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Zeno Clash developer ACE Team knows us all too well. Apparently, we let the latest trailer for Zeno Clash: Ultimate Edition slip into inbox obscurity, which is unfortunate. We were informed that the video features hot pig-on-foot action, which is not unfortunate. Hence this write-up of said trailer.

Jump straight to the one-minute mark if you’re only in this thing for the animal abuse. Otherwise, I urge you to watch the full thing; it’s a good trailer, especially for those of you who are relatively unfamiliar with what Zeno Clash is all about.

With the reveal of PlayStation Move, the question on everyone’s minds is whether or not Heavy Rain will be updated to take advantage of the motion controller.

While Quantic Dream is quiet on the topic, we do know that the developer had originally designed Heavy Rain with a motion controller in mind. But taking it a step further, David Cage revealed to me that they went as far to design a working motion controller, specifically for the title. 

Designed for two hands, the controls were to allow for full interaction with the on-screen environment. While he didn’t go into any great detail, he calls it “very different” than Sony’s upcoming motion controller. Cage talks about this, he taps the back of both hands to visually describe the concept. I’m reminded somewhat of ARI, the fictional virtual reality device used by Heavy Rain’s Norman Jayden. 

The controller was eventually shelved, as Quantic Dream came to the conclusion that designing a device to work with one game “wouldn’t make sense.” As for whether or not he feels motion controls are the next step for what they’re trying to accomplish, he’s not entirely convinced, but is interested to see how it could work.

“I wouldn’t say it’s the next step,” he tells me. “It’s… something we will look at with some interest. We want to see if it’s possible to create something that’s not family entertainment or casual games, to see if it’s possible to use it in the context of a more serious experience.”

On-rails light gun action is what you’re getting with this PlayStation Move game called The Shoot. It’s called The Shoot because you’ll find yourself traveling through mock movie sets. Think of an updated Virtua Cop that takes you through generic film lots and you’ll be on the right track. We saw a science fiction-based “set,” and we were told that others are coming. In the end we’ll see a “Wild West” set and a haunted house/horror one among others.

I played this game last night over drinks. It’s a fine game to play when your drunk, actually. It uses one Move controller. You point it at the screen to aim, and the underside T trigger button fires. The game is best known for the crazy motions you’ll have to perform to do special moves. Jabbing down at the ground throws a shockwave. Jabbing the controller up does a rampage-ish attack. Leaning your entire body from side to side dodges projectiles. The most entertaining move requires you to twirl your entire body around in a circle to trigger a sort of slow-motion mode that makes it easier to shoot enemies. I was in the company of friends, piers, and hot women, so I was really hesitant to do the spin. It turns out that I’m not alone.

Senior producer James Hawkins admits that some that play are hesitant to do the motions, though he also feels its likely due to the setting.  He thinks that letting loose would help people appreciate the game more: “With all of the moves, you’re getting a bit more than the standard rail shooter, where you would shoot five times, reload, shoot five times.”

The game is still early. I played the entire two stage demo, but Hawkins told me that I’ve only seen about 1/5 of one stage, and that there are 5 stages in all. I was told about secret stages and more special moves, but those will be revealed at a later time.

The Shoot will be released right around the Move’s launch.

Lawsuits aside, I’m a huge fan of the Bit.Trip series. I may wish nothing but destruction on Gaijin Games, but hell if they don’t make some fantastic stuff.

Bit.Trip Runner, Gaijin’s newest game, was playable on the GDC expo floor. As the first Bit.Trip platformer and the first game in the series to not consist entirely of abstract visuals, I was very curious as to what I’d see once I put my hands on the controller.

These are my impressions.

Hrm.

Runner controls as well as you’d expect: the platforming is incredibly precise, and it’s surprisingly easy to make a distinction between the stuff you need to interact with and the considerable visual noise that comprises the background. Each jump and dodge results in a sort of 8-bit beep, and the obstacles are thrown at you in such a way that by successfully navigating the level, you also sort-of create a song. From a musical perspective, the game is more along the lines of the uberlinear Bit.Trip Beat than the more improvisational Bit.Trip Core, but it still sounds distinctly like a Bit.Trip game. When you’re doing well, you get into that same sort of aesthetic nirvana where everything — the visuals, the music, and your own control — feel as if they’re in a kooky, transcendental harmony.

Also, if you do anything wrong, at any point, you have to repeat the entire level. No checkpoints.

The game consists of 36 levels in total along with a few unlockable special stages. I couldn’t finish the level I attempted, so I can’t say how long they are, but I do know that about 60% of my time with Runner consisted of me replaying the first fifteen seconds of the level over and over and over again.

On the one hand, this makes a sort of sense: Runner is the series’ most visually referential work since Beat, and it’s understandable that the sort of trial-and-error gameplay that categorized so many of Runner’s influences should make an appearance here. Even beyond the aesthetic reward of doing well, the game gets incredibly tense once you start dodging obstacles with some level of effectiveness: given that one mistake will send you back to the start, I felt a constant tension that I’d never really gotten from the previous games in the series.

