BitSnark

The headline says it all really.

It’ll be interesting to see if Ensemble can do the impossible (thus far) and replicate a decent RTS experience on a console.

Time will tell 🙂

While Fable II and Gears Of War 2 were raking in the christmas gold for Microsoft, it wasn’t commercial cheer for all of their first party offerings. Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, has (at up until New Years Day), only sold 140,000 copies in the US (Worldwide figures have yet to come in but they are expected to be similarly meager) which is a disappointing figure to say the least.

Logic suggests that between the mainstream crowd who didn’t even know what Banjo Kazooie was in the first place, and die hard fans who abandoned the franchise when they saw what direction it was going in, such poor sales figures don’t come as a great surprise.

Innovation doesn’t quite translate into dosh it seems.

Echoing Capcom’s claim that 2009 would be the year of multiplatform releases across both PS3 and 360, comes the announcement that Lost Planet 2 and Dead Rising 2 are both due out this year for release on 360 AND PS3.

Great news for Sony fans for sure and also for Microsoft fans too, as Capcom production head honcho Kenji Inafune, also confirmed that the 360 versions would have ‘special bonuses’ exclusive to the platform.

Everybody wins 🙂

Following on from the success of the original Banjo-Kazooie rerelease on XBLA back in November, Rare and Microsoft have announced that the sequel to Banjo-Kazooie that was released back in the day, Banjo-Tooie, will be hopping and pecking it’s way to XBLA this April.

As a side note, Developer 4J Studios will also be including a feature that developer Rare originally excluded from the Banjo-Kazooie known as “Stop ‘n’ Swop”. This previously cut feature will allow players to take items that they collected in the previous Banjo rerelease for use in it’s sequel.

Roll on April methinks.

Upon loading up the F.E.A.R 2 demo, it becomes immediately apparent that Monolith are old hands with the horror FPS genre; competent though they may be at it, they are also seemingly stuck in 2005. Straight away the player finds themselves thrust into the post-apocalyptic landscape that was hinted at during the ending of the first F.E.A.R title (Monolith apparently seem keen to distance themselves canon-wise from the later released F.E.A.R Files expansion pack), stumbling around seeing fleeting ghostly images of Alma and more than a smattering of disturbing imagery.

When a gun is finally requisitioned (after some 5-10 minutes of hide and seek with spectral apparitions) the game finally starts properly, with the player encouraged to kill enemies using the slo-mo gameplay mechanic that has been a standard in the franchise since its inception.

Like so much of what the demo shows us, the mechanic just seems stale as seemingly every encounter results in a slowed down shoot fest that never truly makes the player feel they are in any kind of real peril, and more troublingly, is far too similar to previous F.E.A.R titles. The weapons themselves, while seemingly capable of abusing the enemy into physic defying spasms when they die, simply do not seem meaty enough and their resulting lack of effect on the surrounding environment serves to further detriment the meaty feeling that each weapon should possess.

For example, firing your SPAS-12 Combat Shotgun into an upright piece of wood should either shatter it completely, or (if the developers don’t want you getting past it) at least show some kind of visual degradation such as splinters flying etc.. But instead what we get is a generic bullet hole texture mapped onto whatever surface you happen to be firing at. Lame.

Other than this, graphically the title appears to more than hold its own with the various ghosts looking suitably creepy and the various particle effects all looking quite swish indeed. As well as these incidental effects, the game moves along at a smooth frame rate, and didn’t hitch once during any point in the demo.

The inescapable, nagging feeling that the demo gives you is that you have simply done all this before, you’ve done the slow-mo, you’ve done the jumping at ghosts and you’ve seen and killed the same faceless enemies a thousand times over.

Ultimately, it feels like more of a remake of the first title than a true sequel. Based on what I’ve seen in this demo, I would simply say to Monolith; go back to drawing board folks, as essentially reheating 2005’s leftover’s does not a good game make.

Why are you reading this?

Impressions as soon as.

(promise)

The next chapter in the sprawling crime saga epic that is GTA IV, is due for release on April 29th for 1600 of your Microsoft Points.

By all accounts the DLC appears to offer a lot of bang for your buck, with a whole new story, missions, weapons and of course, achievement points.

Now, for the love of all that is holy I just need to finish GTA IV…

Going on from the very well hidden footnote in Ubisoft’s financials that 2007 stealth hit Assassins Creed would be receiving a follow up, comes the official confirmation that Assassins Creed 2 would hit PS3, 360 and PC platforms in Q1 2010.

Obviously this is miles away and so details are non-existent at present.

But hey, at least we know it’s on the way.

More as and when folks (probably at E3).

What are you waiting for? Go get!

Impressions incoming shortly 🙂

DEAD LEAVES REVIEW

Production I.G.’s yearly anime experiment continues unabated with this newest work, Dead Leaves. Having been feverently promoted by Manga Entertainment as the next big thing since, well, the last big thing, Dead Leaves piqued my interest slightly, if only because the crux of it’s infamy appeared to be it’s wacky visuals and even wackier content. And after taking in a viewing of the show, when I say wacky, I mean wacky.

The story, such as it is, concerns a Retro, a guy who has a TV for a head and Pandy who has a funky birthmark. Still with me? Good. They basically go off on a wild one, shooting cops and blowing stuff up all in the pursuit of food, clothes and a set of wheels. Eventually, the authorities get the better of them and they are sent to Dead Leaves, a penal colony in outer space. It is there that they break out of prison, take a whole bunch of prisoners with them and go on a rampage against the prison and it’s guards. Zany? Oh yes.

That said, other zany anime shows have done well in the past, shows like Excel Saga and FLCL have all found their audiences and possess much that the average anime fan can relate to. Not so with Dead Leaves. The alienation begins with the visuals. When I first saw an advert for Dead Leaves on some obscure web page somewhere, I actually thought it wasn’t an anime at all, but rather one of those crazy MTV adult ‘powered’ animations that seem to be doing the rounds these days. And upon actually viewing the show, I can’t really say my initial impressions were that far off. Everything in the show is very angular and exaggerated, with random lines everywhere in the styling of American comics.

The visuals are completely insane with barely a moments rest given to onlooking eyes, there are explosions that fill the screen, massive random close ups of characters faces, masses of blood, huge gun fights, chases, you name it and the visual style does a great job of carrying these sequences along. It’s just a shame that it all looks so darn ugly, with foul looking characters and lacklustre backgrounds. Still, I do respect the work that has gone into the visuals as apparently no computer aided animation was used and some 18,000 colours were used in the creation of the show. Bravo, but if you prefer your anime more, well, anime looking, the visuals will be a huge turn off.

By association the characters are just as crazy, besides the aforementioned leads, we have a randy guy who has a drill where his genitals should be and *dribbles* a lot, monster mecha, cloned policeman, basically naked prison wardens and much more besides.

While the action in the show is pretty intense and just as wild as the visuals, I felt strangely empty and disaffected about ten or so minutes in. After a little while because it’s all so absurd and stupid, you just get numb to the craziness of it all, but your left with no solace since the meandering plot is banal to say the least and fails to leave you with a single iota of care for either the characters or the plight that they find themselves in.

As an experiment, Dead Leaves remains different but not refreshingly so. It left a bad taste in my mouth because ultimately, under all that craziness and American styling, there really isn’t much to enjoy. Watch it if you’re completely, and I do mean completely burnt on anime right now and crave for something different. If not, don’t give it a second thought.

Overall Rating: C-