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Gaijin Games just let loose with the news about Laserlife; one of many secret projects they've got cooking on the back burners as the finish up the Bit.Trip series. Drunk off of potato chips and compliments, Gaijin Games CEO Alex Neuse was actually willing to share the details of the project with me back at E3 2010. Of course, I was sworn to secrecy, so I couldn't tell you a thing about it… until now.

Check out the rest of the post for the details on what was planned for Laserlife, and what it still might be.

Laserlife was planned for both motion controls and HD consoles. In the game, you control lasers using your arms, as you traverse a strange, unfamiliar world. These lasers are on a set path, which can change and expand based on how you play the game. Other gameplay details were scarce, but the video above shows how much of the game would look during play.

There was a specific publisher actively seeking to work with Gaijin Games on the title, but they backed out sometime after E3. It's a real shame too, as the team had so many awesome things planed for the game (some of which may be implemented in Bit.Trip FATE, to be released on Monday of next week.). But how do I tell you about them?

I don't want to give too much away, because if Laserlife does eventually get made, a lot of the experience will center around a sense of mystery. Who is the game's seemingly dead astronaut? Why are some of people considered heroes, while others are considered "ordinary"? Where do we begin, and where do our memories end, or perhaps more importantly, do our memories end just because we do? All this and more was to be explored in Laserlife, but if I tell you exactly how, it may ruin it for you is and when the game ever sees release.

One thing I can tell you is that Gaijin Games planned on request permission to use the real life "memories" of an actual astronaut in the game. By memories I mean pictures, writing, video; any personal affects that might help reveal the true nature of their character. That sort of biographical storytelling would have been a first for the games industry. That is, until Child of Eden came along.

Alex and company came up with that idea long time before E3 2010, and even longer before Q Entertainment announced that they were looking to incorporate real people's memories into their upcoming title. In fact, Laserlife and Child of Eden had a lot in common, though I don't think for a second that Gaijin Games and Q Entertainment were intentionally borrowing from each other. Sometimes when great minds are presented with the same cultural landscape and the same new technology at the same time, they're minds go in similar directions.

I hope that those similarities didn't stop a publisher from picking up this game. There is definitely room for both Laserlife and Child of Eden in the modern gaming market. I know I'd buy them both.

 A brief video is doing the rounds right now, showing an over-the-shoulder viewpoint in Street Fighter IV on the 3DS. While it’s not up close and personal like Resident Evil 4, it’s nonetheless an interesting new perspective for the fighting game.

Apparently, the over-the-shoulder camera is used when the game is played in 3D mode, which makes sense considering you’ll get a greater sense of depth that way. Whether or not it will affect gameplay, however, especially given the game’s list of complex combos, remains to be seen. 

Some people are already saying it looks terrible, but do you agree? Check it out, and remember that you can always turn 3D off if you want to play the game with a traditional perspective.

3DS SSF4 will have over the shoulder perspective option [EventHubs]

While most of us are quite content with finishing our Legendary runs and going after the daily multiplayer challenges in Halo: Reach, I suppose it’s never too early to start looking toward the future. Here is what’s in the pipeline, according to Bungie:

“The first matchmaking update for Reach will occur in early October and consist primarily of fixes for bugs and balance issues. We’ll also be adding some game types and Forge maps. Co-op campaign will be going live in October as well.”

As for OMG spoilers: “Campaign matchmaking will not take into account what your current progress is, so if you’re worried about spoilers make sure you finish campaign before jumping into this playlist!”

Can’t say that I trust the majority of Xbox LIVE users enough to campaign it up with them, but this is one of those features that will be good to have.

Halo: Reach Co-Op Matchmaking Update Coming Next Month [Giant Bomb]

If you own a PlayStation 3 The Last Guardian is a game you are going to play. It just doesn’t make sense not to. How you will play the game, however, is still up in the air at the moment. While neither 3D nor Move support are currently in the game the developers are looking into making it happen.

