests in with some errand-running and challenging higher level quests? Or do you grind the night away, staking out rare mobs and good drop areas?I tend to think the different characters I play drive my questing behaviour. My druid always seeks out new adventures and gets bored when in the same area for too long, my rogue tries to do quests that are way above her level by stealthing past most of the mobs, and my warrior just charges in and kills things for fun. It's interesting to push the limits of the different classes, and quests are one way to measure yourself against the game's idea of your skill -- having an addon that shows the quest levels is invaluable for this
Desperate Housewives to despair on PCs
If all goes according to plan, fans of the desperate housewives on Wisteria Lane will be able to live out their soap opera dreams on their PCs before the TV show's canceled.Disney (which owns the ABC television network that distributes Desperate Housewives in the States) has set its Buena Vista Games division to publish a PC-based adaptation of the sudsy Sunday-night staple this fall.While negotiations are underway to secure additional cast members to represent themselves in-game (they've only gotten the deceased housewife narrator on-board so far), we hope this license works out better than the recent video game adaptations such as 24: The Game, Alias, and Dark Angel (where the DA game actually came out after the show was canceled). The screenshots revealed seem to display more suburban architecture than gameplay, but the game will involve taking on the role of a new neighboring housewife. It has not been disclosed, however, whether you can take prisoners in your basement as of yet.[Thanks, riffgod, bandersnatch, Nick, & GunForHire; via Yahoo! & the BBC]See also: Mark Green discusses 24: The Game Metacritic metascore for 24: The Game (on the PS2): 61 out of 100 Metacritic metascore for Alias (on the PC): 55 out of 100 Metacritic metascore for Dark Angel (on the PS2): 48 out of 100
The daily grind: when playing turns into work
There's an interesting back-and-forth discussion over at Terra Nova on the subject of gameplay and labour; as the boundaries between work and play become blurred, what are the issues and where will the trend lead? Unless you're a pro gamer or gold farmer, playing games is unlikely to net you any real-world salary, and yet many of us log into MMOs to continue our "daily grind". A serious commitment to World of Warcraft, for example, can leave one with a raid schedule more gruelling than a day job. The boundary blurs elsewhere, too, when you carry out a complicated task in-game that you couldn't do in real life. The difference is that by playing a game, you have control over what you do, rather than relinquishing the reins to an employer. Perhaps this will lead to higher self-employment and entrepreneurship amongst gamers--certainly worlds like Second Life let you work in-game for real cash. A warning, though--once the game becomes a job, the roles may reverse, leaving real life as the fun distraction.
Breakfast Topic: Abort, Retry, Fail?
Sometimes, despite our best intentions, we can't complete a particular quest on the first try. Maybe it's a difficult escort quest, or we're trying to kill mobs with some particularly nasty attacks, but there are plenty of moments when we want to just give up--or at least come back later.Aborting quests has the unhappy side-effect of filling up your inventory with quest items--half-collected drops and special items given to you by NPCs. Retrying again and again often leads to death and armour at 0%; but failing isn't a nice thought. On the occasions when I give up on a quest, I try to destroy the quest items straight away (so I won't start chucking out the wrong thing in the middle of an instance) and I like to think of it as "moving on" rather than "failure".What's your attitude to the inevitable quest abandonment? Do you try to complete every single quest you pick up, or are you happy to drop them at a whim?
