The Full Circle: 360 News Report 06.27.08

Posted by Joe Roche on 06.27.2008

It might be the longest Full Circle to date and we're talking a bunch of Gears of War 2 news, something doesn't add up with Alone in the Dark, Denis Dyack of Silicon Knights gets overly defensive about Too Human, Microsoft winning the battle of European supremecy against Sony, the next chapter in the Halo series, and a couple stories that would make Jack Thompson jump for joy. All of that and we'll close out the week with a Top Ten list of my most anticipated summer video game releases, it's all inside The Full Circle.



Quick introduction this week because I'm heading out to an NBA draft party, the first time in many years that it won't really matter who my favorite team selects because they're the defending NBA Champions. I'm slowly but surely working on a few upgrades for the column including the ability to send you all to the other writers here at 411Games (yes I know it's as easy as it seems), but if you haven't been checking out everything that gets posted around here then you're doing yourself a disservice. The writers here are all top notch and for the most part they talk about video game consoles, even the guy who snuck a DVD player onto this site holds up his end of the bargain pretty well. Enough ball washing, on with the show.

Party with Gears of War 2



Cliff Bleszinski from Epic allowed the kids over at 1UP got some hands on time with the multiplayer for Gears of War 2 and they didn't waste much time bringing the details to our doorsteps. I am on record as saying that I am not that excited about Gears 2 just yet but I know enough of you are that this will be some important information. The first, and from what I can tell most important addition to the online multiplayer is the elimination of host advantage by offloading the voice servers from the host to other servers. Epic wants everyone to know that they're interested in making a fair game across the board and they thought this would be the most beneficial means of doing just that.

Also uncovered is that with the edition of 5 on 5 matches (up from 4 on 4) there is no sign of increased lag. Furthermore, Epic has done away with the God like qualities that players would enjoy when engaging in chainsaw battles – apparently in Gears of War when you were locked in a chainsaw struggle enemy fire couldn't damage you, so yeah that's gone.

There are also some new multiplayer game modes including Wingman. When I first heard about this mode I figured you got to talk to a fat chick for twenty minutes while your buddy tried to impress her hot friend with the story about the time he hit a three pointer at the YMCA against Cedric Maxwell. It turns out that it's actually a mode where five teams of two do battle against one another – you are able to revive your wingman six times but I assume the goal is to not have to do that.

We've also got Guardian which is a reworked version of Assassination from the original Gears, and Meat Flag which is the best name for a multiplayer mode in a long time and allows you to track down a computer controlled opponent, kill him and then drag him to a specific point on the map – brilliant.

Finally it was revealed that Gears 2 will ship with 10 maps, 8 brand new and 2 reimagined versions of Gears 1 maps (Subway and Gridlock). There also hasn't been any word on whether there might be some DLC down the road for the game, but I wouldn't rule it out.

Alone in the Dark Panned and Rich



Here is a strange turn of events – heading into this week the Xbox 360 had two pretty impressive releases hitting the shelves, Alone in the Dark and Battlefield: Bad Company. As the date of release began to get closer you started to get the feeling that Alone in the Dark was going to be pretty horrible. Did anyone see a single trailer for the game on TV? Were there magazine advertisements that I missed? Website banner ads? You couldn't get away from Battlefield: Bad Company if you tried, yet Alone in the Dark seemed to be flying under the radar.

The optimist side of me tried to hold out some hope that it just wasn't the type of game that lent itself to television advertisements. The realistic side of me understood what this meant – and the reviews for Alone in the Dark seem to back up my biggest fear, the game stinks. Currently pulling a 58 rating on Metacritic, the Atari produced game has managed to score worse then Hellboy: The Science of Evil (61). Some of the ratings have been outright harsh for this game including IGN saying "nice visuals, great fire effects, and valiant efforts at innovation don't make up for boring combat, frustrating controls, poorly designed levels, and a hackneyed story." Ouch.

But all is not lost in the world of Atari because as it turns out the Europeans love "hackneyed" things because Alone in the Dark is the number one game for the Xbox 360 this week in the European market. Color me impressed by people willing to give a game a shot even though it is almost universally panned, or at least willing to ignore their better judgment and purchase a game that they wished would be as good as it could have been.

Denis Dyack Makes Me Laugh



Denis Dyack is the president of Silicon Knights which puts him at the helm of one of the most highly touted and – let's call it put off games of 2008, Too Human. If you're nine years old and reading this column Too Human and you have been on this planet for the same amount of time. Needless to say Dyack has been taking some criticism over at NeoGAF about the upcoming release of Too Human and he's not taking it lightly.

"I think it is time to draw the digital line. Too Human will be out in August and I think there is going to be a lot of trolls crying here. Either way when the game comes out this forum will likely be on fire. So in order to try to put it out some gasoline on this fire I will ask those interested to stand up and be counted.