Speaking at TGS Lead designer at Team Ico Fumito Ueda addressed 3D by saying (through poor translation), “We’re still looking into this. In its current state, we’ve pretty much used up the full system specs. However, we’d like people who don’t normally play games to play, so if it can reach these people, we’ll think about it. With this meaning, it’s not the case that there is absolutely no plan for support.”

He then discussed Move as a possibility, but said that “even if we did adopt Move, it would be Move compatible, and not exclusive.”

Who cares? I doubt anyone. As I said before, you’ll be playing this game even if it gives you an electric shock every ten seconds.

可能性を秘めたる大作『人喰いの大鷲トリコ』上田文人ディレクターにインタビュー [Dengeki Online, via Andriasang, via CVG]

A critical part of the gaming experience, yet one that doesn’t get discussed very often, is sound. I’m willing to bet the vast majority of people reading this right now have an mp3 library full of video game music and remixes, and I’d even go so far as to say most of you probably have something video game themed as your ringtone & text message alert.

Yet, even though the sounds of gaming are, to many of us, immediately more recognizable than whatever is currently popular on the radio, it rarely comes up in any significant form when we talk about games. Reviewers (myself included) usually just briefly mention sound design when reviewing a game — a paragraph at most. When asking friends for game recommendations, I’ve yet to have anyone suggest a game to me for the sole reason that the sound/music is stunning. Sound, sadly, is often ignored, or at the very least marginalized in the overall gaming discussion.

Let’s change that. For this month’s Musing, you’re to write a blog that discusses the role sound plays in the gaming experience. Instead of giving you a list of ideas like I’ve done the last couple months, I’m going to leave this one completely open and see what you guys come up with — talk about sound and/or music in games, and be creative.

To participate, just click “Post A Blog” up there in the upper right of the screen, title your post “More than just noise: WhateverYourTitleIs”, make sure you pick the “Monthly Musing” from the tag list (this is important!), write it up, and set it live. If your article is particularly well-written or sparks interesting discussion, we’ll stick it up on the front page.

A critical part of the gaming experience, yet one that doesn’t get discussed very often, is sound. I’m willing to bet the vast majority of people reading this right now have an mp3 library full of video game music and remixes, and I’d even go so far as to say most of you probably have something video game themed as your ringtone & text message alert.

Yet, even though the sounds of gaming are, to many of us, immediately more recognizable than whatever is currently popular on the radio, it rarely comes up in any significant form when we talk about games. Reviewers (myself included) usually just briefly mention sound design when reviewing a game — a paragraph at most. When asking friends for game recommendations, I’ve yet to have anyone suggest a game to me for the sole reason that the sound/music is stunning. Sound, sadly, is often ignored, or at the very least marginalized in the overall gaming discussion.

Let’s change that. For this month’s Musing, you’re to write a blog that discusses the role sound plays in the gaming experience. Instead of giving you a list of ideas like I’ve done the last couple months, I’m going to leave this one completely open and see what you guys come up with — talk about sound and/or music in games, and be creative.

To participate, just click “Post A Blog” up there in the upper right of the screen, title your post “More than just noise: WhateverYourTitleIs”, make sure you pick the “Monthly Musing” from the tag list (this is important!), write it up, and set it live. If your article is particularly well-written or sparks interesting discussion, we’ll stick it up on the front page.

Words. They’re like tiny nuggets of enriched uranium. They hold great power and potential energy, but they’re also extremely fragile and unstable. When harnessed correctly, they can galvanize people behind a concept; when handled sloppily, they’re likely to blow up in your face. Despite the potential fallout, humans continue to rely on words as their primary currency for information exchange.

“Immersion?” “Compelling?” The overuse and misuse of these terms and others in videogame discourse has led to a grand muddying of the waters. The different factors and variables that go into either of those concepts are legion, but the words themselves strangely become vague placeholders that somehow magically absolve the writer from describing what specifically about a game drew them in or transported them to that other world (i.e. doing their job). As such, we end up with lazy writers and confused readers.
 