On the other hand, gone is that wonderful health system from previous Bit.Trip games, where a half-dozen small mistakes eventually turned into larger ones, eventually reducing all the visual sexiness from the screen until all the music and graphics were gone save for a few white dots and some minimal beeping noises. Gone is the sensation of finding yourself just one or two missed beats away from plunging into failure, desperate to do just a little bit better, to get that little bit of health back so you can go back to screwing up every once in a while. That rhythmic, elegant give-and-take that allowed the player to make mistakes while steadily learning the different beat configurations and patterns has been replaced with intense fear and a demand for pinpoint precision.

Not to say that one type of design is demonstrably better than another, or anything: the GDC expo floor is a stressful place to try any game, and it’s tremendously hard to get a feel for how the game will truly play when you’ve only got a few minutes with it. Once I start playing the full version at home, perhaps the constant retries will become an integral and compelling part of the experience. Maybe the frequent death with give the game its own unique, funky rhythm on par with the more forgiving experience of playing something like Core.

Either way: Bit.Trip Runner is unlike anything we’ve yet seen from Gaijin Games, and that excites me more than anything.

The majority of UK gamers will look back fondly on the year 1992 as it saw the start of the cult gaming show, GamesMaster, air on television. 12 years later, the classic show is rumoured to return by Q4 2010.

GamesMaster was the very first television programme aired in the UK exclusively involving videogames. The original show was marketed in the sports category as the shows main focus was competitive gaming, but also covered reviews, hints and tips. One of the shows most recognisable characters was “The Gamesmaster”, a cybernetic Sir Patrick Moore, with a rather well to-do British accent who handed out golden joysticks.

According to MCV, Future purchased the brand last year but up until now the licence for the TV show has remained with Double Act Films. Now Future are looking at potential TV networks, presenters and large amounts of interest is already being generated. The new show is said to now focus on new releases with a bigger and better production value than previously seen, and is likely to find sponsorship from large gaming retailers.

Oh GamesMaster, we are not worthy!

When not conveying Naughty Dog’s production process in intricate detail, Uncharted 2 co-lead designer Richard Lemarchand also talked about the team’s larger design goals during his postmortem today.

At least one of those goals was to further increase the scale and intensity of Uncharted’s cinematic experience: this meant focusing on huge cinematic setpieces that occur mostly in the course of regular gameplay, like he hotel collapse and the much-beloved train level.

“Moving away from so-called quick-time events was definitely the way to go,” Lemarchand said.

I find it hard to disagree: I’d take Uncharted 2’s fully-playable hotel collapse over the arbitrary pseudogameplay most QTE’s provide. Not to say that QTE’s don’t work, ever (that’s not what Lemarchand was saying, either) but that they don’t really fit the world of Uncharted.

_{Each year, Gamma entrants are asked to make games under certain constraints. This year, all Gamma4 entries must be controlled with a single button. I’m going to write up my impressions of all six Gamma4 games.}

Yeah, that’s what the actual game looks like. At his IGS talk earlier in the week, cactus called Mark Essen his “hero.” cactus’ Gamma4 submission — unceremoniously titled GAMMA IV: The Game — shows how true that statement is.

Hit the jump for my impressions of the game.

Before trying to explain GAMMA IV: the game, it’d probably be best if you watched this trailer:

So, the object of the game is to make the flashing white lines crash headfirst into the flashing white boxes, without hitting any walls, or enemies, or the borders of the screen. You control all the flashing white lines simultaneously, and by pressing the button, the line will make a 90-degree turn to the right. Imagine Snake, but with only one turn command, and also made by someone interested in inducing seizures in his players.

Though the visuals are distinctly Messhof-esque in nature, the majority of Essen’s game visuals (The Thrill of Combat excluded) don’t actually interfere with the player’s ability to understand what’s going on. In reality, GAMMA IV shares more in common with Jeff Minter’s games, albeit with much simpler gameplay. Since the basic act of “get your snake to hit the white boxes” is pretty straightforward, the player generally has to focus harder on deciphering the visual noise and understanding exactly where their lines are on the screen, and where the evil red enemies are firing from, and which part of the line is just a graphical trail and which part is where you currently are.

This is really fun, for a little while. Since all of your lines are basically mirrored versions of one another, victory is usually signified by the simultaneous, explosion of four different boxes in four different areas of the screen. A pattern of destruction suddenly erupts onscreen everytime you do something good, which is enough reward to mitigate the initial “what the shit am I doing” frustration that inevitably confronted me at first.

Unfortunately, after a certain period of time it becomes obvious that, rather than dividing your attention across the game screen as a whole, it’s much easier to progress if you just focus on one particular line, and try to get it to one particular box. The same line-mirroring that makes victory so visually satisfying also makes many of the later stages easier than they initially seem: since all your lines are controlled simultaneously and the entire world is often vertically and horizontally mirrored, it’s impossible to detonate one box without also detonating a bunch of other boxes. This keeps the game from being overwhelming difficulty-wise, but it also severely detracted from the pure, epileptic spectacle I felt upon first starting the game and trying to keep my eye on everything all at once. The best method of playing the game makes it less fun to look at, which is unfortunate for a game so focused on visual noise and spectacle.