"I feel Too Human is a great game, likely to be better than most that will come out this year. I certainly feel it is the best game we have ever made. I also believe the press and gamers alike will believe this. This puts me in the 'For' camp.

"I know there are many who feel strongly in opposite camp. I also would ask you to stand up and say 'Against'.

"When the game is released and everyone plays game all the speculation will be over. If I am wrong and gamers in general think the game is 'crap' then I am comfortable with getting tagged "Owned by the GAF".

"However, if I am right and it is received well, I would like to see those 'Against' to be tagged with 'Owned by Too Human'.

"I would like to make a honorary invitation to EvilLore and Duckroll who help fuel the fire on a regular basis -- assuming you both would be 'Against'. In the end though, it is your decision and I want to remind everyone that I have an advantage of actually playing the game.

"I invite anyone who seeing someone trolling Too Human in other threads to point them here.

"So it's time to be stand and be counted:

"Denis Dyack -- 'For'"

Frankly this entire situation cracks me up and I respect the hell out of Dyack for coming out in support of a game that has the potential to make or break his entire studio. On the other hand, I think Dyack might be a bit oversensitive and that doesn't make me feel very good about the potential for Too Human. I am sure that having the game in development for so long has been difficult for Silicon Knights, but just like the kid who gets overly upset when you call him "gay" on the school playground, Dyack seems to be showing his cards a bit with his reaction here. Either way, I am on the record (keep reading) of saying that I am very much in anticipation of the release of Too Human and I hope that Dyack can put his studios talents where his mouth is and produce one of the best games of 2008.

More Gears



The Artist Formerly Known as CliffyB has a message for all your Solid Snake fans – you're not going to like Gears of War 2. "Metal Gear Solid is our example of the game we're not doing. Passive entertainment is on its way out."

Was anyone really concerned about this in the first place? I'm pretty sure that everyone in the Gears camp understood what to expect come the holiday season when Gears 2 drops, and I'm also relatively sure that everyone who bought Metal Gear Solid 4 was at least partially prepared to sit through very long, very drawn out action sequence cut scenes. Frankly I've got my own feelings about MGS4 and whether or not I want to sit and watch an hour long fight scene, but that's neither here nor there. So if you're a Gears fan who was hoping for epic storyline plot twists and convoluted twists and turns it seems like you'll be sourly disappointed with the next installment of the Gears franchise.

Sid Meier Gives Small Pox for Christmas



I believe that if nothing else my time writing this column has shown people that I think the mainstream (read: non gaming) news culture spends far too much time concerned with aspects of video games that either don't exist (read a few stories below), or remain such a small part of the overall package that most gamers don't even notice the issue. I understand why there is such a focus on video games, because the concerned vocal minority has already taken the balls away from music, and film so they're left with this final avenue of artistic expression and damnit if they won't have their way with it as well.

That might be an oversimplification, but with more then a handful of round the clock news networks, and thousands upon thousands of news websites you're going to find people trying to make up issues to get people to tune in. Call it the sports radio phenomena – I live in Boston, the day after the Celtics victory parade the hosts of certain radio shows were asking whether Kevin Garnett was overrated, I kid you not.

I bring it up because Variety reporter Ben Fritz wants you to all take a step back and make a decision on whether or not Sid Meier profiting off a game centered around global colonization is a bad thing. He is directly quoted as saying "Goddamnit, am I the only one who thinks it's morally disturbing to make a game celebrating COLONIZATION?"

This is the same logic that I have based my hatred of Katamari Damacy upon, basically that allowing someone to profit off the premise that a person might roll me into a giant ball seems morally outrageous. I'm not even sure how to appropriately respond to Ben Fritz so I throw it out to the masses instead, do you feel any trepidation towards playing a Sid Meier game when you think about the sad truth behind the premise?

Futbol and the Xbox 360



Remember Sony's David Reeves claiming that the PS3 had outsold the Xbox 360 in the European market and basically declaring themselves the winner of the console war? Well rumors of the 360's demise may have been greatly exaggerated because David Gosen who has the thankless job of being the VP of Strategic Marketing for Microsoft in Europe reported this week that the 360 has reached the 5 million units sold mark, putting it almost one million units (750,000) ahead of the Playstation 3 in Europe.

Frankly three quarters of a million consoles isn't a huge disparity in the numbers, especially when you consider MGS4 and the potential that the PS3 will more then likely bridge that gap within the next couple of months. Gosen proclaims that the major surprises that Microsoft has lined up for E3 will help the system close the year out on a high note (I remain somewhat skeptical of this proclamation), but we shall take a wait and see approach on that claim. Meanwhile this really isn't much of a new story except it highlights one of the most interesting things about the console wars right now, the fact that it's not only fanboys on websites and message boards taking part – these are high ranking officials from each camp taking shots at one another and really pushing the entire feud to the next level. In a somewhat related story someone asked a representative from Nintendo to comment on the console war and they responded "What is the PS3 and Xbox 360?"