The abuse of words and phrases like “immersion” has thankfully seen a decline in recent days. But, like a game of linguistic Whack-a-Mole, there’s always a new idiotic rodent in dire need of flattening. Our target for the sweet hammer of logic today? “Trial and error”.

The most frequent misuse of the term seems to be concentrated in the discussion of platformers, where you’ll find it sprinkled liberally like salt and pepper on a piece of grossly over-cooked chicken. Reviews, critiques, and comments of games in this genre have been getting it wrong for years. From classic franchises like Mega Man and Rayman to modern indie titles like Braid or P.B. Winterbottom, you’ll inevitably find a gripe that summons the phrase “trial and error”.
 
I actually read a review of Limbo that said the game “suffered from a reliance on trial-and-error gameplay.” If you take a closer look at the meaning of the term, the absurdity of that statement becomes more apparent. A game cannot suffer from trial-and-error gameplay, because trial and error is a fundamental component of gameplay. There is no other kind.

 
All games employ trial and error. Trial is interactivity — providing the player with a set of tools/options and an environment to play with them in. Error is defining the rules — determining what actions result in success and which lead to fail states. There is no game that doesn’t utilize this system; rhythm games, shooters, and even artsy-fartsy titles like Passage employ it (in Passage every playthrough technically results in a fail state: death).
 
Essentially, saying that a game suffers from trial and error gameplay is no different in meaning from saying that a game suffers from being a game. If games were self-aware, that would be a very cool nihilistic meta-statement to make. Since they aren’t self-aware (yet), it’s just wrong. Telling developers that their games are bad due to trial and error gives them absolutely no substantive or constructive information with which to push the quality of their games forward.
 
When a writer uses this term in the context of game critique, it generally indicates a lack of ability to accurately zero in and elaborate on the source of their dissatisfaction. I’ve misused the phrase myself recently in an attempt to use the accepted meaning of the term rather than the actual meaning. No more. Particularly because there is no accepted meaning. It’s all about context.
 
When someone dings Mega Man for trial and error, what they usually mean is that they are frustrated with the difficulty level or that they feel the game relies too heavily on pattern memorization. When Demon’s Souls was slammed for trial-and-error gameplay, it wasn’t just the difficulty that reviewers were concerned with, but also the steep penalty for hitting a fail state. In the case of Limbo, the penalty for a fail state is minimal, so many reviewers used the term to refer to their concern that the conditions for success aren’t more implicity communicated (i.e. if you die even once and it’s not your fault, it’s always bad design).
 
If you’re familiar with the game in question, it’s possible to work backwards and make an educated guess as to what they mean by that phrase. But asking a reader who is coming to a review or editorial without having played the game to try and properly infer which meaning of trial and error the author intended is simply bad writing. It does nothing to inform the audience or strengthen the dialogue.

 
I personally think part of the problem is that really drilling down to that level of detail exposes the subjectivity of the craft involved in game writing. Games writers are not the arbiters of objective quality when it comes to things like trial and error.
 
We can say, “this game has massive bugs, therefore it is a bad game.” However, it is not our job to say, “this game is extremely difficult (or easy), therefore it is a bad (or good) game.” It is our job to say, “I enjoyed this title in part because it possesses x level of difficulty, and that meshes well with my tastes.”
 
It is the readers’ job then to plug their own tastes into the equation and base their own decisions accordingly. The writer acts as a compass needle; based on how the writer’s opinion, style, and reasoning resonate with a given reader, that reader can then use the point to chart a course either towards or away from the writer’s stance. When a writer relies on an ambiguous catch-all phrase like “trial and error,” the needle becomes wobbly and therefore a less valuable tool to the reader. It’s asking an audience to adopt an opinion based on faith rather than specific reasoning, and the Internet’s not so good at that.
 