Still, there’s a lot to be said for GAMMA IV’s initial experience. I felt a weird power in making sense out of the seizure-inducing graphics, in maneuvering around a nearly indecipherable world before spontaneously lighting up the screen with four, then eight simultaneous explosions.

GAMMA IV: the game isn’t publicly downloadable yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if cactus makes it available after GDC is over.

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I was all ready to jump in with my old Shepard and Mass Effect 2 for a spin. However, I was shocked to learn that my old flame was no longer really receptive to my feelings. Bioware had a new set of romantic subplots for me to choose from though. There was Miranda (who seemed to be up on her high horse a bit too often for me), Tali (who seemed honest in her feelings, but that weak immune system makes things complicated), and perhaps the most complex of the choices, Jack.

From here on, you are forewarned, we are entering spoiler country.

Upon first meeting Jack, I felt like I was not going to like her much at all. She had the exact kind of attitude that I hate; and I believe this video just about sums it up.

As I talked to her, I noticed there was something funny about the way she acted. It was like she was trying too hard to be the bad girl. Missions went by, and I learned more about Jack. The woman had a hard life. From being used for her talents or her body, being suckered into trusting people, and even a story that heavily implied that she was raped, it’s hard to tell if she had one social interaction that did not end negatively. Surely this would help form her overly negative kill or be killed attitude, but it seems that underneath there is something else.

Then her loyalty mission came. She seemed anxious to confront the earliest stage of her life and erase it. Coming into the planet, I begin to see her change. She was nervous and looked like she wanted to run away, but I brought her to her object, encouraged her to find strength in what she endured, and convinced her to show mercy to another person trapped in the past. On the way out, I briefly notice a sad look on her face as she detonates the facility where she spent her earliest known years.

Briefly afterword, I went to check on Jack. At first she was thankful, but then her conditioning takes over. She demands to know what Sheppard wants, saying “You eyeing me up? Because if this is just about sex, maybe you should just fucking say so.”

This is where things get intriguing. While the subplot involving Jack is a “romance,” it feels wrong to tell her yes and just go at it. If anything, it justifies her world view, that everyone wants something and that Sheppard is no exception. Should I sleep with her here, she clams up and won’t let me get closer to her, in effect causing me to fail at the romance.

So I tell her I want to know her first. This initially serves to frustrate her, and she closed up for a time. Then she told me. She wasn’t always on her own. She had a partner at one point, and they were on the verge of a big score when she got caught. While her partner could have run off with the loot, he instead came back and saved her, dying in the process. This confused Jack, but the true blow was yet to come. A time sensitive message played for Jack, detailing the plans for the future he wanted to share with Jack had he survived. He was closer to her than anyone, and it hurt her. Sheppard’s advances reminded her of all this, and she told me she needed time to think.

Fast forward to the climax of the game, and on my way to the Omega 4 Mass Relay, this happens:

The scene is little more than some making out and crying, but that is what makes it work. It would not make much sense to me if they did go at it right then and there. Jack finally opened up completely, admitting to Sheppard that she needs someone to care about. This would, of course, put her in an extremely fragile emotional condition. Sleeping with her here would be a bad move, and could later reinforce her previous “everyone’s after something” view on life. If all Sheppard did was comfort her, then that would set the foundation for a trusting relationship. Jack’s peaceful smile at the end hints to me that they opted to take it slow.

So what does this have to say about sex in gaming as a whole?

That can be looked at many ways, but to me it shows a bit of maturity in the approach. Jack’s hyper sexualized appearance certainly doesn’t say much, but the approach to the positive resolution to her romantic subplot shows that sometimes, you have to take it slow. Should Sheppard choose to take her up on her initial offer, the player is shown a brief, PG-13 style love scene that shows little more than the fulfilling of a momentary spark of lust. This results in nothing; however, as no lasting relationship is formed, and Jack is openly hostile towards Sheppard should he try to talk to her. If the player is more sensitive to Jack’s feelings, none of that anger is present.

Sometimes it’s more rewarding to take the more mature route.

_{This promoted blog was written for our March Monthly Musing assignment, “Write something about sex.” You too could get promoted if you write something about sex in videogames over on the Community Blogs.}

I know it’s bad form to go on too much about prior events in the beginning of a post, so go read up on the whole “mapathy” thing here if you haven’t. There. That was painless enough.

In a sorta hilarious move, DICE has made a not-so-subtle joke at Modern Warfare 2’s expense. On the Battlefield blog, they have an article entitled “How to avoid ‘mapathy’ without paying!” You see, the second map pack for VIP Bad Company 2 members is going out the same day as MW2’s DLC — and it’s free.

DICE says this new content “helps avoid segmenting the community,” and “plays a vital part in making sure you, the players get proper value for the money you’ve invested.”

Of course, if Infinity Ward wanted to, the studio could pretty easily come out and say A) the BC2 DLC — Arica Harbor for Conquest mode and Laguna Presa for Rush mode — is essentially on-the-disc maps re-purposed for new modes, and B) “hell, at least we can keep our game up and running.”

I love your latest game DICE, really I do, but the (somewhat expected) server-side stuff that’s cropped up recently is getting damned annoying.