File This Under Duh



So Kotaku got their hands on an excerpt from a marketing survey concerning potential future Halo products to be developed by Microsoft. This survey has been getting a lot of people riled up on the interwebs because of the different game types that it mentions including a LEGO Halo, and a family friendly Halo. The entire list includes:

A Halo LEGO Game
A Halo MMO game
A Halo racing game, using vehicles from the Halo universe
A more family friendly Halo game
A 3rd-person Halo action-adventure game
A Halo arcade game
A new Halo shooter where you don't play as Master Chief
Halo Wars (an RTS game set in the Halo universe) – (Confirmed for this year)
A Halo squad based shooter game
A new Halo shooter with a story that takes place before the existing Halo trilogy
A new Halo shooter that is an extension of the Halo 3 game

Before anyone freaks out lets break this down to the simplest possible form. Microsoft owns the Halo IP, and each time they release a Halo game they've got a license to print money thus you will most certainly see more Halo games in the future. It all comes down to what type of a game you'd like to see added to the collection of Halo games, and frankly while a LEGO Halo seems strangely appealing why would Microsoft not develop a Halo game that departs from the Master Chief story arch and brings us a new character?

Frankly this seems like the most obvious choice, and also brings in new people to the fold who didn't want to jump into the Halo series when Halo 3 came out, but had no desire to go back and play the older generation Halo games when they could just as easily play a beautiful current generate console shooter and ignore Halo altogether. If I was in charge that's the direction I'd take the series, but I'm interested to see how you all think about the potential for future Halo games?

Jack Thompson Would Be Proud



Gayle Slossberg (D) is a Senator from the average at best state of Connecticut. You might remember Senator Slossberg from the time she was mentioned as one of the call girls working under the Hollywood Madam, Heidi Fleiss.

Naturally that story isn't true, it isn't even remotely true – but luckily for me Senator Slossberg has determined that relying on things like facts, evidence and the truth are less convenient then just making outrageous statements to get your name in the news. Somewhere on Miami Beach Jack Thompson must be smiling because Gayle Slossberg has taken the ball from former attorney Thompson and run with it. According to statements made to the New Haven Advocate Senator Slossberg is deeply offended by the "scene in Grand Theft Auto IV where you earn points for rape" to the point where she wants a law passed that provides for better warning labels on video games.

Now if you're like me, in that you've actually played Grand Theft Auto IV then you can say with a certain degree of authority that there is no such rape mini game anywhere in Liberty City. I'm pretty sure that it's not a Brucie side quest but I will confess to having not completed all the race missions so I might be wrong. I'd venture a guess that there is a much better chance that Senator Slossberg has absolutely no idea what she is talking about – especially when you consider that the article ends with her asking for confirmation that there is no such rape scene in the game.

Could you imagine if everything in life operated the way Senator Slossberg lives her life? Instead of backing up any claims with facts or evidence you just make an outlandish statement and then demand that the opposing party provide the evidence to rebut your assumption. I guess what this means is the ball is in your court Senator Slossberg, please prove to the good folks at 411Games that you were never a prostitute working for Heidi Fleiss, otherwise we'll all just assume it as true.


THE HOT BUTTON

This week marked the official start of summer (June 20th to be precise), which brings to mind many things – island drinks, the beach, bikinis, boats, sunshine and most importantly to the people reading this column I am sure, a severe lack of quality video games. For gamers the summer months are akin to the early portion of the year for movies, studios put out that which they anticipate will flop so they can save their heavy artillery for the holiday season. In the spring we saw Grand Theft Auto IV, and in the fall/winter we'll get our hands on Gears of War 2 and Saints Row 2, but what are we supposed to look forward to during this most beautiful of all seasons? For The Hot Button this week I am going to run down the Top 10 most Anticipated Summer Games of 2008, which was a relatively simple list to make when you actually take a step back and realize what is coming during the next few months.

I'll set some ground rules first for the list – only games that came out from this past week through Sept. 1, 2008 could be counted towards the summer list. I understand that some of the most calendar savvy readers of The Full Circle will proclaim that summer doesn't end on Sept. 1st but we'll anyone who is still in school knows that's a mere technicality more then the general rule. So without further ado let us take a look at what the next 75 days have in store for the video game starved voice in your head.