Avoiding “trial and error” outside of its actual meaning can only elevate the quality of videogame discourse. It will force us as writers to bring more specificity and logic to our arguments, and that will provide us with much more benefit as readers. And by that, I mean it will make game analysis more immersive and compelling.

_{[New releases is your weekly look at all the hot new titles coming out this week.]}

Oh. Hell. YES! It’s time to get Shank’d! The awesome beat-em up is coming out for Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation this week and I couldn’t be any more happier. This game is a ton of fun and it’s violent as F*CK too. You’d be an idiot to skip it.

Also un-skippable this week is Mafia II for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC. Xbox 360 gamers also get Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game, another game you’d be dumb to skip.

What’s look sw33t to all of you this week, Dtoiders? Hit the break for the full release schedule!

[Editor's note: This post did not go live on Monday as planned. So here it is now!]

PS3: Mafia II

PSN: Shank

X360: Mafia II

XBLA: Shank, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game

Wii: Gunblade NY and LA Machineguns Arcade Hits Pack, Ivy the Kiwi?, Grease: The Game, The Bachelor, Martian Panic with gun, Gunblade NYC & LA Machine Guns, NHL 2K11

WiiWare: And Yet It Moves

DS: G.G Series: Ninja Karakuri Den, Crazy Pig, Grease: The Game, Ivy the Kiwi?, The Bachelor, Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar

PC: Worms Reloaded, Mafia II

And Yet It Moves (WiiWare)

Releasing 08/24:

Gunblade NYC & LA Machine Guns (Wii)

NHL 2K11 (Wii)

Mafia II (PS3, X360, PC)

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game (XBLA)

The Dragon Quest saga began for me in earnest only with Dragon Quest VIII. I had played previous games in the series, but not in any capacity other than “OK let’s do this oh WTF this is shit?” I never even got around to finishing DQVIII despite the fact that I loved it like my own magical Japanese/British love child. But the point is that I’m hardly an expert on the entirety of this crazy Dragon Quest thing, and that’s especially true of a little thing called the “puff-puff.”

What the hell is the puff-puff? I’m glad you asked. Just last week, I found myself asking that same question — around the same time I was writing that two-part thing. When all was said and done, the puff-puff just wasn’t relevant to what I was saying in those two pieces. So now it’s time to answer once and for all, “What is the puff-puff?”

It’s a story that begins, as so many others do, with getting high. And it ends with boobs.

One of my favorite things about Dragon Quest IX is the DQVC service, a specialized store offering new items and quests. A couple of Fridays ago, I unlocked a quest called “Puff-Puff Performance.” To any true Dragon Quest fan, this would have immediately meant something quite glorious, but as for me, I simply wandered over to the quest giver expecting a fairly typical mission, perhaps one involving dancing.

However, the quest giver asked me to find an herb called “cheer-me-up.” Hmm … something called a “puff-puff” that involved a magical herb? I thought I had an idea of what was going on now. This silly little JRPG with an E10+ ESRB rating was going to get me high as fuck. Ah, the perks of being an angel. Innocence? Ha!

The reality was quite a bit less innocent than this.

So I set out to find a cheer-me-up. Fairly straightforward. Go out, steal the cheer-me-up from a big-ass troll, and return to quest giver Tuya. That’s when the true fun begins. The music cuts out and the screen goes dark as Tuya makes your character close his or her eyes, and the ritual begins. You see only the text come on screen, telling you of the magic you are about to experience.

This is where things start to get really weird. Tuya begins talking some really random nonsense, like “Come to me! Good! Now stay!” Uhh, yeah lady, I’m just sitting here with my eyes closed. Then the “puff puff puff puff puff” begins, and a strangely bouncy sound effect plays through the speakers. Is that supposed to represent taking a hit from a pipe?

The sudden “baa” pretty much shatters that idea.

Yeah, with the screen still blank, a voice begins to bleat. It’s not Tuya — she commands the bleating to cease. Is it me? Has my character become so mind-alteringly high that she believes herself to be a sheep? Soon, more puff puff, more bleating, and Tuya offers the cheer-me-up to the baaing voice. OK, so apparently I’m not high. Shit is fucked up.

The bleating reaches its climax, and the screen lights up. Mia, my character, is surrounded on each side by two little lambs who appear to be rubbing their asses upon her face as hearts emit like love fumes from the top of her head.

A couple of stoned lambs are humping me with their butts.

They bestow upon me the honor of the puff-puff once more before fleeing the scene like a couple of freelance hookers at a drug bust, and the “puff-puff experience” ends. I am given a piece of lambswool as a memento by which to remember the experience/ordeal. But, trust me, no memento is necessary. I have nightmares of being suffocated by lamb asses the next night.

The following day, I do a little research. Apparently, this is not the first puff-puff performance in the Dragon Quest series. Soon, I’m knee-deep in a history of puff-puffs, and I’m surprised to learn that the missing link in my comprehension was breasts.

In the Japanese version of the first game, Dragon Quest (which became Dragon Warrior in the States), a woman offers a “puff-puff” to the hero. Strangely, it’s hard to find a ton of information about this, but Gamasutra has us covered. According to that article, the idea of puff-puff comes from a Japanese onomatopoeia, “pafu-pafu.” The sound it’s supposed to represent? That of rubbing one’s breasts in another person’s face.

Oddly, I kind of think that onomatopoeia works!

Other sources suggest that the person receiving the “pafu-pafu” is supposed to make the sound vocally while his face is the meat in a breast sandwich. Whatever the true meaning is, this could never fly in America, so Dragon Warrior substituted a girl selling tomatoes for the girl offering the puff-puff. It’s amazing that this tale doesn’t end here. But against all odds, this silly replacement for the true “pafu-pafu” spawned a long-running series of jokes.

Throughout the Dragon Quest series (and Akira Toriyama’s other major series, Dragon Ball), there have been a variety of strange references to this bizarre fetish, though its inclusion in Dragon Quest VIII is perhaps the greatest of all. It’s hidden pretty well in the game, but if you do manage to find it, you’re in for a real treat — one that’s considerably more direct in its relation to the real “puff-puff.”

As the video above shows, the protagonist is placed in a chair with the promise that it “feels sooooo good.” He is then instructed to “let it all ‘ang out” (whatever “it” may be) as he is blindfolded. Naturally, he will have twice as much fun with his eyes closed. Sure.

As in DQIX, the screen goes dark and you’re treated to the sound of bouncing and the question “Ave you ever felt a pair as warm and soft as mine?” Oh, yeah, there that is. That’s definitely probably a reference to her breasts.

Of course, no real breasts can be involved in this ritual, so it is revealed that the woman has been rubbing two bouncy slimes on either side of the character’s head. Still, it’s a hell of a lot more obvious in this entry of the series what the puff-puff is meant to symbolize. And it’s just brilliant.

The game does include yet another instance of the puff-puff. Jessica, the party member best known for her gigantic mammary glands, learns the ability to perform a puff-puff in the hopes of “putting a huge grin” on the face of your enemy, making him so enthralled that he misses a turn.

The best part, however, occurs when an enemy attempts a puff-puff upon Jessica. If it fails, the game displays the message “But Jessica laughs triumphantly having won the battles of the bulges.” I really wish there’s something witty I could say here to make the effect greater, but there really isn’t. This level of writing in a game really speaks for itself.

As a bonus, 3D Dot Game Heroes made a reference to the puff-puff. You can see that here. Sort of vanilla, at least when it comes to the full glory of the puff-puff, but at least it’s there.

So there’s your exhaustive investigation into the puff-puff. If my other two posts hadn’t convinced you that Dragon Quest IX is something that you need to have, hopefully this will. Everyone needs a good puff-puff once in a while.