The Hot Button's Most Anticipated Summer Games

10. Battlefield: Bad Company (06.25.08) – Through the power of advertising DICE managed to get me interested in a game that I otherwise was prepared to avoid as just another cookie cutter war time shooter. You have to admit that the trailers for this game made it seem incredibly fun and the visuals seemed to convey a feeling of really being in the middle of a fire fight. On the back of a very strong multiplayer feature BF:BC has come out the gates this week with very strong reviews averaging an 86 currently on Metacritic.
9. Mercenaries 2: World in Flames (08.31.08) – Closing out the summer season (or at least, my summer season) is the follow up to a game that some people called a success, and other people considered a failure. From all accounts Mercenaries 2 does not really change much from the original game, going with the old adage if it ain't broke don't fix it, and frankly I think that'll serve this game well. If you want a deep, storyline driven, emotionally charged game you're in the wrong place. If you want to blow a bunch of stuff up then this will be the perfect way to usher in Labor Day Weekend.
8. Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway (08.26.08) – It's an overly dramatic first person shooter set in the European front during WWII, so obviously BiA: HH isn't on the list for originality. That being said Ubisoft hasn't really disappointed me lately, and from the early word going around about this game they're not going to start here. The game is designed to be accessible to newbies to the franchise but also provide enough reference to previous Brothers in Arms games to keep those who have followed the series satisfied as well.
7. Tales of Vesperia (08.19.08) – I wish I could be more excited about this game, but frankly I'm a bit burned out by the entire JRPG genre and I think there are more enticing games coming later in the year (read: Infinite Undiscovery). However, what is shocking about this game is how quickly it is coming out in the United States, basically mere weeks after the Japanese release. I will be very interested to see how the translation process goes over because if it can be done seamlessly then Namco Bandai might reveal to the world what we already knew – the year long wait between Japanese and American releases for these games is all a ruse.
6. Madden NFL 09 (08.12.08) – The granddaddy of all sports franchises returns in the middle of the most dead of dead months. Even though I have become less of a fan of the Madden franchise as the years have gone bye and the game has remained almost unchanged it's difficult to argue against the impact the game has on a cross section of our culture. You can expect ESPN, G4, and CNN to all be up at midnight when Madden is officially released and there isn't another video game franchise that you can say that about.
5. Sid Meier's Civilization: Revolution (07.08.08) – Much like Tales of Vesperia one of the major selling points of this game other then the fact that Sid Meier is an admitted genius with what he does, is the fact that there just aren't any other games like this on the 360 right now. I was never a huge fan of the Civilization series before now; mainly because I never had a computer with enough balls to run the game properly (I basically have a word processor with Wi-Fi). However, with the move to the console I fully anticipate at least giving world domination a go of things and hopefully really enjoying this game.
4. Soul Caliber IV (07.29.08) – I'll be honest recent rumors of Kratos, and the already confirmed and highly publicized inclusion of Darth Vader in the PS3 version of the game has damped my anticipation for the next installment of the Soul Caliber series. I will say that of all the fighting games on the horizon this is one that I am most excited for, and I do intend to play it at least once but where is the Microsoft love on exclusive characters?
3. Unreal Tournament III (07.07.08) – I'll be honest, I don't really care about Unreal Tournament III. That being said it makes my list because I'm interested to see whether anyone else still cares about UT3.
2. NCAA Football 09 (07.15.08) – Sure the NCAA has a hard time crowning an actual college football national champion that everyone can agree on, but the game lends itself to a terrific video game experience which only looks to improve this season. I did a preview for the game earlier in the week and I loved the demo, but more importantly I love that they'd added online dynasty to the series, something that might lend itself to an interesting 411Games competition. Sure bringing your favorite pro team to the Super Bowl on the back of high priced free agents is fun in Madden, but there is no comparison to signing blue chips recruits and competing for a BCS Championship bid with Rice.
1. Too Human (08.19.08) – What makes Too Human the most anticipated game of the summer season is the same reason that some people think it doesn't deserve to be on the list. Frankly Silicon Knights have been turning the hype machine to 11 since the first Xbox 360 had yet to experience the Red Ring of Death, and even the thought that we'll see Too Human before the snow begins to fall seems too hypothetical to get me excited just yet. However, there is a date attached to the game now, and for that reason alone the story of Baldur gets on the list, and occupies the number one spot on my most anticipated games list of the summer of 2008. Sure the idea of creating a game out of Norse mythology isn't new, hell this isn't the first game based on that premise to come for the 360 this year (anyone remember Viking?), but the combination of the Norse mythology with the idea of technologies effect on man is something that I've yet to see in a video game. Maybe Too Human is benefiting from a relatively week summer season but it's tough to argue that it won't be the most anticipated game to come out before we're watching the NFL and hearing about Santa Clause.

That's my list of the most anticipated games hitting store shelves during the summer season but it is by no means the definitive list. I left off Xbox Live Arcade games, and I am sure that you all have things on the horizon that you're looking forward to – feel free to leave your recommendations in the comment section, who knows you might even change my mind on a couple things.